Chapter 356 You Are Not Like Him

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    She lifted her chin, voice steady. “That’s right. I’m not leaving. You, however, may go.”

    A tangle of emotions flickered across Joaquin’s features before he climbed into the helicopter alone. Momentster, the machine rose, rotors shredding the sky, and dwindled toward the horizon.

    Quinn watched the helicopter shrink to a speck, then disappear. She turned to Julius. “Let’s go.”

    She managed only two steps before something–perhaps a shadow of pain, perhaps a second thought–made her stop short.

    Julius remained rooted to the spot, shoulders squared yet unmoving, as though a silentmand had nailed his shoes to the ground. His eyes stayed on her–wide, baffled, almost childlike–searching her face for an answer to a question he had not yet learned to voice.

    Quinn glided thest few steps until she stood directly before him. “What’s wrong?”

    Julius‘shes trembled, a telltale quiver betraying how fiercely he drank in the sight of her, as though a single blink might steal her away.

    He had been certain she would follow his father back, the same way every fragile, reasonable hope usually fled him.

    He knew–better than anyone–how desperately she ached to see Rowan again, how her brother’s ce in her heart eclipsed almost everything else.

    Yet here she was, still on the ind, choosing him over the quickest route home.

    Moments earlier, she had even said, point–nk, that he and his father were nothing alike, a line drawn in bright, defiant ink.

    Scenes like this belonged in sleep, not in the brutal daylight that had governed his life until now.

    “You… You didn’t go?” The words scraped out of him after a long, raw silence, his

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    Chapter 356 You Are Not Like Him

    throat as parched as driftwood.

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    “No. I’m still here,” Quinn answered, simple as sunlight breaking through cloud.

    “Why… are you still here?” The question cracked from him again, disbelief wrestling with a fragile surge of relief.

    “Because I can’t stand your father, that’s all.” Her tone was light, almost offhand, yet the wordsnded with the weight of a promise.

    Before the sybles finished hanging in the air, Julius surged forward and pulled her into his arms, as though the earth itself might tilt and fling her away if he hesitated.

    Even in that desperate rush, he kept his left hand clear of her injured shoulder, fingers angling awkwardly but carefully, terrified of brushing the wound beneath

    her shirt.

    “You didn’t leave. You really didn’t.” The words spilled against the curve of her neck, muffled, half prayer, half confession, his face buried in the shallow hollow where her scent lived.

    Her breath, her warmth–quiet, human proof–sank into him, and the frantic drum in his chest finally eased into something like a rhythm.

    Quinn did not push him away. She simply stood there, letting his arms shake around her.

    They had broken up; they should not be hugging like this. Yet his hands were trembling so violently she could not bring herself to pry them off—not immediately.

    Quinn, you’re hopeless at clean breaks. The thought flickered, half chiding, half amused, inside her own mind.

    After a long, measured moment, Julius‘ breathing steadied. Only then did Quinn murmur, “All right, let’s go inside.”

    Julius loosened his hold, arms falling away like ropes finally untied.

    Quinn caught his hand the instant it dropped, eyes narrowing at the raw scrapes blooming across his knuckles–marks earned when he traded punches with his

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    Chapter 356 You Are Not Like Him

    father a short while ago.

    “Put some antiseptic on that,” she said.

    “All right,” Julius replied, the single word soft but obedient.

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    Back in the mansion, he fetched the battered first–aid kit and dabbed ointment onto each reddened ridge along his fingers.

    “Anywhere else? Did he hit you badly?” Quinn asked, scanning the rest of him with clinical precision.

    “A few spots hurt, nothing serious,” Julius said, though a faint wince slipped through the practiced calm.

    She had watched the entire brawl. She knew how hard those punches hadnded. Bruises were a certainty; fractures a real possibility.

    And on this isted ind they were alone–no doctor in sight, no hospital within miles of ocean.

    “Take your shirt off,” Quinn ordered, voice brisk, already rolling up her sleeves for triage.

    Julius paused, surprise flickering across his dark eyes, but he offered no words. Without ceremony, he reached for the hem of his T–shirt, peeled it over his head, then shrugged free of the undershirt as well until his torso stood bare to the chill air.

    Quinn’s gaze drifted to his chest and the lean muscles across his abdomen. Bruises bloomed there, ugly and raw, the unmistakable souvenirs of the brawl he had waged moments earlier with Joaquin.

    She lifted a hand, fingertips brushing the injured skin. Her touch shifted into practiced pressure, and she murmured, “If it hurts, tell me.”

    Her mother had served as a military doctor, and Quinn herself had once worn the uniform, so the basics of diagnosing fractures and blunt trauma still lived in her hands.

    If Julius carried nothing worse than surface bruises, the matter would remain simple. But if a boney cracked beneath the swelling, he would need a hospital,

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    Chapter 356 You Are Not Like Him

    and quickly.

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    Her palms traveled across his torso in small, methodical circles, mapping each contour, testing for hidden fractures.

    He stared at her, stunned into stillness. The single fact that she had not walked away yet wrapped around him like a warm nket.

    After pressing several spots without drawing so much as a hiss, Quinn lifted her head. “Any of those feel especially bad?” she asked.

    Julius blinked, as though waking from a deep reverie. “Nothing hurts in particr,” he said.

    “Then your bones are fine,” she concluded. “A little ointment will do the trick.”

    He held her with an unwavering gaze, the question spilling out before he could cage it. “Do you truly believe I am not the same kind of man my father is?”

    Quinn hummed a soft assent. “You are different.”

    “Yes, different,” Julius whispered, almost to himself. His eyes searched hers. “You left with me instead of my father today. Are you certain you will not regret it?”

    “Not at this moment,” Quinn replied. “I only ask that you keep your word and take me home when the timees.”

    The flicker of hope in Julius‘ eyes slowly dimmed. “So you still do not trust me, do you?”