[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my":3,"chapter-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-274":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1735708,2219,"Chapter 274: The ghost in the room pt 2","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-274",274,"\u003Cp>CASSIAN\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was hanging from the narrow stone ledge of the second story, his fingers hooked into the architectural molding with a casualness that bordered on suicidal.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He looked entirely unbothered by the fact that he was dangling thirty feet above a rose garden.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He wore the staff uniform, but he wore it wrong, the collar was open, the sleeves were rolled back to show his lean forearms, and his dark chestnut hair was a chaotic frizz that somehow looked intentional.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Are you going to let me in?\" Julian asked, a grin already tugging at his lips. \"Or are you going to stand there until my grip gives out? Either works for me, though one of them is going to be a lot messier for the gardeners.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I felt a surge of longing so sharp it nearly knocked the wind out of me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was fierce and irrational. I was looking at him, right in front of me, and yet I missed him with an intensity that made my hands shake.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Behind the present moment, a shadow of the dream flickered: Julian, older, dying with a smile on his face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The déjà vu was a physical weight. I have already lost you, I thought, the realization breaking my heart even as he climbed over the sill. You are standing right here, and I have already lost you.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Go away,\" I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. I frowned, the kind of frown that clearly meant don’t you dare leave me, and I didn’t lock the window as I walked back to my bed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Julian tumbled into the room with a huff, dusting off his trousers. \"Woof. I will never get used to the size of this place. It’s almost impressive how small they managed to make this room. It’s like they built a closet and forgot the hangers.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I buried my face in the pillow, refusing to respond. I was caught in the crossfire between the dream and the reality, the sensations of the other life refusing to leave me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I could still feel the rage and the grief, and the phantom sensation of a hand in mine, a hand that belonged to the boy named Noah.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The silence in the room stretched out, but it wasn’t empty.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I felt Julian’s body heat before he even moved. He was close, too close, his shadow falling across me as he sat on the edge of the mattress.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I turned over, and he was directly above me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was close enough that I could count the individual eyelashes on his lids, close enough to see the small, familiar scar near his temple that I had memorized without meaning to.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My heart did that thing it always did when he was near, it became too large for my ribs, a frantic, unreasonable throb of love that I had no way to explain and no way to stop.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In my scramble to move away from the intensity of his gaze, my elbow caught him squarely in the face. The contact was unintended, a clumsy jerk of limbs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Ack! My face—\" Julian groaned, clutching his nose. \"I think it’s bleeding. I think my vision is swimming. Cassian, you’ve blinded your only friend. Tell my mother I loved her.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I turned back, panicked. \"Are you—\" I stopped. Julian was looking at me through his fingers, his eyes dancing with mischief.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was a performance, a piece of theater designed to pull me out of my head.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Get out,\" I muttered, my face heating up. \"I told you to leave.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I’m sorry, I’m sorry,\" he laughed, settling onto the foot of the bed. \"I heard what happened. Detained again. In your own house, by your own father. You must be bored out of your mind.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I don’t need you to repeat the highlights,\" I said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"You’re blushing,\" he noted, his smile softening into something that read me better than I could read myself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I’m not. It’s the heat.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"You look like a sad puppy pretending to be a wolf, Cassian.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t respond, because any answer would have been a confession.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Julian was called away eventually. I heard his name being shouted from the courtyard, some senior staff member irritated that he was slacking off again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He left with a visible reluctance, the kind of look that said he’d rather stay in this cramped, dark room than be anywhere else.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That was the thing about Julian that I never said out loud. He protected me. He did it constantly, with jokes and sandwiches and smuggled books, and he did it without ever making it look like a chore.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the evening bled into night, the window opened again. Julian was back, this time with a cloth-wrapped bundle of sandwiches and a deck of cards. We sat on the floor, the small lamp by the bed casting long, flickering shadows against the walls.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He talked, as he always did, about the drama in the servant’s quarters, who was sleeping with whom, who was about to be fired, the small, petty wars of a large household. I listened, though I pretended not to, eating the stolen food with a hunger I refused to admit to.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Underneath the conversation, the dream was still there, a low-frequency hum in my blood.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The love was there, the grief was there, and the image of Julian dying remained a sharp, jagged point in my mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was so Julian, I realized, to die with a smile. Even in a dream, he was the only person who could make the end of the world look like a joke.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Julian stopped mid-story, laughing at something he’d said himself. The sound filled the small room, expanding until the walls didn’t feel so close anymore.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had a way of filling space without even trying, a natural gravity that I found myself pulled into over and over again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I looked at him in the lamplight, and the want was a physical ache in my throat. I wanted to reach out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I wanted to close the three feet of floor between us and say the things I didn’t have words for yet.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I wanted to tell him about the dream, about Noah, about the fear that he was going to leave me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A strange, nostalgic feeling washed over me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was wrong, how could I feel nostalgia for a man sitting right in front of me? This feels like remembering, I thought, memorizing the curve of his jaw and the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I was memorizing him the way you memorize a sunset when you know the storm is coming.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t understand why I was so afraid of losing someone who was right here. I just knew that in the dream, the world had ended when he did, and I wasn’t sure the waking world was any different.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Cassian?\" Julian asked, his smile faltering slightly as he caught me staring. \"You’re doing it again. The ’I’m brooding because I’m a tragic hero’ look.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Shut up and deal the cards,\" I said, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. I had to keep him in my sight for as long as the light lasted, before the dream and the reality finally became the same thing.\u003C\u002Fp>",1215,"2026-06-06T16:23:43.455Z",1,"novelbin.me","99246c19b04b6947ca76bb5fa4fdce6c20a8f749e09edbfecaab6b5359e3027c","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-275","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-273",307,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fbl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-cover.jpg"]