Elias stared at her like he’d been punched. “He threatened you?” he breathed.
“Not really threatened. He called it consequences for my behavior,” she said bitterly. “But it’s always been like that between us. If I don’t live my life the way he wants, he uses money to pull me back into line. He threatened to cut me off when I didn’t take the job that he had lined up for me after I graduated with my master's degree. I told him that I wanted to get my graduate degree, and he freaked out. He even called me his eternal college student, as though everything that I’ve worked so hard for has been a joke to him.”
“That’s not okay,” Elias said fiercely.
“I know,” she murmured. “But it’s my reality.”
She finally looked at him, tears burning her eyes again. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to drag you into my family drama, and I didn’t want to hurt you either. So I just, well, I just shut down.”
“I’d rather you tell me what’s going on with you, honey,” he said quietly. “Even if it’s messy. You have no idea how worried I was that you wouldn’t want to see me again. I thought youghosted me—wait, did I use that word correctly?” he asked, making her smile.
“You did,” she said. “I guess that I was scared,” she admitted. “I still am. I’m not sure what to do.”
He shifted closer, just enough that she could feel his warmth. “What are you scared of, Aliza?”
“That I’ll have to choose,” she said. “Between you and everything I’ve worked for.”
Elias swallowed. “You shouldn’t have to give up your future for me.”
“And I don’t want to give you up, either,” she whispered. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Elias reached out, taking her hand gently into his own. “We’ll figure this out—together. No ultimatums to cloud our decisions, and no fear.”
She reached for his hand and squeezed his fingers into her own. A fragile thread of hope winding through her chest. “I don’t know what the right answer is,” she said.
“Then we’ll take it one step at a time,” he replied. “I’m not going anywhere.” For the first time since her father had left her standing in her living room, Aliza felt like she wasn’t completely alone. She wasn’t about to give up on a man who might very well be her future, so she’d just have to find a way to keep both—him and the life she had been working so hard towards.
Elias
Elias left Aliza’s apartment with a weight in his chest he couldn’t shake. The door closing behind him had felt wrong—like he was walking away from something fragile when every instinct he had screamed for him to stay. He should be there to hold her and tell her that none of her father’s threats meant a damn thing to him. But he’d seen the fear in her eyes, the way she distanced herself from him, and that hurt like hell. He knew that pressing her right now would only make it worse. She’d spent her whole life being pushed into choices by someone who believed he owned her future. Elias refused to be another man making demands on her, and although he wanted to ask her to choose him, he just couldn’t do that to her. So, he did the only thing he could. He went back to St. Jacobs to work the rest of his shift.
The hospital was loud, relentless, and mercilessly busy, which usually grounded him. But today, it just felt like noise. He moved through rounds, nodded through briefings, and scrubbed in for surgery with the mechanical precision of someone who had done it too many times to count—but his mind was somewhere else entirely.
Aliza’s face kept slipping in between heart rates and incision lines. The way her voice had cracked when she’d said her father had threatened her. The way she looked when she admitted she was scared. And the way she’d still reached for his hand, as though needing his comfort anyway. That was what gutted him the most.
In the middle of a consultation, he found himself staring at the edge of a chart without reading it. Jonnas seemed to notice. “You look like hell,” his friend muttered once they were alone in the corridor. “And not the usual exhausted-doctor kind of hell, either. What happened to you since our talk this morning? You just don’t seem yourself. ”
He wasn’t himself, not since his talk with Aliza. Elias dragged a hand down his face. “I went over to see Aliza during my lunch break. She hadn’t answered any of my texts or calls by noon, and was starting to get really worried about her. I found her half asleep, and she admitted that she had been crying most of the morning. Her father showed up at her place this morning and threatened to cut her off because he saw the story and our photo in the paper today about the auction. He told her that he’d stop paying for her tuition, apartment, the works—just because of me.”
Jonnas swore under his breath. “That’s not just controlling. That’s straight-up abuse.”
“I know,” Elias said tightly. “And she feels like she’s standing on a cliff. One wrong step and everything disappears. All of her hard work getting into grad school—it will all just be gone if she chooses me. So, how much of an ass does it make me that I hope like hell that she does choose me?”
“What are you going to do?” Jonnas asked, not answering his question. It was rhetorical, anyway. But Elias worried that he was being a selfish bastard. Hell, he knew that he was, but it still didn’t change what he wanted, and he wanted Aliza.
Elias hesitated. “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. I don’t want to be the reason she loses her future. But I also don’t want to disappear from her life just because her father scared her. Hell, I can pay her tuition, but I doubt that she’ll take me up on my offer. She’ll probably think that I’m trying to buy her love, and that is the last thing that I want.”
Jonnas clapped him on the shoulder. “Then don’t disappear. Just don’t push her for answers. Let her know you’re there.” That was exactly what Elias wanted to do. He wouldn’t try to fix the situation or demand answers from Aliza. He’d just find a way to be present for her while she navigated her way through this mess.
He stopped mid-stride and turned to face Elias. “Did you use the word love?” he asked.
“I did, but not the way you’re thinking. It’s too early to talk about love, but down the road, if we stay together, how will I know if she’s with me because she loves me? What if she sticks around because I’ve offered to help her out with her tuition?
“Yeah, that’s a fine line you’re walking, man. But you’re smart enough to figure it all out. Just don’t make any rash decisions. Nothing has to be decided tonight,” Jonnas insisted,
By early afternoon, his phone buzzed in the pocket of his lab coat. He pulled it out and checked the screen to find Aliza’s name in bold letters staring back at him. His heart did a little flip-flop as he stepped into a quiet stairwell and answered. “Hey.”
“He just called,” she whispered.
