Page 154 of Meet Me In The Dark

“Or what?” I snap, my anger finally boiling over, shredding whatever restraint I had left. “You’ll disappear again? Leave without a word?” He opens his mouth, but I cut his words from his tongue. “You don’t get to just disappear after months of mind games.”

“You’re making assumptions.”

“I’m stating facts.” My voice trembles, betraying the hurt beneath the anger. “You wanted to prove you could break down every wall I had, just so you could feel good about yourself? Congratulations. You succeeded.” My throat burns. “I knew I should have run the second I realized who you were.”

He holds my stare. “We’ll discuss this further.”

“We can discuss it now.”

He steps closer, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “We’ll discuss it in my office. Meet me there in thirty minutes.”

Before I can protest, he turns and strides away without another glance, leaving me alone and trembling.

Not for the first time.

“Fuck you, Julian,” I mutter under my breath.

Even as I say the words and fight the sting behind my eyes, I know I’ll be at his office in thirty minutes because when I look beyond my own rage, I know something deeper is going on in his head.

I can see it.

I can always see it because Iseehim.

And despite everything he’s done, despite the way he ripped me open and left me bleeding, I still want answers. I still want him.

And I hate myself for it.

Forty-Nine

Julian

I’d gone that night, leaving Celeste in her bed, heart hammering with guilt and confusion as I drove to the hospital.

I didn’t need to ask which one my mother was at.

I was paying for it.

The private wing was quiet when I arrived. Catriona stood outside the room, smaller and younger than I imagined, her wide eyes watering as I passed. Inside, my mother lay frail, eyes sunken but bright with a desperate sort of hope.

The room emptied around us, giving us space that felt more suffocatingthan comforting.

I stood there, unmoving, as she cried quietly and whispered her apologies.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I can’t leave this world knowing you still hate me,” she said, her voice thin but urgent. “I just need to know you’ve forgiven me, so I can have some peace.”

It hit me then, brutally clear: these apologies weren’t for me. They were for her, a last grasp at absolution before her final breath.

My grief had come and gone years ago, a teenage boy mourning the mother he wished he’d had. But if she needed this to ease her passing, if she needed forgiveness to let go, I’d give it to her.

Even if it was a lie.

“Yes,” I said quietly, forcing the word past the bitterness on my tongue. “I forgive you.”

I watched relief wash over her face and felt something inside me break all over again.

What scared me most was that I think, more than ever, I understood her. Not the cruelty or the coldness, but the darkness she carried. It was the same one that sometimes sits on my shoulders.

Moments later, I left feeling numb while her family gathered around her bedside to hold her hand in her final hours.