Hazel's POV
He didn't back away the way I expected him to. That was the first thing I noticed, standing there under three chandeliers with Adrian's steady presence beside me. The old Julian would have absorbed the rebuke, retreated behind some cool, composed silence, and waited for a better moment to try again. This version of him stayed exactly where he was.
"I'm not trying to command you," he said, and something in his voice sounded thinner than I remembered, worn down in a way five years of marriage had never once revealed to me. "I flew here because you deserved to hear the rest of it in person. Not from a recording."
"I heard enough from the recording," I said. "Ruiz. Penelope. The accident. I understand what you're telling me, Julian. I'm not sure what you expect me to do with it
