Page 65 of His To Unravel
His hand tightens around mine, the pressure subtle but unmistakable, and something flashes across his face—an ache, raw and unguarded, gone so quickly I almost wonder if I imagined it.
A tension coils tight between us—a collision course I can no longer ignore.
NINETEEN
nathaniel
The city lightsstretch below me in fractured silence as I sit at my desk, the glow of my screen illuminating the empty space.
Olivia’s phone logs fill the display, each message and movement a piece in the ever-deepening puzzle that she’s become.
At first, her attention was mine, given freely and without hesitation. But now…something has shifted. A subtle deviation that pricks at my every thought, gnawing at the foundations I’ve carefully built.
She thinks she can mask these moments of doubt, the little pauses in her gaze, or the polite deflections whenever I reach for something deeper. She’s skilled—graceful, even—in sidestepping my questions, pivoting conversations back to light, academic matters as though I won’t notice.
But I notice everything.
Scrolling through her cloned messages, I trace her interactions with surgical precision, dissecting each text, each insignificant exchange with friends, searching for any thread that might lead me to the distraction.
She’s started staying at her dorm more often under the guise of needing “quiet space.” And when I suggest joining her there, shedemurs with a gentle smile, assuring me it’s just about needing to manage the semester workload.
As if I’m a mere distraction.
I click through her tracking history, retracing her movements over the past week.
Her steps from class to the library, the occasional stop at The Nookalone, moments I wasn’t there to share with her. It grates against me—the thought that she can find solace, even the faintest trace of peace, without my presence to anchor her.
I lean back, closing my eyes for a moment, allowing myself to remember the way she once looked at me: open, her eyes filled with unguarded affection.
She’s been my accomplice, my willing equal in this dynamic we share, each touch between us an unspoken promise. The memory flickers, sharp against the quiet tension I now sense whenever I hold her.
That warmth is fading, slipping away like sand through my fingers, and I’m left with a hollow, gnawing rage at the thought.
Others might dismiss it as a mere fluctuation, a lover’s paranoia.
But not me.
I know her too well, having studied every inflection in her voice, each shift in her gaze. The distance she now builds, brick by cautious brick, is an insult. A betrayal.
My jaw tightens as I read the last few messages she exchanged with Sophie and Carolyn, and I feel the insatiable hunger for control tightening in my chest.
I’ve been patient. I’ve given her freedom, indulged her social ties, her trivial friendships, and yet she still seeks more. A foolish notion, one that has no place in what we’re building together.
I will not lose her to these fleeting whims of self-sufficiency.
She belongs tome. Her time, her thoughts, and her very essence are mine to shape, to protect. Every second she spendsbeyond my reach, every moment left unmonitored, feels like a challenge, an invitation to tighten my hold.
And I will.
The measures I’ve taken—the surveillance, the precautions—they are all born from devotion. Proof of my loyalty, mylove.
My gaze fixes on the last notification, my jaw locking as her tracker’s location pings from her dorm. Once again, she’s chosen to be there tonight,without me.
She’s made a mistake in keeping this distance, one that she will soon come to regret.
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth, my resolve hardening in the cold light of the screen. Whatever shadows of secrets linger between us—I’ll dismantle them, one by one. She will look at me the way she did before.
She will give me that trust again, that yielding obedience, because I will allow no other alternative.
