Chapter 6
*No. No, no, no.*
I shoved against his chest with both hands, throwing all my weight into the push.
Julian let me go immediately, stepping back with his palms raised in surrender, his expression shattering into lines of profound, unbearable sorrow.
“Don't touch me,” I choked out, my vision blurring at the edges with silver sparks. “Don't you dare touch me.”
“Clara, please—”
“Conservatory,” I gasped, clutching my clutch to my chest like a shield, turning away from the crowded party. “Now. Walk ahead of me. If you make a scene, I swear to God I’ll scream.”
Without waiting for his response, I turned and practically bolted through the arched French doors at the back of the tent, fleeing the chandeliers, the laughter, and the suffocating scent of lilies.
***
The Victorian conservatory was cold, damp, and smelled of wet earth and bruised ferns.
It was an enormous, iron-ribbed glass cathedral built in the late nineteenth century, extending out from the main country club manor into the dripping autumn darkness. Outside, the October drizzle had turned into a steady, rhythmic rain, drumming a chaotic tattoo against the thousands of curved glass panes overhead. Inside, the only illumination came from a handful of low, wrought-iron lanterns tucked among towering monsteras and drooping weeping figs.
The air here was heavy with moisture, cooling the burning fever on my face.
I marched down the narrow brick pathway, my heels clicking sharply against the damp pavers, until we reached the central rotunda beneath the soaring iron dome. An empty stone fountain sat in the middle, surrounded by rusted wire chairs and overgrown white camellias.
I whirled around to face him.
Julian followed me into the clearing, walking with that same quiet, unhurried grace. He closed the glass doors behind him, cutting off the distant, muffled music of the marquee string quartet, plunging us into a world made entirely of rain, shadow, and green leaves.
He stopped five paces away from me, his hands resting loose at his sides, watching me with that terrible, patient grief.
“Who hired you?” I demanded, my voice cracking against the glass ceiling.
Julian didn't answer.
“Answer me, Julian!” I stepped forward, trembling with rage and terror, pointing a shaking finger directly at his chest. “Who the hell are you? Who gave you my file? Was it Derek? Did Derek pay you to come here, memorize my private journals, pretend to be some brilliant, chivalrous prince, and then tear the rug out from under me during the toast? Is that what this is? Some sick, sadistic psychological prank to make sure I never show my face in this town again?”
Julian didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He stood beneath the dripping ferns, the lantern light casting deep shadows across the hard planes of his jaw.
“Derek doesn't have the imagination for something like that, Clara,” he said, his voice quiet, steady, and so agonizingly gentle that it felt like a knife slipping between my ribs. “And Derek doesn't know anything about you. He never did.”
“Then how do *you* know?” I screamed, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, burning hot tracks down my cold cheeks. “How do you know about Inverness? How do you know about my grandmother? How do you know about the calcium phytate? I didn't write it down! I’m an archivist, Julian! I keep records! I know every single word I wrote on that intake form for your agency! I wrote down three sentences: *Male, over six feet, dark suit, willing to act possessive and pretend we have been dating for six months.* That was it!”
Julian closed his eyes for a long, heavy moment. When he opened them, the rain drummed harder against the glass above us, a violent, rushing roar.
“Clara,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
“I am looking at you!” I sobbed, clutching my head as the migraine flared into a blinding, white-hot spike behind my temples. “I’m looking at an absolute stranger who knows the songs my dead grandmother sang to me! You’re stalking me. You’ve been breaking into my apartment. You’ve been reading my letters, haven't you? What kind of sick, predatory freak takes money to terrorize a woman at her ex’s engagement party?”
I expected him to get angry. I expected him to defend himself, to snap, to pull out a phone and cancel the contract, to demand his two thousand dollars, to call me crazy—just like Derek had called me crazy.
Instead, Julian took a single, slow step toward me.
His eyes were completely red-rimmed, glistening with unshed tears that he fought ruthlessly to suppress. His jaw worked as if he were chewing on broken glass, but his posture remained entirely unthreatening, entirely open.
“I have never broken into your apartment, Clara,” he said, his baritone thick with an unbearable, suffocating love that terrified me to my very soul. “I have never read a word you didn't hand to me with your own fingers. And I would rather cut off my own hands than terrorize you.”
“Then why are you here?” I wept, my knees buckling.
The gray fog was rushing in from the edges of my vision now, thick and cold and suffocating. The glass dome began to spin. The ferns twisted into monstrous, looming shapes. The air in my lungs turned to ash. I couldn't breathe. My diaphragm locked into a hard, painful knot beneath my ribs, and the ground seemed to vanish beneath my emerald shoes.
I was falling.
I didn't hit the stone.
Julian’s arms caught me before my knees touched the brick. With an effortless, fluid strength, he scooped me up and lowered both of us to the wide stone rim of the dry fountain. He didn't trap me; he sat beside me, his long legs bracketing mine, his broad shoulders shielding me from the chill of the damp conservatory.
“Don't,” I choked out, weakly trying to shove his chest away, but my hands had no strength left. They lay limp against the rough, heavy wool of his tuxedo lapel. “Don't... I can't... I can't breathe...”
“You can,” Julian said. His voice was right by my ear, steady as a heartbeat, low and resonant, cutting straight through the roar of the rain and the screaming alarm bells in my nervous system. “May I take your hand, Clara? Tell me yes or no.”
The respect in the question, offered even in the middle of my hysterical unraveling, made a fresh sob tear through my throat.
“Yes,” I gasped. “Yes, just... make it stop. The room is spinning.”
Julian took my left hand in his.
He didn't just hold it. He pressed my flat palm directly over the center of his chest, right above his heart. Through the tailored wool, the crisp linen shirt, and the solid wall of his sternum, I felt the heavy, slow, deliberate thud of his pulse.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
It was beating at fifty-five beats a minute. Calm. Unyielding. A lighthouse in a hurricane.
With his other hand, Julian took my right wrist, pressing his thumb firmly into the acupressure hollow between my tendons, applying that exact, familiar, stabilizing pressure.
“Four counts in through the nose, Clara,” he instructed. His tone was not commanding; it was the rhythmic, practiced cadence of a guide leading someone through a minefield they had crossed a hundred times together. “Follow my chest. Feel it rise.”
