Page 48 of Heart of a Rebel

How had I been so blind?

And not only to what happened at the hotel but the aftermath of it.

Before we left for LA six years ago, Eloise stood in front of me a different person than she had been. She looked me in the eye with nothing left. I thought I pushed too hard or crossed a line. I made it all about myself instead of noticing the parts of her that were breaking.

Was she really that good at hiding it? Or did I just not want to see the truth?

Raking my hands over my closely shaved scalp, I try to figure it out all over again. If I thought the world snapped into an alternate reality when I found out Sam was dead, this is something else entirely.

There Eloise was, feet away as the elevator descended.

I left her.

This is on me, regardless of what she says.

“Adrian?” Eloise stands in front of me with her eyebrows pinched, and I feel like I’ve been blind to not have seen the darkness in them. “Are you coming in?”

I’m frozen in the doorway to her bus, staring. Stepping inside, I close the door and lock it, wishing it was enough to keep out whatever I sense looming.

Eloise picks up a watering jug and begins watering her plants. I’ve been around many rock stars at this point but she’s the only one I know who keeps a near garden on her tour bus. Vines climb one wall, flowers hang near the kitchen sink. Every empty corner is filled with greenery.

She cares for her plants as if watching them grow breathes life into her. Maybe it does.

Tipping the water jug to fill a vase of purple flowers, she looks at me over her shoulder. “Couch okay?”

I nod. “Slept on worse.”

Anything beats desert dirt and wondering if you’ll be blown to bits in the middle of the night.

Eloise sets down the water jug and turns to face me. Her hands grip the counter behind her, tightening as the bus starts to move. The motion sends my stomach to somewhere on the road behind us because parked, it felt like there was still a way out, and now it’s just me and her.

Eloise chews her bottom lip, a nervous tick that’s unlike her, but I shouldn’t be surprised she’s unsettled after the day she’s had. As the bus moves once more, my attention is drawn to the chain swaying against her chest.

“You’re wearing it,” I say, knowing I should probably just let it go for both our sakes, but something about the daisy I gave her hanging low on her chest sends my heart skittering on the pavement.

Her hand presses over the necklace.

“Didn’t know you still had it.” I toss my bag in the corner and take a seat on the couch. The air is thick, flowery, caught in my lungs.

Eloise holds the charm between her fingers and looks down at it. “I didn’t.”

My eyebrows pinch, trying to figure out what the fuck she’s talking about. It’s not until her eyes are glassy that pieces clink together one at a time.

Me giving it to her.

Her just as quickly never wearing it again.

The way her fingers clenched around it as she stood in front of the threat drawn on the mirror.

Swallowing hard, I feel like time just got a hell of a lot thicker, and I’m fighting to move through it.

“He…” I can’t finish the sentence.

Eloise blinks a tear away as she nods. If what happened wasn’t enough to make me want to gut the man like a fucking fish, the fact that he kept the necklace I gave her as some fucked-up trophy makes me all kinds of violent.

She drops the necklace beneath the neckline of her T-shirt, letting it disappear like a secret she’s not ready to face.

I’m not sure what strikes me more in this moment, the fact that she seems scared of it or the fact that she’s wearing it. A token reminder of evil, but she’s keeping it around her neck anyway.

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