by Stella Rhys
“I know. Nothing made sense to me that day, and I felt like I was helpless for once. Everyone was furious with me, and I couldn’t stick around without doing more damage, so I talked alone with my grandfather. He said he loved me, he understood, and he knew I needed to just get away for a bit – to cool off. He said that we’d say goodbye now. Just in case.”
I hugged my knees tight against my chest. I knew where this story was going, and I couldn’t take it. My heart was twisting and turning as I waited for Julian to just say it, but obviously, he needed time.
For awhile, it was just the silence and the sound of the motor as the yacht continued sailing toward the skyline.
“I took my bike, actually. It was my preferred getaway, too,” Julian finally said, and with the kind of strained smile I knew was for the purpose of bracing your emotions. Inching closer to him, I dared to reach for his hand. Before I could tell myself to pull back and give him some space, he took my hand in his. I stared down at our fingers entwined, a little amazed by the notion of my touch providing him comfort.
“Where did you go?” I asked softly.
“Nowhere in particular,” he said. “I just rode. I rode for probably five hours to calm myself down. I was close to Martha’s Vineyard by the time my heart was beating normally again. But when I checked my phone, I had more than fifty missed calls, texts and voicemails.
I closed my eyes for a second. “Your grandfather passed?” I wasn’t sure if he’d even heard my whisper of a question, but then he gave my hand a squeeze.
“No,” he said. “It was my dad. He had a massive heart attack an hour after I left.”
I covered my mouth.
I couldn’t speak for a moment.
Several moments, actually. My heart pounded like it had grown ten sizes, and I could almost feel how rocked Julian had been standing next to his bike all those years ago, in a different state, helpless and broken by the news. I had no idea how he could even go on talking, but he did. His voice was mostly steady, but his grip choked the wheel as he steered and explained everything.
His dad had passed that very night, and by the next, his heartbroken grandfather left them as well. And of course, the Hoults were in shambles – at least Julian’s grandma, mom and brother were.
The real estate wound up going to his vile aunt, uncle and cousins. His mother obviously didn’t care. She had never wanted it in the first place. And now, all she wanted was her husband who was suddenly gone.
Apparently, she took her grief out on her son.
“She’s apologized profusely since, but she blamed me then. She said I drove my father to that point. And I did. You can’t deny that,” he said, knowing well I was about to try. “You really can’t,” he repeated with the most faintly detectable tremor in his voice. “I shocked him, and I angered him so badly it killed him. I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. We just left off. It still feels like we’re up in the air, and wherever he is, he’s always wishing he could say something to me.”
My heart was completely broken for him. I could tell from the way he cleared his throat that he was choked up, and more than anything, I wanted to just crawl into his lap and give him the biggest hug, but he was still driving. I took a moment to sort through my fractured jumble of thoughts.
“You have to know he’s proud of you, Julian,” I murmured. “How could he be anything but that? You put his early business lessons to work, you founded your company – you even followed through on your grandfather’s promise to buy the New York Empires. That’s crazy, Julian. You and the people around you might be used to your success and achievements at this point, but as an outside party, let me tell you that I am constantly in awe of you. You are unstoppable, and considering the unreal accomplishments you’ve had so far, I can’t imagine a greater honor than being the motivation for your success, the way your family is.”
Julian said nothing but squeezed my hand hard, rubbing his thumb over my palm.
“You told me yesterday to stop blaming myself and trying to repent for the past,” I pointed out gently, “so I’m telling you now to allow the same for yourself. A part of you has to know you deserve it. You gave your grandmother the opportunity to be Rosie The Reaper to a bunch of big pro ballers. Your grandfather is definitely somewhere laughing with your dad about that,” I said, a little smile touching my lips as I watched Julian grin.
“They’re definitely pleased about that.”
“Exactly.”
Julian smiled for a bit, and I let myself enjoy it. But I knew there was more.
“My guilt doesn’t end there,” he finally broke the silence. I took in a deep breath.
“What else happened?”
“I was estranged for years from my mother and Emmett.”
I raised my eyebrows. Judging from his relationship with Emmett now, it was hard to believe that Julian was ever anything but close to him. But evidently, there was a period where they had gone years without speaking.
“I went home for my father and grandfather’s funerals, but I moved overseas shortly after. Just weeks after. There was a sudden wall between me and the rest of my family. My mom couldn’t look at me. She didn’t want to. Emmett claimed it was because I reminded her too much of our father, and not because she blamed me for his death, but I knew that was a lie. So, I moved to Stockholm.”
“Stockholm? As in Sweden?” I said with surprise.
“Yes. People don’t associate the city with being the tech hub it is, but it was there that I wound up starting the company that would become Hoult Communications. It was Hoult Media at the time, and it offered mobile content like news, sports scores, et cetera. Once we developed a mobile payment technology, the company surpassed a billion dollars in value. I was twenty-seven when I sold it.”
“Holy shit.” I let it all process for a bit as the boat slowed significantly, humming along the water now. “So you spent four years away from your family,” I murmured. My mom was exhausting, and my dad was a lot of talking to handle at a time, but I couldn’t imagine going even a year without seeing them.
“It wasn’t easy. But as time went on, the wall between us just got higher and higher. More and more miscommunications built up. My mother can be incredibly proud and hard headed, and when I asked if I could send her money, she took it as a slight. She thought I was trying to buy her forgiveness for abandoning them when this entire time, I swore she was the one who abandoned me. I was so angry for so long, and I missed my dad. A lot. I had always grown up telling myself I would be exactly like him, so with my mother and my relationship on the rocks, and Emmett just doing whatever he could to keep her afloat, I filled the void with a woman I worked with. Elizabet. Or Liz.”
“I’m going to guess she’s French.”
“Yes. She was something of an assistant to me at Hoult Media.”
“You were in love with her?” I asked, doing my best to sound casual despite how fast my heart was beating.
“I thought I was. In reality, I just wanted to replace the family I lost, and I was hasty. I picked someone I thought was important to me because I conflated her significance to me with the success of my company. She was in the office every day watching me grow it from a startup, and my perception of her was skewed thanks to that. After we split for good, I made a rule for myself.”
“Zero tolerance. Never sleep with or date an employee,” I recited so dryly Julian looked at me with a laugh.
“Yes.”
“Split for good?” I recalled what he said. “What caused the final split?”
From Julian’s pause and the way he drew a palm over his jaw, I knew we’d reached another painful peak in his story.
“Liz said for a long time, it was easy to pretend I loved her the way she loved me. But then Lucie came along, and she saw what real love looked like in my eyes.”
I swallowed. “Lucie?” I repeated, a small chill running over my arm just before Julian answered.
“My daughter.”
It felt like my org
ans had all crashed to my feet before he clarified.
“She isn’t biologically mine,” Julian said, looking at me. “Liz got pregnant with her around the time of one of our breaks, but I specifically didn’t do anything to confirm paternity when Liz said the child belonged to me. I wanted a kid. I wanted that family. I raised Lucie till she was four years old.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed. It was a much more significant amount of time than I had thought. “How old were you?”
“Twenty-five,” Julian replied. “From the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine, I was a dad. And a fucking good one. I was the father my own father raised me to become, and I was proud of myself. I adored Lucie in a way I didn’t know was possible. But Liz couldn’t handle it. Lucie and I were closer than she was to either of us. Lucie had anxiety. Panic attacks.”
Julian glanced at me, and my reaction to the explanation I now had for that night. He had been able to put air back in my lungs the night at the pool with Turner and Carter Roth, because he’d spent years using the same tricks to soothe the girl he raised as his daughter.
“I was the only one who could calm her down, and Liz resented that,” Julian said. “She resented that she was second best to the both of us. She resented that the love Lucie and I had together upstaged anything we had for her, and it was a painful daily reminder.”
“That sounds hard,” I couldn’t help but murmur. It really did. There was nothing more hurtful than being unloved and unwanted, and I knew well that being reminded of it every day was like torture following torture. A revolving door of pain.
“It had to be hard. I didn’t even realize myself how much it had to hurt,” Julian said, remorse in his voice. “I was just so hell-bent on having a family again. I was transfixed with Lucie, and with being a father. It felt like through the universe, my dad and I were somehow sharing a connection again. I knew exactly what he had felt when he was raising Emmett and me.” Julian paused, as if suddenly losing his breath. I squeezed his hand. “Lucie would look at pictures of my dad and say ‘Grandpa,’ and it was the best feeling. I was so over the moon, I didn’t know Liz was unhappy. I had no idea I was hurting her constantly.” He swallowed. “And I had no idea that she was plotting to hurt me back.”
A pang of fear hit my chest. “How?”
“I woke up one morning in December, and they were gone. Bags packed. Just gone. Liz didn’t tell me where she went with Lucie, and it wasn’t till months later that I found out they moved to France, where Liz is from.”
“Biarritz?” I guessed.
“No, but close by. She had always talked about going there with her family growing up, and how it was always a dream, and she wanted to raise her children there.”
“So you built the resort,” I murmured, staring ahead of us in pure, stunned awe.
“Yes. Before all the renovations and additions, it started out as a home. A big one. Liz said if I somehow showed her my love, maybe she would come back. Just maybe. So I designed a fucking mansion for her. At least I said it was for her.”
“But it was for Lucie.”
“Yes.”
The heat of the sun was almost unbearable now.
I was speechless.
I had been so sure Julian Hoult was unfeeling, made of steel. But for this little girl, he had turned himself inside out and worked tooth and nail – all for the fighting chance to perhaps see her again.
And apparently, he did. But it was short-lived.
Liz had returned to Julian, and they had spent all of four months in the Biarritz home before she detected the lie of his love and disappeared once again.
“They live somewhere outside of Paris now. Liz told me she would make sure I’d never be close to Lucie again. She promised me she would stop speaking English to her, and place her in a strictly French-speaking school.”
My jaw dropped at the unbelievably calculated cruelty of it all.
“So Lucie would be unable to communicate with you?”
“Yes. She writes letters here and there, and I provide financial support here and there. But the relationship we once had is gone, and now that she’s almost nine, I doubt she really remembers it. Which is okay. It’s less painful for her.”
The anguish in his voice was more than evident now, so I let him be for awhile. I needed the quiet myself, too, because my image of Julian had just been completely rocked. He wasn’t just cold, hard and efficient.
He was a million layers of complexities that made my heart actually ache for him more. He knew grief and suffering all too well – he just kept it always locked tightly inside of that ironclad exterior.
Except for now. With me.
The wind tousled my hair as I climbed halfway into his lap.
“Hey.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He turned his eyes to me for a few seconds, studying me with a look of unfiltered relief that made my heart swell. “I know it was hard to say all that.”
He gazed at me another few seconds before leaning in to kiss my lips.
“Not as hard as it could’ve been.”
26
JULIAN
I woke up in the morning when I felt Sara stir, but I didn’t open my eyes even after she climbed onto my chest, feathering sleepy kisses over my lips.
“You’re awake,” she murmured with a soft giggle. “I can see it.”
I smirked. “I’m awake. But I’m still recovering.”
She knew well what she’d done to me last night.
We were content to be quiet during the boat ride back to the marina, and after getting home she had gotten wordlessly into the shower. Just as wordlessly, I followed her in. I had jerked off on the marble bench while watching her soap up that beautiful body, her hands taking extra time on her tits when she heard the way I groaned.
Christ, I was content to just watch her all night.
She was just so damned beautiful. She had a way of hypnotizing me without even trying, and entrancing me with just the way she spoke or moved. I had been under Sara’s spell from the moment she pulled me up to stand in front of her in the shower, her eyes shimmering up at me as she took her time to lather my body with soap. We spent awhile standing under that rainfall, content to just watch each other as she drew her hands all over me. I was hard, obviously, but I didn’t want to break the moment to get a condom.
I was happy where I was. We both were.
Of course, our bodies entwined the moment we stepped out of the shower. We didn’t make it three feet to the bed, but the love seat worked fine, and I went briefly blind after bursting inside her and fucking drowning the condom in my cum.
At night, I lie there next to Sara, so sweet and beautiful as she slept right next to me. As fucked up as it made me feel, I jacked it hard while gazing at her lips. They were pink and perfect, parted lightly a she breathed. I studied the way her thin top stretched over the full mounds of her breasts, and I swore I could’ve come just from watching her sleep.
But with a sweet little noise, she woke up.
She was groggy, smiling, half-asleep when she tugged gently on her tank top, till one of her breasts sprang free. I had every muscle flexed as she reached over and wrapped her fingers around my cock, taking her time, sighing with bleary content as she helped jerk me off.
It was surreal.
“You came all over my hand last night,” Sara whispered when I opened my eyes, a grin of content on my lips.
“You were a very sleepy, sexy girl last night.”
“Mm, well, I’m not going to lay there doing nothing if my man needs to come.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Your man?” I repeated, enjoying my view of her blushing furiously as she lay on top of me.
I let her stammer for a bit. It was cruel, but she was cute, and I needed time to figure out what the hell was going on with my own heart.
I felt different this morning – awake in a way I hadn’t felt in awhile. And I was under no illusion that our conversation on the boat yesterday had nothing to do
with it.
I hadn’t spoken about any of that since it happened – not about my father, Liz or Lucie. The only people I had told the story to were Mom and Emmett, and then, it was for the sake of explanation, and defending my side of the story as to why I left for so long. There had been tears, yelling and questions demanded mostly by Mom. It wasn’t a peaceful conversation, but it was the first step in breaking down the wall. So of course it was hard.
But yesterday with Sara had been easy. In fact, it felt surprisingly good. Relieving. I hadn’t felt the need to ever revisit that story, but it felt oddly natural to do it with her.
And I was repaying her for that this morning by forcing her to stutter about how she didn’t mean to call me her man. I grinned.
“Easy,” I murmured gently. “Tell me what you want for breakfast. I’m going to cook for you.”
She blinked. “You are?”
“Yes. But that requires a few things first.”
“What?”
“We need to pack so we’re ready to go after we eat. But even before that, we need to go on a grocery run.”
“And even before that?” Sara grinned, writhing on my chest as my hand went from cupping her ass to fingering her slick pussy from behind. I smirked as she flattened her hands on my chest and pushed up till she was straddling me.
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Mm-hm.” Sara wet her lips, flattening her hands against my bare chest as she sat up to straddle me. Her mouth lightly parted when she felt my dick twitch under her pussy, and she giggled as it twitched again in response to the way she teased me with her tank top.
She pulled it up slowly, using the bunched hem to lift the underside of her chest. When she finally peeled her top off, her tits bounced so hard I growled and gripped her waist to reclaim the top. I swirled my tongue over her taut nipples, sucking on them like candy as I reached down to free my dick. I enjoyed her little gasps as I rubbed my naked head against her swollen clit.
Fuck, that feels too good.
Before I even reached to find a condom, she read my mind.
