"What greater thing is there, for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life... to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories...?"

—George Eliot

I had only started to drift off to sleep when it happened.

Julian was thoroughly spent from the moment we got back to our hotel room after the show—which went by without a hitch—and he fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the over-stuffed pillows. It had been a long day and I couldn't blame him one bit. The thrill of watching the concert from a hidden corner of the stage, however, had spiked my adrenaline, so I passed an hour by watching the muted flat screen television in front of the bed.

Colorful flashes from the screen would illuminate his face every so often. Even in his sleep, Julian's brows were furrowed, and his lips were stuck in a hard line. His unbrushed hair lay in small swirls on the pillow, and his breathing was soft, yet ostensibly labored.

The television screen could not have been off for more than twenty minutes when I heard the screaming.

"No... No... NO!" The terror in his voice curdled my blood and I scrambled to find the lamp switch. My fingers could not move quickly enough.

"NO! Get away from me!" In this confounding moment, I thought Julian might have been talking to me, so I nearly leaped out of the bed, and in doing so, fell onto the floor.

"PLEASE!" Julian cried out. I found my way to my feet and ran my fingers along the wall, begging for light to come.

"I haven't done anything. Please don't. No. DON'T HIT ME!" Finally, my hand brushed the tip of the switch and light filled the room. My eyes adjusted to see Julian writhing and thrashing on the sheets, with his forehead covered in a thin layer of sweat.

"Julian!" I was on my knees beside him on the bed, gently shaking his shoulders. "Julian, wake up!"

His terrified, dilated, brown eyes fluttered open and he focused on me.

"It's okay. It was just a dream. You're okay now." I brushed my shaky hand through his hair while speaking to him softly.

"Oh, Brooke." He latched onto me and began crying into my shirt. "It was so bad. It felt so real."

"Shhh... I'm right here. It was just a nightmare. Everything's okay." I held onto the clammy skin of his bare chest. He nearly curled into a ball on my lap.

We sat in a noiseless embrace and I waited for the tears to pass through his contorted body, carrying with them the weight of his aching burdens.

"Do you want to talk about it?" My rounded fingertips trailed his arms. "It's okay if you don't."

"I don't want to, but I need to," Julian finally answered, using his thumb to swipe away the last few tears on his swollen cheeks.

"You know you can trust me," I assured him gently.

"And I do, with all of my heart." Julian sighed. "I don't want you to think any differently of me. I wish you hadn't seen me like this."

"I don't think any differently of you, and I won't. If anything, this has only made me feel closer to you. That's all I want, Julian," I promised this broken man before me.

"You have been so open with me. If I want you to stay with me, I should be open with you as well." Julian rested on his back and encouraged me to lie with him. His arm looped around me, pulling my head to his left rib cage. His heart was hammering in his chest.

"I'm not wanted," Julian said. "Nobody has ever wanted me."

"I want you," I said while trying to meet his eyes, but my favorite shade of brown was hidden behind his closed eyelids. I couldn't understand what he was getting at, or how this related to his dream.

"Nobody except you. You think I'm so great, Brooke, but I'm nothing. At least you... you're loved. Your mates love you. Your family loves you." I could tell Julian was trying to keep his composure.

"You're loved far more, and far wider than I am, Julian." His arm tightened around me.

"Nobody knows the real me. So nobody can love the real me." His tone was cold.

"Let me in then." My meek voice broke at the end.

"Don't leave me," he begged.

"Never," I promised. My eyes were already threatening to flood over.

"I'm a fraud. I'm a fucking phony. I shield myself behind an instrument and pretend to be somebody relevant, someone of vital importance. It's my mask. After the lights dim, I am completely alone. People want to be near me only when they believe they can get something from me."

With our bodies linked like this, his tangible heartbreak trickled through his skin and into my pores. I wanted nothing more than to uproot all of his pain, and let the tormenting memories make their place inside of me instead.

"I don't have a family, Brooke. I have no idea who my dad is. My mum was an alcoholic on acid who couldn't keep her lips off the booze for nine months, so I was born with a dead kidney. I haven't been to very many doctors, but the ones I've seen have told me how lucky I am that a toxic kidney is all I suffered. I should have never been born."

My arms dug into his skin when the words left his mouth, as if his very existence depended on my grip.

"I was given up to the orphanage and spent sixteen years in that hellhole. They would beat us, I mean really beat us, and boys got it the worst. See, this is quite embarrassing to admit, but I had this problem with... bed-wetting. Bed-wetters were made to rise before everyone else, to tidy up everything. If we didn't rise early enough, the matrons would conjure up more barbaric ideas for punishments. It also didn't help to lie in bed at night and hear your mates screaming. So, I barely slept. Still to this day, I can't sleep for too long, and I wake up earlier than most do. It's almost like my body grew used to the minimal rest, and adjusted itself to make do with less. Nightmares like the one I just had are rare, but they do happen sometimes, and it's hard to come to afterward."

I could not speak.

"Anything would set the orphanage directors off. Any little fucking thing. They would take their own stresses and griefs from home out on us, knowing better than anyone that we had absolutely nobody to tell and nowhere to go. Who could we ask for help? We were reminded each day how unwanted and valueless we were."

Julian sighed deeply. I wondered if the hotel room suddenly felt void of air for him, as it did for me.

"Something as simple as our shirts being untucked, or dirty fingernails, called for canings and skipped dinners. My best mate from the orphanage, Ollie, he would sometimes sneak off to the kitchen late at night, to find snacks for us to eat. Not just me and him, but anybody who had missed dinner that night. Most of the time he would get away with it, but not always. The first time he was caught, I took the blame."

Julian sucked in a sharp breath and I shut my eyes tightly closed, trying to blink away the images crossing my mind.

"That's where I got this." Julian rolled over to show me his lower back.

I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, until my eyes found three long, recessed lines near the bottom of his spine. I had never noticed them before, since the scars blended into his natural skin tone, except for being slightly more pink on the surface. Unthinkingly, my finger traced his skin there and he jumped in response.

Julian rolled back over and continued before I could apologize.

"The night before I ran away, Ollie got it bad. He never came back to the beds. I waited all night for him to return, but he never did. That next morning, my sixteenth birthday, I ran away. I just left him, Brooke. Maybe I was thinking he wasn't going to come back, and if so, I had no reason to want to stay. It was five in the morning, and I set off all the alarms but I got out past the property lines. I ran and ran until my legs gave out. I was in the slums, just south of the River Thames, where anyone else would do well to avoid. When I looked up and around, the first thing I noticed was a grimy pawnbroker's shop, so I walked right inside and asked for work. Much to my surprise, Patrick, the shop owner, said he could use another pair of hands. I'm sure he took in my appearance and gave me the job out of pity. I told him my name was Riley, my middle name, just in case they ever came back looking for me. But they never did."

Julian's hand traced the skin of my arm, discovering the goosebumps prickled on the surface. He pulled the thick, white blanket around us, mistaking my goosebumps for a sign of physical coldness.

"Patrick would play this old rock radio station in the shop, and I hadn't often heard music like that before. Aside from children's songs, the only music we heard a lot of in the orphanage was gospel, during church assemblies. So, anytime someone would bring in a guitar to pawn, I would practice chords on it during my breaks and downtime on the shift. I saved all my pitiful payments, all made in cash under the table, until I could afford this beat, old Ibanez. I would walk to the lending library, twenty blocks away, to watch videos on the shared computers, and read instructional books. I taught myself everything."

"Where were you staying?" I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer.

"I wasn't old enough to get my own place, and Patrick didn't pay me enough for that anyway, so I had this brilliant idea to hire out a small storage unit. It was only a small fraction of the cost of a flat, and it left me enough for food. The unit was somewhat climate controlled, secure, and gave me a place to keep my guitar whilst I was working. As wretched as it sounds, I felt like a man. Like I was making it on my own. The independence of it was intoxicating."

"How did you sleep then? Just on the ground?" My chest heaved with suppressed tears I didn't want him to see.

"Sleeping on the ground inside the unit wasn't that bad. A human body doesn't need much more than a warm blanket and something soft for the head to rest upon. I bought an alarm clock at the shop, with my employee discount, and would set it just in case I overslept, but I never did."

"How did nobody mess with you? I mean, how did you stay safe?" My heart was in my throat at the thought of a young Julian, living in a cement garage with nobody to talk to, and nothing to do except play guitar.

"I took care of myself the best I could, physically. There's always a way to get by. One morning, someone was moving his belongings out of another unit, and he didn't feel like moving his punching bag, I guess. He left it out by the bins, so I brought it into my unit before heading off to the shop for the day, and that bag was heavy, let me tell you."

He laughed, and I found myself in awe of his ability to find any bit of light in his story of anguish.

"It even had a metal stand to go with it. So I built myself up a bit, and took out a lot of frustrations that way. I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to bulk up, you know, considering where I worked and how I had to walk everywhere in that neighborhood. I still kickbox as well. That's what I was doing in the gym before you woke earlier today."

"When I got up, and I didn't feel you next to me, I panicked." The hot burn of tears pooled at my waterlines.

"Why? What did you think?" Julian propped himself up on his elbow to look at me. Still, I nuzzled into his shoulder and neck, to hide my face. The fact that I had even mentioned this minor worry at a time when Julian was trying to divulge his innermost turmoils to me, was quite embarrassing.

"I don't know. I was afraid you left without a word," I admitted.

"I'm so sorry, Brooke. If I'd known that, I would have stayed until you woke. I was hoping you wouldn't wake until I got back, anyway." He wrapped a strand of my wild hair around his finger.

"It's okay. You're here with me now. That's all that I care about." I kissed his shoulder, and left my lips lingering there.

"Aside from telling Mason some small details here and there, you are the first person in my life I've ever shared all of this with, Brooke. I had nobody to speak to before, and I wasn't sure what I could say, even if I did. But, I needed some type of outlet for all of my miseries. Music was that for me, like writing is that for you."

"You were born to do it," I assured him. It was a simple truth that left me feeling both proud and devastated for Julian.

"I started so late. Sometimes, I wonder how much better I would be now, if I had picked it up five, six years earlier. Surprisingly, although I had always received poor marks in classes at the orphanage, guitar did come very easily to me. My mind soaked up the techniques like a sponge."

"A true virtuoso." I smiled for the first time since his story started. His neck was warm against my lips. "How did you get into the band then?"

"So, one day, Mason walked into the pawnbroker's shop looking to buy some gear. I was practicing on this beautiful Charvel that someone hocked the day before, and he heard me playing. Mason told me he was trying to start a band, and asked if I would be interested in joining. At the time, it was just Mason, Devon, and me. I started off on rhythm guitar, actually. Shortly after, Tommy and Jesse joined, and we had the fuller sound that we wanted. The lads decided my skills had improved exponentially, and kept improving, so they moved me up to lead guitar, even though I was more than happy where I was. I guess the rest is history."

"Look at you now." I reluctantly moved my face from the warm shield of his skin and met his eyes. The puffy, bloodshot image before me was surely a near exact reflection of my own.

"What are you thinking?" Julian anxiously pried.

"I'm wishing I could have met you sooner. I feel like all of these years spent without you have been a waste."

"What else?" A smile was playing on his lips.

"I'm thinking of how much I admire your bravery and strength, and how anyone should be so lucky to know you." To love you, I added silently in my mind.

"I wasn't courageous, Brooke. I was scared every second of every day. Sometimes, I still am." Julian looked away from me and twiddled his fingers.

"Being brave doesn't imply you feel no fear. Only a fool would feel no fear." I ran my finger along the stubble of his chin. "No, Julian. Having courage means feeling that fear, and still facing what it is that scares you. You are the epitome of bravery, and you don't even know it."

"Where have you been all of my life?" Julian half-jokingly smirked and leaned in for a quick kiss.

"Waiting for you." My heart beat irregularly. I really believed I was.

"You don't want to run away screaming now? I've just admitted how much of a useless human being I am. You're cuddling a former orphan, turned homeless teenager. If not for Mason, I might still be worthlessly navigating the streets. I'm only here with you through pure luck." His humorous grin attempted to lighten the heavy strain of his words.

"I do want to scream, at your absurd self image. You aren't going to get rid of me, Julian. If anything, this has only made the space I have for you in my heart, grow exponentially. You think my own self esteem is skewed, but you are unbelievable. None of what has happened to you, absolutely none of it, was your fault. The fact you could even think to insinuate that, greatly bothers me."

Julian looked as though he was about to speak, but instead he let me continue.

"Everyone around you wasn't fit to care for you like you deserved, and yet look around you now. You made a kingdom out of nothing, through your own incredible talent. You should feel so proud."

"How can I feel pride when all that consumes me are questions of my worth? I'm lucky, that's all. Nothing more, nothing less. I keep rolling the die, and somehow my numbers keep coming up. Eventually, that luck is going to run out. The purple patch has to end." My favorite eyes in the world were downcast and despondent. They almost looked amber, in the low light of the lamp.

"Julian, you deserve every last bit of what you have now, and then some. It has been well earned, and I'm so glad it went to you, instead of someone else. You will always know to appreciate it."

Julian nodded once, and tucked his face down thoughtfully.

"I am so sorry that nobody came for you, Julian. You didn't lose anything in them. They lost the world in you."

"May I tell you something?" Julian asked quietly.

"Anything."

"Throughout my life, I've had a lot of recurring dreams. But they weren't always nightmares." Julian's breathing slowed. "I was telling you about the bow and arrow theory, and all of that still stands, as I definitely believe in it... but there's another reason I was drawn to you, Brooke. I didn't want to freak you out before, but I'd like to tell you now."

I waited wordlessly for him to explain.

"I would sometimes have this dream where I'm in an all-white room, and there are noises everywhere. I know something is wrong with me, but I can't tell what. Someone grips my hand, and I feel myself coming to. When I open my eyes to see who is touching me, there's a beautiful girl sat next to me. She looks like an angel, with a glow in her face. It's surreal how gorgeous she is, just simply breathtaking. Her face is perfectly round. Her cheeks are flushed. She has a thin nose. Two big, beautiful, brown eyes, set below thick lashes. Long, dark hair, set in loose curls."

He rendered me speechless.

"I've had the same dream for years. It's the first dream I ever remember having, actually. When things got really bad at the orphanage, and I wanted to give up, the dream would come back that night. She pulled me through, over and over again."

He took a deep breath before continuing.

"You're going to think I'm mad... but... I've searched faces in crowds before, in different cities and countries. And, until recently, I never saw anyone that even closely resembled the girl in my dream," Julian said. "But, Brooke, she looks just like you."

My ear rested on his rising and falling chest. Each thud and thump of his heart moving blood throughout his veins was proof of his permanence in my own heart. The two of us together were proof that two sorrows combined could form something akin to hope.

"Do you know why that patch you gave me means so much to me?"

I shook my head.

"On the good nights in the orphanage, when Ollie got away with a nice stash of cold rolls and lunch meats, we would all sit awake and chat about what we wanted to be once we got out of there, when we were grown. Ollie wanted to be a pilot. Of course, I've told you my goals of being a pirate and firefighter—the latter because I wanted to save lives. But I couldn't save my own, and I couldn't save his." Julian's voice trailed off at the end, getting softer.

"I think you saved mine," I murmured.

Minutes passed, with only the sound of cool, ventilated air flowing between us. When I peeked at Julian's face, his eyes were closed again and his features appeared relaxed, much softer. I reached back to turn the lamp off, and pulled the blanket around the exposed part of his skin.

"I love you, Brooke." It came so softly from his lips that I wasn't sure I had heard it at all.

I love you, Julian, I thought to myself, as we fell asleep entangled in each other's limbs.