Chapter 4 The Past Never Sleeps

> "I wasn't supposed to open his old journal. But I did."

Julian's secrets run deeper than his wealth. One old entry threatens to break down every wall she's barely begun to chip.

🌸🌸🌸🌸

It was nearly midnight when the storm rolled in.

Thunder cracked over the city skyline as rain painted streaks across the windows of Julian Vale's library. But Alora didn't flinch. She had grown up in storms. Real ones. Emotional ones. You learn to stop jumping when you've lived through enough lightning.

She was curled up on one of the leather armchairs, manuscript pages in her lap, laptop screen glowing softly. Her hair was tied in a loose bun, her glasses slightly crooked. Julian thought she looked like something out of a dream he didn't know he'd been having.

He hadn't meant to come downstairs.

Sleep didn't come easily to him-hadn't in years-but tonight the pull toward her presence was too strong. There was something magnetic about the way she filled his quiet spaces. She didn't ask for anything, didn't expect him to be charming or kind. She simply observed.

She felt safe.

Alora looked up when she heard the creak of the floorboard.

"You couldn't sleep either?" she asked gently.

Julian walked in, barefoot in lounge pants and a soft black shirt, his usual armor of formality peeled away.

"I haven't slept through a night since I was twenty-two," he said, sitting across from her.

She gave a small smile. "Nightmares?"

He looked at her, and something in him gave way.

"No. Just... too many memories." He paused. "And some regrets."

Her eyes softened. "Want to talk about them?"

He was silent for a long time, the only sound between them the ticking of the antique clock on the wall and the distant roll of thunder.

Then he whispered, "Her name was Elena."

Alora's heart slowed. "The one from the tabloids?"

He nodded, gaze fixed on the storm outside. "We were engaged. I met her before the first billion. Before the boardrooms and the bodyguards. She was smart. Beautiful. Manipulative in ways I didn't see coming."

Alora shifted, setting her notebook aside. "What did she do?"

"She made me trust her." His jaw tightened. "And then she sold our story. Photos. Private recordings. Even letters. She told the world I was broken. Cold. Unlovable. And the worst part is... she wasn't entirely wrong."

"Hey," Alora said softly. "You're not unlovable, Julian."

He looked at her then. Really looked.

There it was-that flicker of pain behind the perfection. The boy beneath the billionaire. The man still bleeding beneath layers of polished steel.

"I don't know who I am when I'm not being 'Julian Vale,'" he confessed. "Sometimes I think I created this version of me just so I'd never have to be hurt again."

"And yet you hired a writer to tear that version apart."

A corner of his mouth lifted. "Maybe I'm ready to find out what's underneath."

They sat in silence for a moment, the kind that wasn't awkward-but intimate. Heavy. Beautiful.

Julian leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "Do you think people can change?"

"I think people can return to who they were before the world taught them to be afraid," Alora said, her voice barely a whisper. "Which might be the bravest kind of change."

He stared at her like she'd just read the one line in his soul he'd buried the deepest.

Then slowly, he rose and walked toward the grand piano tucked in the corner of the room.

"You play?" she asked.

"Not well," he said. "But I remember this one melody. My mother used to hum it when she thought no one was listening."

He played a few soft notes-broken, beautiful, full of longing. Alora watched, heart tugging with each key he pressed.

"You're not who they say you are," she murmured.

He didn't look at her, but the quiet shift in his posture told her he heard every word.

And that night, as thunder rolled and rain tapped the windows like a lullaby for broken people, something invisible passed between them.

Something soft.

Something real.

Something that couldn't be put back once touched.