Page 48 of Second Chance with the Half-Elf
“Truth.”
Another silence. Deeper this time. Thicker.
The kind where all the unsaid things come out to dance.
I turn toward him slowly, finding his eyes already on me.
“You mad?” I ask.
His brow lifts. “At you?”
“Yeah.”
He takes his time answering. That’s the thing with Aeron. He doesn’t fill silence just to kill it. He respects the weight of words too much to throw them around.
“I was,” he says finally. “But not in the way you think.”
I swallow. “Then how?”
“I was mad you didn’t trust me to handle your mess.” His voice is low, steady. “Mad you thought leaving would spare us both when all it did was leave us bleeding in different corners.”
My throat tightens.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I thought if I got too close… I’d ruin it.”
He turns his body to face me fully, one arm braced on the back rail. “Then ruin it.”
I blink.
“Break it. Drop it. Fuck it up,” he says. “Butdo it here.With me.”
The car jerks slightly as it reaches the top, swaying gently in the breeze. We’re suspended over the whole town now—sky stretched wide around us, the ocean below shimmering like liquid obsidian. The sun kisses the horizon one last time before vanishing, and twilight rushes in like a held breath finally exhaled.
“I regret it,” I say.
The words are thin. Bare. The kind you only use when there’s nothing else left in your arsenal.
“Leaving?”
“Yeah.”
His expression softens—barely. But it’s enough.
“Not just this time,” I add. “Every time.”
The wind picks up.
The lights strung along the spokes flicker on, one by one, until we’re haloed in gold.
“You scared?” he asks, voice barely above the hum of the ride.
“Terrified.”
“Of what?”
