Hazel’s POV
“I haven’t told anyone this, not even Michael, back when we were still friends,” Julian said, staring into the fireplace of his childhood home like it might offer him courage.
We’d driven two hours outside the city to the estate where he’d grown up, a sprawling stone house that felt more like a museum than a home, every room too clean, too quiet, too perfectly arranged.
“You don’t have to tell me tonight,” I said, settling beside him on the cold leather couch. “We have time.”
“I want to,” he said. “I think I’ve needed to for years.”
He explained slowly, carefully, like a man defusing something that had been buried under pressure for decades. His mother, Eleanor, had married his father for the merger of two family businesses, not for love, and had spent Julian’s entire chil
