[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl Chapter 219: Freight Train

NOAH

I felt the heat rise in my neck, a searing, prickly burn. I kept my face still. I didn’t blink. This was bait. This was exactly what he wanted... for to stamr, to defend myself, to prove that I was just as pathetic as he rembered.

"I know Cassian’s reputation," Nick continued, his voice low and conspiratorial. "He’s a man with impossible standards. He doesn’t hire charity cases. And yet, here you are. A month ago you were a low-level clerk in the records departnt, and now you’re his right hand? After the way you’ve always been?"

He didn’t say it directly. Nick never did. He worked in the architecture of the unsaid, in the spaces between words. The implication was a foul, heavy thing in the air: Soone like you doesn’t get to soone like him without taking a shortcut. Soone like you sells themselves because you have nothing else to offer.

"I’m not doing this," I said, turning away. My heart was thudding against my ribs, a panicked, frantic rhythm. "I’m going back inside."

I started walking toward the revolving doors, but Nick didn’t let go. He didn’t grab my arm, he didn’t have to. His voice followed , hooking into my back like a barb.

"Running away? That’s interesting," he called out, his voice conversational enough that passersby wouldn’t think twice. "If you had nothing to be embarrassed about, you’d just say it. You’d tell how you earned it."

I stopped. I didn’t turn around yet, but my jaw set so hard I thought my teeth might crack.

"You can tell , Noah," Nick said, and now he was right behind . I could hear the perford warmth in his tone, that fake, honeyed sincerity he saved for the caras and the boardrooms.

"I’m your brother. We’re family. After everything that’s happened... I just want to understand my little brother’s ’success’."

The word family felt like a slur coming from his mouth. He used it like a weapon, as if he hadn’t spent our entire lives making sure I never felt like I belonged to one. As if he hadn’t been the one to tell our father that I was "broken" when I couldn’t handle the pressure of the academy.

I turned around, the anger finally bubbling over, hot and jagged. "What do you actually want to know, Nick? Say it directly for once in your life. Stop the Performance."

Nick’s face shifted into a mask of wounded innocence, his eyebrows knitting together in a way that would have been convincing if I hadn’t seen him do it to our mother a thousand tis.

"I’m just curious how you got there," he said. "That’s all. Because I know you, Noah. I know exactly what you’re capable of. And I know what you’re not."

The full sentence echoed under the one he spoke. You didn’t earn this. You never earn anything. You take shortcuts because you’re a coward.

Nick tilted his head, his eyes scanning my reaction with a clinical detachnt. "So people just have a pattern, don’t they? They find ways around the things they can’t do legitimately. I rember high school. I rember that ss with the finals. I rember the principal’s office, and the way Dad had to... fix things. It’s a character trait, isn’t it? Finding a man to hide behind when things get too hard."

The high school reference landed like a grenade. Suddenly, I wasn’t standing in front of XUM; I was sixteen again, sitting in a plastic chair in a hallway that slled of floor wax, listening to my father’s disappointed, icy voice tell I was a liability. The panic attack from Saturday... the one Cassian had held through... threatened to surge back up, the pressure building right behind my sternum.

I felt the edge. The mont before sothing snaps. My hands were shaking at my sides, and the city noise felt like it was screaming. Don’t, I told myself. Not here. Not where people are watching. Don’t let him see you break.

"NOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The sound cut through the ringing in my ears like a lightning strike. It was high, excited, and stretched into a gleeful, lodic shout.

I didn’t even have ti to turn before I was hit with the force of a freight train.

Cyan arrived like a natural disaster. He didn’t just hug ; he tackled , his arms locking around my torso and lifting my feet clear off the pavent. The air left my lungs in a sudden oof, the world spinning for a second as he squeezed the life out of .

"Noah! I found you! I was going to call but then I saw you and you looked so serious and I just had to—"

He was a blur of bright energy and warmth, his grip crushing and genuine. I was lifted about a foot off the ground, my arms flailing uselessly for a second before I instinctively grabbed his shoulders to keep from toppling over.

"Ehh? Wait a min—"

The anger that had been vibrating in my bones just a second ago was short-circuited.

My brain didn’t know what to do with the sudden, overwhelming warmth of being grabbed by soone who was actually, undeniably happy to see .

After the weekend of silence, after the last ten minutes of Nick’s poison, Cyan felt like a sun going off in the middle of a blizzard.

He finally set down, though he didn’t let go of my shoulders, his face beaming with a frantic, ssy sort of joy.

"You’re here! You’re actually at work! Look at you in a tie!"

I blinked, my chest still heaving, trying to find my voice. "Cyan... what are you—"

I stopped, rembering who was standing behind .

I turned my head slightly. Nick was standing three feet away, his arms crossed, his professional mask gone. In its place was a look of pure, unadulterated confusion.

He was staring at Cyan... at the bright clothes, the wild energy, the way he was still holding onto ... trying to figure out how this fit into the narrative of the pathetic, lonely little brother he’d built.

Nick looked at Cyan, then back at , his eyes searching for the "shortcut." But Cyan wasn’t a shortcut. He was just a person who liked . And for the first ti in my life, I saw Nick look at and not have a single clue what he was seeing.