The Comments Said He'd Kill Me

"Stay away from Julian Aldrich if you don't want to die." My brother had never met a rule he wouldn't break, and now, out of nowhere, he was warning me to leave Julian Aldrich alone.

At the time I had Julian cornered in the gym. I was an inch from touching his hand. Then my brother kicked the door open and hauled me out. "Sis.

Go find yourself another guy." I struggled against him, impatient. "Don't wreck this for me." The words were barely out of my mouth when my brother shivered.

Twice. "Quit trying to get yourself killed." It was the first time he had ever warned me in that voice — shaken, like whatever it was had already happened. All I felt was curiosity.

So I missed them. The pair of eyes behind me that had just gone dark and cold.

Chapter 1 My brother dragged and hauled me all the way down to the foot of the academic building before I finally yanked my hand back. "What is going on with you?" We were born into money.

My brother and I were fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, spoiled from the day we arrived. There had never been a time when either of us was afraid of anything.

But my brother Cassius was not acting like himself today. This was a rich kid who had never in his life been afraid of anything, and right now his face was still gray.

I asked, and he didn't answer. He just came out with a question that made no sense at all. "Do you see text in front of your eyes?" Text in front of my eyes?

I looked him over, thrown. He was serious in a way he almost never was. He wasn't joking. So I actually turned and looked around me, carefully.

Then I pointed at the building in the distance. "Over there," I said. "The Humanities Buil—" My brother closed his eyes. "Never mind," he said.

Then he turned back and took me by the shoulders, the first time he had ever done it like he meant it. "From today on, you leave Julian Aldrich alone." I frowned. "Says who?" My brother was a jerk, and I was no better.

I wasn't about to be managed by him. I shoved his hands off. "You're way out of your lane." "I said no, and I mean no!" He snapped at me out of nowhere.

He almost never snapped at me. I stopped. "…What is that supposed to mean?" He didn't explain. He just said, "If you don't want to die, stay away from him.

The farther the better." "Have I ever gotten in the way of you and Evangeline Wells?" I said. "You've spent two years trailing around after that girl picking fights." Evangeline Wells was the girl the whole school agreed was the most beautiful.

She was pretty and quiet, and my brother had had his eye on her from the day she enrolled. He had been hounding her for two years.

Any other day, all I had to do was say her name and he'd get worked up. But not today. He was calm in a way I had never seen from him.

He even said, "I'm not having anything more to do with her." When he said it, I was genuinely stunned. Evangeline did not like my brother.

Two years of chasing her and he had never gotten so much as a look. His friends and I had talked to him about it more times than I could count. But my brother had dug in.

He was going to have her, and that was that. So hearing him give it up himself, out of his own mouth— I was floored.

He said it again. "I'm not having anything more to do with Evangeline." Then, one word at a time: "And you don't go near Julian Aldrich again." But I didn't care what my brother said.

The next morning in class, I hauled my bag over and sat down next to Julian again. It was the tail end of summer, just turning to fall.

He was in the school's blueandwhite uniform, the cleanest color in the whole room. "Let me copy your homework." I held out my hand. Chapter 2 Julian's pen stopped.

He turned his head and looked at me. His eyes were flat. His face was flatter. Then he calmly looked away. He ignored me.

Someone in the seat in front turned around, eager to please. "Copy mine, Aurelia. I'm already done." Out of the corner of my eye, Julian's pen stopped again. I waved the guy off.

Then I went ahead and started flipping through the workbook on Julian's desk. He ignored me. But he didn't stop me from going through his homework either.

His handwriting in that workbook had real force to it. It was almost nice to look at. I copied the answers and tried to imitate the shape of his letters while I did it.

Then, without warning, the person next to me spoke. "Your brother came to find you yesterday. What was that about?" Julian almost never started a conversation with me.

Hearing that cool, distant voice of his, I froze for a second. I pressed my lips together and looked at him. His eyes swept over me, mild, unbothered.

And I answered honestly, with no guard up at all. "He told me to stay away from you.

To leave you alone." "My brother probably grew a conscience overnight," I said. "Worried I'm bullying you." I was copying homework while I answered him.

So I didn't notice the dead silence that came from the person beside me when I stopped talking. "…So what do you think?" Julian said, finally, after a long time.

I paused and turned to look at him. Julian had never been one for big swings of emotion. Two years of knowing him and he had been cool and distant the whole way through.

But I could feel it. He was clearly unhappy right now. "I ignored him," I said. "My brother gets an idea in his head every other minute.

Who listens to him?" Julian seemed to let out a breath, very slightly. He glanced at me once more.

Then he looked away and went back to writing out those impossibly deep physics problems I couldn't follow. What I didn't expect was that my brother meant it this time.

That morning, right after first period, the teacher came and told me my brother had already put in a request to transfer me to another class. I turned around.

My brother was standing at the back door of the room, face like ice. A few of his guys were behind him. They were there to carry my desk out.

My father was an honorary trustee of the academy. We had never caused any real trouble at school.

So when my brother put in the transfer request, the grade dean approved it without a second thought. Nobody had asked me. "I'm not moving—" I said.

The chance to sit next to Julian was something I had paid a small fortune for two years ago.

There was no way I was giving up a spot that close to him. "That's not up to you." My brother's voice was cold. He was a slouching, careless kind of person.

He almost never showed me this serious side of himself. His expression got to me. "You at least have to give me a reason." My brother looked at me for a long moment.

All he said was, "From today on, you're in my class." And then: "You're sitting next to me." He wanted to watch me from up close. Obviously I wasn't going to agree to it.

For the first eighteen years of our lives we couldn't stand the sight of each other. At school we would have preferred to pretend we didn't know each other.

Which was exactly why I didn't understand what he was doing. But my brother had stopped responding to me.

He just kept a tight grip on my arm and let his guys pack up my books and my desk. I didn't want to make an ugly scene in front of the whole class.

And his hand was clamped around my arm so hard I couldn't have pulled free anyway. So all I could do was watch, seething. I figured, fine — tomorrow I'd just sneak back on my own.

My brother couldn't watch me every second of the day. I let it go. But somebody else didn't. I never would have guessed that the first person to speak up for me would be Julian.

Chapter 3 Through all of it Julian kept working on his problems, calm, his profile turned to me. Right up until they started moving my things.

Then he finally set down his pen and looked up at my brother. Julian's eyes were pitch black.

His voice was cool. "Didn't you hear her say she doesn't want to?" My brother was not a person who took provocation well. At that school, he had a serious reputation as a bully.

I looked over at him, nervous, terrified he'd get into it with Julian and rough him up. But my brother was strangely calm.

He was actually apologizing to Julian on my behalf. "My sister doesn't know any better." He said, "If she did anything these past two years that made you angry or upset, I'm apologizing for her." I whipped around and stared at Cassius like I'd never seen him before.

Since when was my brother a man who apologized?

He even put a hand on my shoulder and made Julian a promise. "I'll keep an eye on her from now on." My brother said, "She won't turn up in front of you again." He was apologizing to Julian in front of the entire class.

The way he lowered his head was too obvious to miss. A lot of people turned to look. But Julian only drew his brows together, slowly. My brother had apologized to him.

And somehow it had made him angry instead. He sat there in his chair, lifted his eyes, and looked at me again.

Julian's voice had gone much colder. "What do you think?" Under that direct look, my brother reacted faster than I did. He pulled me a little further behind him.

He didn't pick up Julian's question. He only said, "If Aurelia ever bullied you or gave you reason to be unhappy, you can come to me anytime.

I'll make it up to you however I can." I stood on my toes behind my brother and mouthed at Julian, "I'll come find you tomorrow—" I didn't get to finish.

My brother already had me by the arm and was pulling me out of the room. I looked back. My desk was gone. There was an empty space beside Julian that you couldn't miss.

And he was looking down at it, the side of his face in shadow. I couldn't make it out. My brother made a full production out of watching me.

The moment I was moved into his class, I didn't even get a choice. I was sharing his desk.

If I went to the bathroom between periods, he'd be lounging there blocking the top of the stairs I had to come down. We had never been apart since the day we were born.

We were probably the two people who knew each other best in the world. So before this, at school, we would both have preferred to be a thousand miles from each other.

I lay across my desk and poked his arm, bored. "Cass.

What is actually wrong with you?" "Don't you get sick of looking at me?" I said, "Seeing you every single day is killing me." My brother pulled his arm back.

All I got was: "Deal with it." Then he went back to staring blankly ahead. Two days sharing a desk with him.

In class, I noticed my brother was always staring straight ahead like he'd gone somewhere else. But he wasn't looking at the board.

When the teacher called on him, he didn't even know what page we were on. I followed the line of that focused stare to whatever was in front of him.

There was only the teacher at the front of the room, and the board. Evangeline sat behind us and to the right. So there was no way he was looking at her either.

I poked his arm again. "Cass, you're being pretty unfair." I said, "You forced me away from Julian, and you're still sitting in the same class as Evangeline." I had to poke him several times before my brother finally came back from wherever that focus had taken him.

His lashes lowered, forlorn. Chapter 4 "I don't need to switch classes. She'll leave on her own." That was all he said, one sentence with nothing before it and nothing after.

I pushed him on it. He wouldn't explain any further. Between periods, Evangeline came around to collect our homework. I hadn't done mine, obviously.

But my brother pulled a workbook out of his bag and handed it to her. I wasn't the only one caught off guard.

Even the coolest, most composed girl in school had surprise on her face. And my brother didn't say a word.

He had already turned his head aside and folded down onto the desk, eyes shut, pretending to nap. He kept the back of his head to her out in the hall.

He couldn't have made it more obvious that he wasn't going to talk to her. That was when I finally believed him about being done with Evangeline.

But Evangeline was not as indifferent to my brother as the rumors said. I looked up and watched her. She was still standing in the hallway. She hadn't left.

And when she looked down at the back of my brother's head, the distraction on her face was unmistakable.

I waited until she had gathered up the homework and started downstairs toward the office. Then I gave my brother's arm a shove. He had been especially short on patience lately.

My shove forced his eyes open, and he shut them again immediately, like he'd seen something filthy. "What," he said, eyes closed. "You're not going to help her carry those?" I said. "There's dozens of them.

They're heavy." I was deliberately trying to thaw the air between the two of them. Neither of them looked happy.

But my brother went still, and all he said, coldly, was, "Don't talk about her in front of me anymore." I cut in. "But she was standing right there looking at you for a long time." "You ignored her.

She seemed a little upset." My brother went still again. His eyes stayed shut, but his brows drew in.

Then he said, "You saw wrong." My brother really was holding himself to it, keeping clear of Evangeline. And I really was doing everything I could to see Julian in secret.

We were home for the night by then. I stood outside my brother's bedroom door until I heard the shower start. Then I made another trip to school. Other people wouldn't know this.

But two years of sharing a desk with him had taught me that Julian stayed on after class to keep studying in the library.

Julian's grades stood out at that private school of ours in a way that was almost jarring. Every standardized exam he took, large or small, he finished first. Always.

The head of school had apparently spent a small fortune in scholarship money to recruit him and keep him there. They had even built a physics competition team around him.

Julian was too smart. Julian also worked too hard. So whatever he achieved, I took it as a matter of course. Ten at night. I got out of the car at the school's back gate.

On the way I had sent him several messages. He hadn't answered any of them. Probably studying, I thought, and went in through the back.

My steps stopped under the big old tree by the back gate. I stood there staring ahead of me, blank for a second. It was late. There was almost no one left on campus.

Which was why the two figures facing each other on the treelined path ahead were so clear. The lamps along the path were bright.

Even from that distance, I could see plainly how unhappy Evangeline was. Her head was down and the corners of her eyes were red. Someone lifted a hand.

Long fingers, knuckles sharp, brushed the corner of her eye. Then higher, coming to rest lightly on the top of her head. It was an extraordinarily gentle way to comfort someone.

But that gesture was a stranger to me. I had known Julian for two years, after all. I was used to being ignored by him, used to his coldness. I thought that was simply how he was.

Not until tonight did I catch a glimpse of the tenderness under that cold surface of his. Tenderness that belonged to somebody else. I had been staring at them too long.

Julian must have sensed it. Chapter 5 He started to turn his head toward me. I twisted sideways on instinct and ducked behind the tree.

The moon was bright enough that night to hurt. I stared up at it, and staring at it slowly turned my eyes red. In that moment.

It came to me all at once, what had been wrong with my brother lately. Maybe he had already figured out what Julian was to Evangeline. So he forced me away from Julian.

And forced himself away from Evangeline. The next day was Friday. There was an allschool assembly.

On the walk from the academic building down to the field, of all things, I ran into Julian.

For days I had been finding excuses to detour up to his floor to use the bathroom, and I still never managed to see him.

But now, with people moving in every direction outside the building, I happened to look up and there he was, a little way off. That cool, distant profile.

Maybe a look can have weight. Julian reacted even faster today than he had the night before. Before I could move my eyes away, his came up and met mine.

Any other time, I'd already have run over to him, thrilled, before he could get away. But today I stayed where I was and said nothing. Then I forced a smile out for him.

Julian looked at my smile, and slowly, his brows came together. He was unhappy. Because the next second, he had already turned and walked away. I didn't go after him.

I just stood there and watched that clean, elegant back of his disappear into the crowd. Up on the stage, my brother was reading out a formal apology in front of the entire school.

This was old news for him. But today's host was Evangeline. My brother finished his apology and started off the stage with no expression on his face at all. He passed right by her.

Any other time, my brother had no shame whatsoever. Even with the whole school watching, he would have stood up there grinning and staring at her.

But today he went past Evangeline with his eyes down and nothing on his face. My brother didn't slow.

But in the moment they passed each other, Evangeline, who had never been anything but cool and remote up on that stage, went absent for a second.

After that came the dean of students and his endless lecture. I was bored out of my mind, so I got my phone out of my pocket.

After I got home the night before, I hadn't been in any state to look at my phone. Opening it now, I found a pile of messages from friends had built up. I answered them one by one.

Then I scrolled to the very bottom and found a message from Julian. At 10:30 the night before, he had sent me one.

So short it was a single word. [Mm.] I stared for a second, then tapped into our thread.

Above his reply were the several messages I had sent in a row, telling him I was coming to the school library to find him— [Are you studying in the library tonight?] [I want to come see you.] [Still the second floor?] [I'm on my way.

Wait for me.] I looked at his reply for a long time. Then, without meaning to, I scrolled back through everything we had ever said to each other.

Online or off, Julian was a person of very few words. In the past I would send him several messages and he wouldn't necessarily be willing to send back one.

So it hadn't occurred to me. Last night he had actually answered. But at that hour I had just gotten home and was shut in the bathroom, miserable. So I missed his message.

And I never met him at the library. I sat there debating whether to explain myself to him. I thought about the look on his face just now when he saw me.

Was he waiting for me last night? But faster than that, I thought of the lamplight on that path, and his fingers wiping the corner of Evangeline's eye.

I was still sitting there blank when my brother suddenly reached over and tugged at my clothes.

Chapter 6 I looked up and realized I'd been sitting there so long the assembly was over. "Back to class." My brother tugged me along impatiently, like he was afraid I'd use the opportunity to go find Julian.

I put my phone away. I never did answer his message. Now there were two of us sitting in that classroom staring at nothing.

He still drifted off constantly, gazing hard at the empty air in front of him. Sometimes the look on his face was bleak. Sometimes it was furious.

I ended up folded over my desk staring at nothing too. The phone was hot in my palm. I had been gripping it all day.

The battery was almost gone and I still hadn't answered Julian's message. Every time I was about to, I turned around and stole a look at Evangeline in the back row.

The third time, she noticed. She lifted her head and looked straight over at me. When she saw it was me, something bleak went through her eyes.

Then she looked away and never raised her head again. I kept turning over what Evangeline was to Julian. In public, I had never once heard anyone connect the two of them.

In that entire school, apart from me and my brother, there was probably nobody who even knew they knew each other. I was so deep in it that I lost track.

A piece of chalk came flying and landed exactly on the center line between my desk and my brother's. The teacher called on the two of us to answer a question.

I had no idea where we were. And this was physics, and the textbook still open on my brother's desk was for last period's English class.

Which is how my brother and I both won ourselves a spot standing at the back door of the room. At first I didn't care much about standing there.

I just counted down to the end of the period. Until someone walked past the open back door. Blueandwhite uniform, black hair cut short, silent and cold. It was Julian.

My heart rate shot up. I stood up straighter without deciding to. And then I felt stupid. Of all the times, he had to catch me being punished.

Our class and Julian's had the same physics teacher. A minute earlier the teacher had sent for a student to bring him some materials.

It genuinely had not occurred to me that the student would be Julian.

Julian walked past me, cool and distant, went to the front door of the room, and handed the things to the teacher. My eyes followed him without my permission.

I watched that clean, elegant back of his. I watched the slight tilt of his head down when he spoke to the teacher. I watched his fingers resting on the pages.

I even made a point of checking on Evangeline. But Evangeline didn't move. She sat in her seat looking at the workbook in her hands. She never once lifted her head.

It was like a bucket of cold water over my head. I went cold and clear in an instant. Slowly, I pulled my eyes off Julian. I looked at nothing but the toes of my own shoes.

On the floor, Julian's shadow came into view, and it seemed to catch for a second. My brother straightened up, offhand about it, and put his body between us.

Julian's shadow moved on. Not until it was finally gone did I dare lift my head. "You like him that much?" My brother turned his head to look at me.

I pressed my lips together. "Liking someone isn't a thing you can just hand over and take back." My brother's eyes stayed on me.

After a long moment he reached over and rubbed a hand through my hair. He let out a small sigh. Like in that instant he had decided something. Wednesday night it rained.

My brother didn't have the family driver come for us. Instead he announced we were walking home. I stared at him and put a hand to his forehead. "You don't have a fever?

It's pouring and you want to walk?" I said, "You walk. I'm not walking." But my brother wasn't giving me a choice. He picked up my bag and pulled me out the door.

Chapter 7 He held the umbrella in one hand with both our bags slung over his shoulder, and still had a hand free to push me along.

He steered me onto the little back road behind the school, the one nobody used. The light was dim and the rain kept getting harder.

I edged closer to him. "Cass, is this you getting back at me?" I said, "Bringing me out here on purpose in weather like this." My brother didn't say a word.

He just tipped the umbrella further over my head. Then I heard someone scream. In the rain, at night, that sound set my teeth on edge.

Right after it came the heavy sound of fists driving into a body. And the sound of a body hitting a wall. The further we walked, the clearer it got.

I turned my head to look at my brother. But he seemed not to notice any of it. He kept walking me forward.

When we came around the corner, into the stretch the streetlights couldn't reach— I finally stopped. In the pouring rain, I saw Julian.

He had a man by the throat and was slamming him into the wall