(Vanessa's POV)
He didn't stop.
His hands shot up and caught both my wrists, pinned them above my head against the concrete wall, and kept kissing me. His grip was iron. I couldn't move. I could feel the whiskey on his breath, the pressure of his mouth, the cold wall against my shoulder blades.
My eyes burned.
I hadn't cried in front of anyone in years. I wasn't going to start now. But the tears came anyway, sliding down the sides of my face without permission, and I couldn't wipe them away because my hands were trapped above me.
I couldn't breathe through it. Couldn't think through it. The familiar weight of him, the pine soap, the shape of a kiss I'd spent five years trying to forget - it was too much, and it was wrong, and it needed to stop.
So I bit him.
Hard. Right on his lower lip.
Julian jerked back with a sharp sound - somewhere between a hiss and a curse. His hands released my wrists. He stepped back and pressed two fingers to his mouth.
I stood against the wall and looked at him.
His lip was bleeding slightly. His chest was rising and falling too fast. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and for one disorienting second he looked exactly the way I remembered him - and nothing like it at all.
The Julian I had known for four years had never once touched me with anything but gentleness. He'd held my hand in crowded places so I wouldn't get jostled. He'd learned to sleep on the side of the bed closer to the door because I'd mentioned once, offhandedly, that I didn't like sleeping near walls.
That Julian would not have done this.
Which meant he had changed. Or I had changed him.
The thought drove into my chest like a needle, small and precise and unbearably sharp.
He didn't move away. His hand was still braced against the wall beside my head, and the distance between us was barely a foot. His breath was warm against my face.
When he spoke, his voice was low and rough and completely controlled.
"You chose to disappear from my world." He looked at me directly. "So disappear properly. Don't show up in front of me again."
Every word landed clean and deliberate, like he'd been saving them.
I held his gaze. I kept my voice level.
"Fine," I said.
One word. That was all.
He searched my face for something - I didn't know what. Then he straightened, pulled his hand away from the wall, and touched his split lip once with the tips of his fingers. He looked at the faint red on his fingers without expression.
Then he pushed open the stairwell door and walked back into the corridor.
The door swung shut.
The fluorescent light hummed above me.
I stood there for a moment. Then my legs gave out slowly, and I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold concrete floor with my knees pulled up and my hands loose in my lap.