Chapter 166
Chapter 166: You Were Made For Me
Julian’s POV
Dante’s arm across my shoulders felt like a leaden yoke, designed to crush the very last of my dignity. I could hear heavy thuds of his hand against my back and each of them was a calculated insult. I was frozen, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides, acutely aware of the hundreds of eyes boring into us. I could feel the mockery vibrating in Dante’s chest as he laughed.
I finally managed to wrench myself out of his grasp, my skin crawling where he had touched me. I didn’t look at Catherine. I couldn’t. I knew if I saw her leaning into him, looking at me with that cold pity, I would lose the very little composure I had left. I reached out, grabbed Lucy’s arm with a grip that was far tighter than necessary, and began walking. I needed to get away from the whispers, the snickers, and the suffocating presence of a man who was openly taking what belonged to me.
“Oh my god, Julian, did you see that?” Lucy chirped, stumbling slightly as I dragged her toward the parking lot. She sounded breathless. “That Dante… he has such incredible energy, doesn’t he? He’s so raw. He’s the perfect man for Catherine.”
Her praise of him was the final straw. I stopped abruptly near my car and threw her arm off me as if it were a poisonous snake. I turned on her, my face inches from hers, my voice trembling with rage.
“Stop it,” I spat. “I see what you are trying to do… so you better fucking stop! You wanted to watch my heart break from seeing Catherine in the hands of another man? Fine. You’ve gotten what you want. Now just get out.”
Lucy’s expression shifted from delight to a sharp, narrow-eyed pout. She stepped toward me, her finger pointing at my chest. “I’m only trying to make it easy for you to let go, Julian. Catherine doesn’t care about you anymore. Focus on us, on our engagement. Enough of the distractions. Richard expects us to be—”
“I don’t care what Richard expects!” I roared, the sound echoing off the concrete of the parking garage. “I am done listening to your nonsense for one day.”
I didn’t wait for her to finish. I turned and walked away, ignoring her shouts of my name. I didn’t go to my car. Instead, I doubled back toward the Art department, my mind a chaotic storm of jealousy. My chest felt hollow, a literal physical ache where my heart should be.
I found Catherine near a quiet corridor at the back of the Art building, heading toward an empty classroom to pack her supplies. I stepped into the doorway, blocking her exit. I was breathing hard, my vision blurring at the edges.
“Julian,” she said, her voice flat. She didn’t even look up from her bag. “Get out of the way. I have things to do.”
“How could you do it, Cat?” I asked, my voice cracking. “How could you let him touch you like that? In front of everyone? Do you even know what kind of man he is? And now he’s transferred here? It’s not enough that he’s in your life, he has to be in our school too?”
Catherine finally looked up, and the scoff she let out was a jagged blade. “Wow, Julian. Just… wow. The hypocrisy is actually impressive, even for you.” She stepped closer, her eyes flashing with a cold fire. “Your girlfriend can transfer here and parade around with you, but my boyfriend can’t? You get to announce a grand engagement on a public portal, but I’m supposed to sit in a corner? You’re delusional.”
“It’s not the same!” I stepped into the room, kicking the door shut behind me. I noticed how she swallowed hard, taking a step back. “I am doing this for you! Everything I am suffering through with Lucy is to make sure Richard doesn’t destroy you. And you reward me by throwing yourself at a predator like Dante?”
Catherine let out a slow, cruel smirk that made me want to fall to my knees. “Reward you? Julian, I don’t owe you anything. I didn’t ask you for anyone. Get it into your thick skull, we are step siblings, I don’t belong to a coward who is about to marry a woman he doesn’t like because he’s afraid of his father’s bank account.”
“I am not a coward,” I whispered, though it felt like a lie even as it left my lips.
“Aren’t you?” She walked right up to me, poking a finger into my chest, her voice dropping to a quiet tone. “At least when Dante holds me, he isn’t looking over his shoulder for his father’s approval. He isn’t calculating the ’optics’ or the ’brand.’ He wants me, Julian. Not a business deal. Not a shield. He knows what he wants unlike you who has no idea whatsoever.”
The words hit me harder than a physical blow. A business deal. That’s all I was to her. A coward hiding behind a suit. The reality of what I had lost crashed down on me with a weight I couldn’t bear. The image of Dante’s hands on her, the memory of her leaning into his kiss while I stood there like a ghost, it all became too much.
“Call me a coward if it makes it easier to hate me, but don’t you dare doubt how truly I want you. I have ruined myself for you. I have stepped into a cage and handed my father the key just to keep the world from crushing you. I am a ghost in my own life, Catherine. I am nothing, I am no one, until I am standing in front of you. He wants you? I starve for you.”
She gave me a disdainful look, and shook her head. “Do you really think your Romeo and Juliet lines will make me listen to you? Go fuck yourself, Julian. I am happy with Dante. Go to your Lucy.”
I broke.
The first sob escaped my throat before I could stop it, a raw, ugly sound of total emotional collapse. My vision flooded with tears as I lunged forward, not out of anger, but out of a desperate, dying need to feel her near me. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her into me, burying my face in her shoulder. I held her with a strength that was probably bruising, but I couldn’t let go. If I let go, I would disappear.
“Stop it,” I begged, my voice muffled by her hair, my hot tears soaking into her shirt. “Please, Catherine. Stop punishing me more than I can take. I can’t breathe seeing you with him.”
“Let me go, Julian!” Catherine shouted, her hands coming up to push against my chest. She was fighting me, her body stiff and rejecting, but I only tightened my grip.
“I’m so jealous it’s killing me!” I confessed, the words pouring out of me like blood from a wound. “I can’t stand it. Seeing him touch you, hearing him call you ’his girlfriend’… it makes me want to burn everything down. You were made for me, Catherine. Every hour of every day, I am thinking of you. Please, just give me a chance to fix this. Don’t go to him.”
Catherine stopped struggling for a heartbeat, and for a second, I thought I had reached her. I thought the sheer weight of my agony would make her understand. But then she let out a harsh, jagged laugh.
“You are such a clown, Julian,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. She suddenly leaned forward and bit my shoulder, hard.
The pain from the bite made my grip loosen just enough for her to shove me back. She stood there, her hair disheveled, her eyes filled with so much hate and anger for me.
“You think you can eat your cake and still have it?” she asked, wiping her mouth as if the taste of me disgusted her. “You want to be the Vaughn heir, you want to marry Lucy, you want the money and the power, but you still want me to be your little secret on the side? You want me to wait for you while you play house with your fiancée? You’re pathetic.”
“It’s not like that!” I cried, reaching out for her again. “I love you!”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” she snapped, then turned and headed for the door, her movements sharp and final.
I couldn’t let her leave like this. I lunged forward and grabbed her arm, dragging her back toward me. Before she could protest, I crashed my lips onto hers. It wasn’t a gentle kiss; it was a desperate, starving attempt to reclaim her, to make her realize that no one would ever want her as much as I did. I kissed her like my life depended on it, pouring all my jealousy and my yearning into the contact.
For a split second, I felt her soften, but it was a trap.
Catherine bit my lip so hard I tasted blood instantly. She shoved me away with a strength born of pure hatred and, before I could recover, her hand swung out.
The slap rang in my ear, it was a stinging crack that left my face burning. I stumbled back, my hand going to my bleeding lip, my eyes wide with shock.
“Don’t you ever touch me again,” she hissed. “I respect my boyfriend. You should do the same too.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned and ran out of the room. I sank to the ground.