Chapter 328:

Julie’s POV

Steve looked at me with features filled with intense reproach and a soul clothed in blame. He shook his head with regret and helplessness, saying: "Why all this rejection and hostility, Julie? Jake is no longer a stranger; he has become one of us and within our small, enduring family."

I turned my vexed face away from him with extreme nervousness, exhaled a burning breath from my chest, and said in a dry, cutting tone that settled the argument: "Jake is your close friend, not mine. For that reason, I ask you by the sake of everything, Steve... keep him completely away from my boundary and my path!"

Steve knitted his eyebrows in obvious confusion that filled his face, and took a wide step toward me to inquire, saying: "I only want to understand this riddle; why do you hate each other with this ferocity and all this harshness without an obvious justification?"

I gripped my palms with iron strength until my knuckles turned white, and ground out in a low, faltering voice: "You cannot understand; there are things that are neither said nor explained, Steve."

Steve let out a sigh of suppressed tightness, and asked me, his eyes searching for a reassuring answer in my eyes: "Will we not go out tonight together to forget our worries?"

I answered him with a dry, strict coldness while moving with rapid steps toward the kitchen exit to end the discussion: "You and Jake go out and enjoy your time; I will remain here in the house."

He pursued me with his imploring, tender looks that melt stone, and said in a warm voice filled with hope: "Julie... I truly want us all to go out together. Please do this for my sake, just for your brother."

I stopped in my place with heavy feet, and relaxed my tightened shoulders under the impact of surrender before his imploring. Then I sighed with a bottomless depth and said with heartbreak to mend his thoughts: "Fine, Steve... for your sake only."

The moment my mouth uttered my commitment, I exited the kitchen floor with stormy steps, burning sparks flying from my eyes that were blazing with fury. I headed directly toward the room of that cursed, base Jake to put a limit to this overstepping before he could utter a single word to my brother. I opened the door with blind momentum and entered without permission.

He was still lying on his bed, sleeping carelessly in a highly provoking manner. I closed the wooden door behind me, and with a swift, sudden movement, I bent toward the bed, snatched a pillow, and brought it down, striking him over his head and eyes with all the malice, oppression, and suppressed fury I possessed in my hollow.

Jake jolted from the hollow of his bedding with dread, panic, and sweeping annoyance that shook his broad body. His sharp features hardened while he rubbed his eyes with extreme nervousness, and shouted in my face: "You foolish, crazy woman... what the hell did you do?!"

I advanced a step toward his bed and stood with an entirely tensed body while directing my index finger in a strict, fatal threat toward his surprised face, saying in a sharp, terrifying hiss of a snake: "Do not inform Steve with a single letter that I fainted yesterday in the bathroom... do you understand?!"

Jake let out a sarcastic, mocking, and highly provoking laugh that pierced my nerves. He crossed his arms over his chest with stubbornness and challenge, saying: "And why shouldn’t I inform him? I do not work for your account here, and I will not execute your words in any case."

I approached closer to him and said in a low, burning voice: "For his own sake... because I truly do not want him to worry more regarding me and be occupied with me; what he carries of worries is enough for him!"

Jake’s angry features fell to become cold, belittling, and nerve-wracking. He shrugged his shoulders with an insolent indifference, saying: "I basically do not understand why he worries about you in this exaggerated manner and wastes his time for your sake."

I raised my chin with pride, and ground my teeth, saying: "Because he is my beloved brother... you certainly do not know the meaning of this with your petrified mind, because you do not possess a family or an origin in the first place to feel this!"

In that second, Jake’s sharp blue looks froze like daggers, and his massive body stiffened completely over the bedding in a sudden manner as if a thunderbolt had struck him.

He looked at me with an absolute, shocking astonishment for which his eyes widened with rigidity, and swallowed his saliva with extreme difficulty with pale features emptied of blood, saying in a sharp tone: "Not everyone is fortunate with a family like you, you harsh woman."

I twisted my lips with bitterness and burning mockery to conceal the sting of my conscience, and said with blind agitation: "I am fortunate with my brother, yes, and you likewise are fortunate because you possess a faithful friend like my brother... you depraved, fallen pervert and molester!"

He jolted up from the bed with a terrifying momentum like a wounded lion, and approached with his towering height and massive build toward me with a convulsed face and prominent veins in his neck, saying with a vexation that filled his hollow: "And what the hell did I do to you by all curses for you to label me with this disgusting description?!"

I shouted in his face with a faltering, shaking, and lost voice from the intensity of embarrassment, malice, and anger: "You should not have dared and entered the bathroom upon me! You should have left me unconscious on the floor; in the end, I would have woken up on my own without your base hand touching me!"

He waved his massive hand in the air with intense disgust and disdain, grinding from between his teeth until they almost shattered, saying with a biting mockery: "You make all this loud drama and madness just because I saved your life and saw you naked?"