Chapter 13 — Meeting the Twins
1516 Words
POV: Seraphina Vale
Present Day — Meridian City, a few days later
I hadn't told Julian about the scene at the restaurant. He hadn't asked me to explain it either, which I appreciated more than I said out loud. He'd simply texted me the next morning — hope dinner wasn't ruined for you too — and left it at that, no interrogation, no demand for details about a fight that had, after all, been about me.
He called two days later, easy and unbothered, like nothing had happened at all.
"I believe I was promised an introduction," he said. "To two very clever children who apparently need an uncle."
"You remembered that."
"I remember everything you say. It's a curse."
I laughed before I could stop myself. It was becoming a habit around him, laughing before I decided to, which should have worried me more than it did.
"Saturday," I said. "The park near my building. Come prepared to be interrogated."
"I've survived worse. I grew up with Adrian."
We met at the park near my building on a Saturday, the twins in matching jackets Aurora had insisted on, Alex carrying a tablet he swore he wasn't going to use. Julian showed up in jeans, no tie, nothing that announced Blackwood Industries in any direction, and crouched down to their level the second he reached us instead of talking over their heads the way most adults did.
"You must be Alex," he said. "I heard you diagnosed a hospital's Wi-Fi as embarrassing. I respect that."
Alex studied him for a long moment, the particular assessment he gave anyone new, weighing whether they were worth his time.
"You're Adrian's brother."
"I am."
"Are you here to spy on us for him?"
"No." Julian didn't flinch from the question, which I noted with something like relief. "I'm here because your mother is someone I should have shown up for a long time ago, and I'm trying to do better late than never."
"That's a very rehearsed answer."
"I've had a few days to think about how to say it right."
Alex considered this with the seriousness of a man reviewing a contract. "Acceptable," he said finally, and went back to his tablet, which I understood to be the closest thing to approval Alex handed out to anyone.
Aurora had no such reservations. She attached herself to Julian's side within thirty seconds and did not let go for the next hour, narrating everything from the correct way to feed park pigeons to a detailed and mostly fictional account of Alex's various character flaws.
"He never shares his snacks," she informed Julian solemnly.
"That's a serious offense."
"I know. I've told him. He doesn't care."
"I care," Alex said, without looking up. "I simply prioritize efficiently."
"He also talks to computers like they're people," Aurora added, undeterred. "It's embarrassing at restaurants."
"They deserve basic respect," Alex said. "Unlike most humans."
Julian caught my eye over both their heads, something warm and slightly disbelieving in his expression, like a man who hadn't expected to enjoy himself this much and wasn't sure what to do with the fact that he had.
"They're extraordinary," he said quietly, once Aurora had run off toward the swings. "Both of them."
"They're a lot."
"That's not what I said."
I didn't have a response for that, so I let it sit there between us, unanswered, the way I'd let a lot of things sit unanswered with Julian since he'd walked back into my life.
We ended up on a bench together while the twins played, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched, and for a while neither of us said anything at all. It was, I realized, the first entirely peaceful hour I'd had since I stepped off that jet weeks ago. No lawyers. No board meetings. No Adrian standing over a table demanding answers I didn't owe him.
"Can I ask you something," Julian said.
"You usually do anyway."
"Fair." He almost smiled. "What happened at the restaurant, after I went back inside? He looked like a man who'd lost an argument with himself."
"He probably had."
"Does it bother you? Watching him unravel like that?"
I thought about it honestly, which was more than I'd let myself do since the incident. "It should bother me less than it does," I admitted. "I spent five years wanting exactly that. Wanting him to understand what he threw away. Now that it's happening, I mostly just feel tired."
"That's an honest answer."
"You seem like someone who deserves one."
Julian was quiet for a moment, watching Aurora attempt something ambitious and mildly dangerous on the monkey bars. "For what it's worth," he said, "I'm not trying to win some competition with my brother. I'd like that to be clear. Whatever this is, between us — I want it to exist on its own, not as a reaction to him."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked at him, really looked, and found I believed every word of it. That was the strange, unsettling part. Julian had never once made me feel like a prize being contested, or a wound being fixed, or a problem waiting for the right man to solve it. He simply seemed to like being near me, uncomplicated and steady, in a way I hadn't let myself want in longer than I could remember.
"I believe you," I said. "I just don't entirely trust myself yet to know what to do with that."
"That's fair too." He nudged my shoulder with his, light and easy. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."
"You say that like it's simple."
"It is simple. People just don't believe it when they hear it, because nobody in your life has actually meant it before." He shrugged, like the observation cost him nothing, though something in his voice suggested otherwise. "I can wait. I've already waited five years without you knowing it. A little more doesn't change much."
That admission sat between us for a moment, heavier than the easy tone he'd tried to deliver it in.
"Julian—"
"You don't have to say anything back. I didn't tell you that to get something in return." He nodded toward the swings, where Aurora had abandoned the monkey bars in favor of seeing how high she could go before Alex, watching with visible disapproval, told her to stop. "Just wanted you to know where I actually stand. Whatever you decide to do with it."
Aurora came barreling back toward us before I could answer, breathless and triumphant about some minor playground victory, and the moment folded itself away, quiet and unfinished, the way most true things did in a life as loud as mine had become.
"Uncle Julian, watch this," she announced, already climbing back toward the top of the slide with the specific confidence of a child who had never once considered the possibility of failure.
"Uncle Julian," I repeated, raising an eyebrow at him.
"I didn't ask for the promotion. She assigned it to me about twenty minutes ago." He didn't look remotely bothered by it. "I wasn't going to argue."
"You're good with them."
"I like them. It's not complicated." He watched Aurora launch herself down the slide with theatrical flair, arms out, narrating her own descent. "I never really pictured myself with kids, growing up in that house. Adrian used to say children were a distraction from building something that mattered. I think he actually believed it, back then."
"Does he still?"
"I don't know anymore. I don't think he knows either."
I thought about that longer than I meant to. It was strange, hearing Adrian described from the inside of his own family instead of across a negotiating table — not as the man who'd thrown me into the rain, but as someone else's older brother, shaped by the same cold house, just with less room left over at the end of it for softness.
Alex wandered over eventually, tablet finally abandoned, and sat on the bench on my other side without a word, which was, for him, its own kind of affection. He watched Julian for a long moment with the same assessing look he'd given him at the start of the afternoon.
"You didn't lie," Alex said finally. "About showing up. You actually did it."
"I try to follow through on the things I say."
"Most adults don't."
"No," Julian agreed. "Most don't."
I watched Julian lift Aurora onto his shoulders without being asked, laughing at something she said, Alex allowing himself a rare, small smile at the sight of it, and felt the ground shift very slightly under a version of myself I thought I understood completely. It would have been easy, sitting there in the ordinary gold light of an ordinary Saturday, to let myself believe this was simple. Nothing in my life had been simple in five years. I didn't entirely trust an afternoon that felt this easy not to be hiding a cost I hadn't found yet.
But for one hour, at least, I let myself have it anyway.
- Writer
