Page 82 of Fractured Loyalties
We stand like that for a while—me with my back to him, him with a question he won’t ask.
Finally, I turn. “You think he’s going to escalate.”
Elias doesn’t answer. Doesn’t have to.
I place the glass on the counter. “If I stay here, am I bait?”
“You’re not a trap,” he says. “You’re the line in the sand.”
“I didn’t ask to be.”
“I know.”
Something cracks then—quiet, internal. Like a hairline fracture I thought had already healed.
“I used to think I was smart,” I say softly. “That I saw people clearly. That I could spot danger before it reached me. But I didn’t see him. Not until it was too late.”
“You saw enough to leave,” Elias says. “That’s more than most.”
I shake my head. “I still carry the way he looked at me. The way he rewrote everything with a word, a hand, a smile. You ever been rewritten like that?”
His voice is a low hum. “I’ve rewritten people. Not the other way around.”
I believe him.
And maybe that’s what scares me most.
He steps closer now, quiet but deliberate. The kitchen feels smaller. Tighter.
“You think I’m like him,” he says. “Even if you don’t say it.”
“No,” I whisper. “That’s the problem. You’re not. But you could be.”
Elias exhales like the truth costs him.
“I won’t be,” he says. “Not with you.”
“But you want to be something,” I murmur.
His eyes darken. “I want to keep you safe. I want the people who made you afraid to beg for breath.”
A beat of silence. Thick. Real.
Then he moves. One step. Two. And we’re inches apart.
I don’t back up.
His voice is a rasp. “If you tell me to leave this alone, I will. But it won’t change the fact that I’m already inside it. Inside you.”
I breathe him in. Salt, cedar, heat.
“Don’t stop,” I say.
He doesn’t.
His hands move slowly, one to my waist, one up the curve of my spine. My fingers catch his coat, drag him closer.
We don’t kiss. Not yet.
