Page 155 of Meet Me In The Dark

At the funeral, I stood at the back. I didn’t belong there, yet my sisters had begged me to come. As I watched the dirt fall onto the coffin, I thought I would find some semblance of closure.

I didn’t.

After everyone cleared away, I approached the grave and laid a bouquet down.

A presence shifted behind me, and I turned, only to find Catriona watching me with tears in her eyes.

“These tears aren’t for her,” she whispered, wiping at her face. “They’re for you. I’m so sorry for what she did. I’m sorry we never got the chance to know you.”

My chest tightened because her sincerity was too raw and more real than I could handle.

“Mom wasn’t a bad person, Julian,” she continued, eyes pleading for understanding. “She was just broken. She fought demons that none of us ever saw. She struggled with us too. Dad had to handle most of it.”

I stayed silent because the lump in my throat was choking any words I might have spoken.

“Can I… can I hug you?” she finally asked, her voice trembling.

Without thinking, I nodded. She stepped forward and wrapped her thin arms around my waist. I was holding this stranger who shared my blood and my pain, and I felt lost on how to navigate any of it..

When I walked away, I thought I was done.

I was so fucking wrong.

Despite all the barriers I’d built, all the ways I’d armored myself, that woman had reached from her grave and torn every wall down, leaving me exposed and completely defenseless.

With her death came something I didn’t expect: the unearthing of parts of my mind I must have buried away. It was like she’d left the door open to a room I’d locked shut. Fragments returned in uncontrollable flashes—still in diapers, wandering the apartment alone for God knows how long. The sharp crack of her voice when I cried. The strangers I was left with for nights at a time, their names forgotten, but their cigarette smoke still clinging to my memory. The gnawing hunger in my stomach and the cold tile beneath my bare feet. The merciless beatings fromfoster families before my parents took me in, the ones who thought the only way to deal with a little boy with anger issues was to beat it out of him.

When those memories surfaced, I couldn’t look at Celeste without feeling like that same small, abandoned boy in the mirror, and I hated the thought of her ever seeing him.

Ever since, I’ve been a fucking mess. A shell of a man, haunted and hollowed out, raw and exposed in a way I haven’t been since I was a kid.

The days after blurred. I’d wake up and feel the weight before my eyes even opened. Working felt impossible. The simplest decisions became mountains. My phone would buzz, and I’d know it was Celeste. My first instinct was to answer, but the thought of her hearing my voice stripped bare and gutted froze me in place.

Every time I almost reached for her, something inside hissed that I’d ruin her. That if she saw me like this, she would look at me differently. Maybe she’d stay. Maybe she wouldn’t. Both outcomes felt unbearable.

So I stayed away. I told myself it was to protect her, when in truth it was because I didn’t know how to protect myself from her.

I missed her like a physical ache. I’d catch myself imagining her curled against me in the dark, her voice teasing me awake, and her sharp little glares whenever she thought I was being impossible. I wanted those things. I wanted her. But when I pictured showing up at her door again, shame would creep in—the shame of not being the man she thought I was and letting her see cracks that were deeper than I’d even admitted.

I’ve fucked it all up, maybe beyond repair, but I stillwant her, and that’s the part that scares me most, because if I go back, I’ll have to hand her every jagged, ugly piece of me. I don’t know if I can survive it if she decides to put them down.

The memories break apart as the unmistakable sound of heels hammer down my hallway.

“Ms. Morgan, please. You can’t just barge into his office like this… Again!” Avery’s voice cuts through the air a second before another, far more deadly one snaps back:

“Oh, believe me. He’s expecting me.”

I sit straighter in my chair as Celeste turns the corner like she’s entering a boxing ring, not my office.

Out, Julian. Push her out, out, out.

“Who the hell do you think you are, Blackwood?” she demands, storming in without so much as a knock.

There’s a streak of dust on her cheek from the construction site, and her lipstick is worn, but she’s still the most arresting thing I’ve ever seen.

Avery shoots me an apologetic look before she leaves.

“Celeste,” I say, calm as ever.