Page 63 of Beautiful When He Breaks

He spreads one hand over his chest in mock solemnity. “Ryan calls me the Bi Godmother. Apparently, every sexually confused man in this house eventually wanders into my room like I’m supposed to be wise.”

I blink at him. “Has this happened before?”

He grins. “Enough that I’m considering a punch card.”

I laugh again, and this time it helps enough that I push off the dresser and sit back down. The embarrassment is still there, hot and horrible, but the panic has eased just enough that I can think around it.

Luca studies me for a moment, then asks more gently, “What exactly are you feeling?”

That’s the question I’ve been avoiding in my own head because answering it makes this less abstract. I stare at my hands again.

“I don’t know,” I say at first, then force myself to do better. “Admiration, yeah. That part’s obvious. He’s kind and… steady. He just shows up for those he cares about, and I know that sounds emotional, and it is, but it’s not only that anymore.”

“How do you know?”

I laugh once, humorless. “Because I looked at him holding my daughter and my body reacted in a way it never has before.”

Luca’s expression doesn’t change much, but I can tell he takes the confession seriously. “Okay.”

“And then I kept thinking about him afterward,” I continue, because now that I’ve started, it’s easier to keep going than to stop. “Not just normal stuff. His body. His tattoos. The way he looks while holding Mila. The way he says things to me. I fell asleep last night thinking about him and ended up hard because of it.” I scrub one hand over my mouth. “There. Happy?”

Luca, to his credit, doesn’t make a joke out of that part. “No,” he says simply. “But I am glad you said it, because now you have to stop pretending this is just admiration.”

That lands hard because he’s right. That’s what I’ve been doing. Dressing it up in safer words because safer words don’t threaten anything. Admiration doesn’t ruin friendships; lust and wanting do. The idea that I might actually have feelings for Julian that stretch past loyalty and gratitude and old history—that’s the thing I keep trying not to look at directly.

Luca’s voice stays calm. “Do you want him?”

The question is brutal in its simplicity. I don’t answer immediately, which is enough of an answer. Luca waits me out, patient as hell, and I hate him for that too.

Finally, I say, very quietly, “Yeah.”

He nods once.

“And I feel like an asshole. I pushed him away for Celeste. I nearly burned fifteen years of friendship to the ground for a woman who lied to me and hurt me, and now that he’s here helping me raise my daughter, suddenly I’m noticing his body and thinking about his mouth and feeling like some fucking—”

“Stop,” Luca says sharply. His expression has gone hard in a way I’ve only seen a handful of times. “You are not gross for figuring something out late.”

“That’s not what this feels like.”

“I know.” His tone softens a little. “But that’s because your guilt is doing what it always does and trying to make every complicated feeling a moral failure.”

I drop my gaze, but he keeps going anyway. “You did fuck up with Julian. That’s true. But you apologized, and now you’re rebuilding—that part matters. But being attracted to him now doesn’t somehow cancel out the fact that you were hurting, manipulated, and confused before. Those things can exist at the same time.”

I want to argue. I don’t, because I know I won’t win.

The room is quiet for a moment before I ask the thing that’s been lodged under everything else. “What if I’m not bi?”

Luca blinks. “Okay. Maybe you are, maybe you’re not, maybe there’s some other word you like better, maybe there’s no word you like right now, and none of that changes what you’re feeling.” He gives me a look. “Straight men usually don’t lie awake thinking about their best friend’s body until they get hard, Eli.”

I groan and drop my head into my hands. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. You came here because I’m wise and beautiful.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And correct.”

I laugh into my hands despite myself. Then I sit up again and look at him, more seriously this time. “What if it’s just Jules?”