Page 79 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“Jesus Christ.” I let out a muffled laugh into his shoulder. “I’m feeling really stupid now.”

He moves enough under me that I have to lift my head again if I want to keep looking at him, which I do. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been calling me sweetheart since I was, like, sixteen and I somehow never put that together.” I study his face, still faintly pink, and the fond disbelief in me grows sharper. “How did I not realize that sooner?”

His mouth twitches. “You were very busy pretending not to understand a lot of things.”

I can’t even argue, so I just look at him and let myself feel all of it at once. The years of this. The buried meaning. The hidden softness sitting in plain sight while I stumbled around trying to make myself fit into a life that never sat right. The sheer ridiculousness that he has apparently been in love with me long enough to be calling me sweetheart in another language, and I still needed half my life to explode before I got the message.

A wave of tenderness hits me so hard it almost feels physical.

Before I can overthink it, I lean down and kiss him. This time I do it awake, with no waking haze to blame later. I kiss him because I want to, because I finally want to give something back, instead of always receiving him with my eyes half shut and my heart too scared.

Julian makes a quiet sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.

The kiss is different from the first one. I know what I’m doing now, or at least I know that I’m choosing it. I let myself feel the exact warmth of his lips, the way his breath catches just before he kisses me back, the soft slide of his hand from between my shoulders to the back of my neck as if he can’t help guiding me closer.

There’s no hesitation in him once he realizes I mean it. The caution drops away enough that the kiss deepens naturally, his mouth opening under mine with a hunger that is somehow still careful with me.

I did not know kissing your best friend would feel like coming home and jumping off a cliff at the same time.

His hand tightens once at my neck, and mine slides down to his chest because I need somewhere to put all the heat rushing through me. I can feel his heartbeat there, hard and fast under my palm, and the reality of that nearly undoes me.

This is real. This is really Julian under me, kissing me back like he’s wanted this long enough to recognize it the second I offer it to him.

He wants me. God, I know he wants me. I can feel it in the way his mouth moves against mine, in the rough little sound that slips out of him when I kiss him deeper, in the heat of his body beneath me. But even now, Julian still handles me like I’m something worth being careful with.

That thought wrecks me.

I kiss him harder because I don’t know what else to do with the feeling. My hand spreads over his chest, then slips higher, feeling the hard muscle under his shirt, the warmth of his skin, the way his breathing goes uneven when I drag my thumb lightly over his nipple.

Julian’s fingers tighten at the back of my neck, and he kisses me back with this low, hungry patience that feels almost unfair. He’s not rushing me. He’s not taking over. He’s just there, matching me, giving me exactly enough to make my head spin and my whole body feel too full for my skin.

His leg is still between mine, and when I shift again, our cocks brush, and it drags a broken sound straight out of my throat.

I don’t know how long we stay like that, kissing, in soft, heated little bursts, pausing only long enough to breathe and look at each other and then going right back because apparently neither of us has any interest in pretending at restraint this morning.

I tip my forehead against his and laugh under my breath, though there’s no real humor in it. “I seriously cannot believe you’ve been calling me sweetheart in another language for years and I never fucking clocked it.”

Julian’s hand moves slowly down my back and settles warmly at my waist. “To be fair, you were busy.”

“That is not fair,” I murmur. “That makes me sound less stupid than I was.”

His mouth twitches. “You were not stupid.”

I lift my head enough to look at him. “Julian, you literally gave me a term of endearment in another language and used it for years.”

“Yeah.”

“And I just let that happen.”

“You also let me carry your books through half of high school because you said I walked faster,” he says. “You’re selectively clueless when it suits you.”

A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it, warm and quiet and dangerously happy. “Wow. So, this has been torture for you for a long time, huh?”

He looks at me for a second too long, and all the teasing softens right out of him. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “A pretty long fucking time.”

My throat tightens. “I’m sorry for not seeing you sooner.” The words come out rougher than I meant for them to. “For not understanding what was right in front of me. For…” I stop and shake my head once because there are too many things in that list, and none of them fit neatly. “For hurting you.”