Page 216 of A University of Betrayal

I carefully stroked his back.

Julian let his body sink against mine, his head leaning against my shoulder, and I wanted to pull him even closer.

“She’ll never come back,” he whispered into my tank top, crying, and it sounded so serious that my worry grew by the second.

“Who’s not coming back?” I asked cautiously.

I pulled Julian further into the hug so that he didn’t have to arch quite so much to get to me and could place his head more comfortably on my shoulder.

“Mum.”

It had only taken that one word, and something inside me burst.Julian had been dreaming about his mother.

I was at the height of overwhelmed.

Julian continued to shake, which made me pull the blanket tighter around him in the hope that he would calm down on his own.

Not a word escaped my lips as we sat there, him leaning against me, his head against the top of my pajamas.

Whenever people were unwell, I felt overwhelmed. Hugs had become the go-to solution for me and my mother the worse it had gotten with her fake cancer, and Larissa had held me when Mum’s diagnoses had continued to worsen.

False diagnoses.Lies.

Butthiswas real.

I leaned down a little toward Julian, but he instinctively turned his gaze away. Then he broke away from me, moved back to the bedstead, and turned his crumpled face away from me.

Shit. He was uncomfortable.

Should I get up and leave? Move closer to him again? Or was that too much? Should I try to talk to him about it?

I didn’t do any of the things I could have done, instead I sat there like a dog waiting for a command and leaned against my bookshelf.

Light A Fire

Rachel Taylor

The sound of water pouring from the gutter under my window came from outside, almost drowning out the drops drumming against the window pane.

There had been a thunderstorm during the night, and a glance at the now closed window told me that the night was not yet completely over. Maybe it was four o’clock... or five?

“I’m sorry...” Julian whispered in a fragile voice that told me he was doing everything he could to hide his tears.

I would have liked to tell him that he didn’t have to be, but since he had moved away from me, I was unsure where his boundaries lay. He shouldn’t have to do anything.

“You don’t have to be sorry...”

“Yes, I do,” he replied quickly.

What was he sorry for? He’d had a bad dream, and that should be okay.

“I don’t usually sleep at friends’ houses.” He played with the end of the fairy lights, whose light had dimmed a little. “And I haven’t had nightmares for a long time either, not these. That’s why I wasn’t worried and...”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I tried to make it clear once and for all, and that was the moment when Julian looked up for the first time and I caught his gaze.

His olive tan was what kept his handsome face from looking like a living corpse.

He exhaled, exhausted, and leaned his head back, giving me an uninterrupted view of his Adam’s apple. My gaze traveled further down to where the blanket failed to cover anything, revealing one muscular shoulder with arteries running along it like the roots of a tree. If I were an artist, I would have liked to paint him.