Read Chapter 19: The Confession

The intercom buzzed like an insect trapped against glass. Camille stood in the lobby of Julien's building, the letter folded inside her jacket pocket, pressed against her ribs like a second heartbeat. She'd barely slept. Moreau's voice kept replaying—*consider why he never sent it*—and the weight of the paper had grown heavier with every step from her apartment to here.

"Yeah?" Julien's voice crackled through the speaker, rough with sleep or something worse.

"It's me."

A pause. The door unlocked with a shudder.

His apartment was a mess of shadows. Muted light from the balcony doors caught the contours of an untouched couch, a half-empty glass of water, the sprawl of training gear drying over chair backs. Julien stood in the kitchen doorway in a t-shirt and track pants, hair disheveled, eyes red-rimmed. He looked like a man who'd spent the night wrestling something larger than himself.

"You're up early." His voice carried no accusation, just observation.

"I need to show you something."

She pulled the letter from her jacket. The paper was creased now, softened by her handling. Julien's name was scrawled across the envelope in his own handwriting—she'd memorized the slant of those letters before she'd even opened it, back in that storage closet, heart hammering against her teeth.

He didn't reach for it. He just stared.

"What is that?"

"Your confession."

The color drained from his face. He took a step back, then another, until his shoulders hit the wall. "Where did you—"

"Moreau's storage closet. Vincent's kit bag." She held the envelope out, arm extended, bridge between them. "You wrote this. You never sent it. I read it—I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—but I did. And I think you need to say the words out loud, Julien. To someone. To me."

His jaw worked. A muscle jumped beneath his eye. "You don't want to hear it."

"I do."

"It's ugly."

"I don't care."

He crossed the room in three strides, snatched the envelope from her hand, and tore it open with such violence that the paper ripped in half. But he didn't throw it. He read. His eyes tracked across the pages, his lips moving silently on words he'd written months ago, words she'd already absorbed like poison and medicine in equal measure.

When he finished, he let the paper fall. It drifted to the floor between them, settling against his bare feet.

"I wrote that the night before his funeral." His voice was barely a rasp. "I sat in my childhood bedroom and I typed it out on my phone about a dozen times. Each version said the same thing in different words: I killed him. I killed my brother. And then I deleted every draft except this one, printed it, put it in an envelope, and drove to his grave."

He stopped. Swallowed.

"I stood there for an hour. There was frost on the grass. I remember thinking how ridiculous that was—frost, in the south, in April, like the universe was trying to make a point about coldness. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave that letter by his headstone because that would mean accepting it was real. That he was gone. That it was my fault."

"It was an accident." Camille stepped closer. She could smell him now—soap and exhaustion, the scent of a man running on fumes. "Julien, listen to me. It was a freak collision on a rugby pitch. These things happen."

"These things don't happen." His voice cracked. "I was the fullback. He was the winger. We'd drilled that play a hundred times—he lofts it high, I come up under it, I secure possession. Except that day I didn't. I read it wrong. The sun was in my eyes, the ball hung up there too long, and I drifted. I drifted, Camille. Just a step. One fucking step out of position."

He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.

"Vincent saw me late. He saw I was going to be late to the contest, and he knew what that meant—that the opposition's big number thirteen would have a free run at me. So he came across. He threw himself into the collision to protect me. His head hit the ground first."

Silence stretched between them. The city hummed outside, distant and indifferent.

"He died with a fractured skull and a brain hemorrhage. He died because I was a step late on a high ball. And I've played six hundred and twelve professional matches since then, and I've caught ninety-nine percent of the high balls that have come my way, and every single one I catch, I'm catching it for him. Every single one I miss, I see his face."

Camille closed the remaining distance. She took his hands—large, scarred knuckles, fingers that had gripped a thousand tackles—and held them between her own smaller ones.

"I saw the match footage," she said quietly. "I pulled the archives after I read your letter. The opposition player responsible for the tackle that killed Vincent retired the next season. He cited mental health reasons. You were never even penalized."

"Penalties don't bring him back."

"No. They don't." She squeezed his hands. "But Julien—you've been carrying this alone for three years. And you don't have to carry it alone anymore."

He looked at her then. Really looked, in a way he hadn't since that first day in her treatment room, when he'd been all sharp edges and deflection. His eyes were wet. When he blinked, a tear tracked down his cheek, and he didn't wipe it away.

"I never told anyone the full story," he said. "Not the coach, not the physios, not my mother. Reynaud suspected—he's known me since I was a kid. But no one else. You're the first."

"I'm honored." She meant it.

"I don't know how to stop feeling it." His voice was small now, stripped of every layer of armor she'd watched him build. "Every time I step on that pitch, I feel his absence like a missing limb. Every time I win, I feel guilty. Every time I lose, I feel like I'm disappointing him. And my mother—she's here, Camille. She's in Montpellier right now because she's worried about me, because she saw my interview, because she knows I dedicated that match to Vincent. And I can't even look at her without seeing him in her face."

"Then don't look at her face." Camille released one of his hands and touched his chin, tilting his head down until their eyes met. "Look at hers. Just hers. She lost a son, Julien. She didn't lose two. Don't make her lose the one she still has."

He wept then. Not the theatrical grief of a man performing for cameras, but the ugly, quiet weeping of someone who'd held a dam together for too long. Camille guided him to the couch. He sat, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, and she sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. She didn't take his hand again. She just stayed.

When his breathing finally steadied, he turned to her with red-rimmed eyes. "Why did you bring it to me?"

"Because you deserved to know someone found it." She paused. "And because Moreau knows about it now. He saw me reading it. He asked me why you never sent it, and I didn't have an answer."

Julien's face hardened. "Moreau. He's been circling this for weeks."

"He warned me, Julien. About the gambling syndicate. About your father's debts and what they might mean for you now that you're back." She watched him carefully. "I didn't tell you because I thought I was protecting you. But I think we're past protecting each other from the truth."

"You believe him?"

"I believe he's terrified." She let that settle. "And I believe whatever connected Vincent's death to your father's disappearance is bigger than both of us."

Julien was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached down, picked up the torn halves of his letter, and folded them carefully into a square.

"His funeral was in Marseille," he said. "My father never showed. Vincent was buried three days after he died, and my father was already gone. I've told myself a hundred times that he was just a coward. But now—" He looked at her. "What if Vincent's death wasn't an accident, Camille? What if it was a warning my father ignored?"

The question hung between them like a blade. Outside, a seagull cried, sharp and lonely, against the morning sky. Julien's mother was already in the city, waiting for answers. And now they had a new one to chase.

She looked down at his hands, still shaking around the folded pages. Friday was two days away. And somewhere between her apartment and this broken confession, Camille had realized she would do anything to keep him alive—even if that meant walking into the syndicate's fire herself.