“Maybe you need someone to care about you,” I whisper, my heart resuming its chaotic rhythm.
Time splinters into fragments. Elias freezes, and I hold my breath.
I hear a faucet leak from somewhere in the distance.Drip. Drip. Drip.
His lashes lift, revealing deep emerald irises rimmed with molten gold flecks, sunlight trapped in an evergreen forest.
Eyes I’ve only seen long ago in another life.
A lever slides into position—the final click unlocking the invisible puzzle buried for all these years in the deepest recesses of my heart.
I lift the music box between us, my hand trembling. Elias’s eyes widen, his grip on my fingers tightening.
“How did you get this, Elias?” I whisper. “How did you know? Where’s Kian?”
Agony flashes in his eyes, and his throat ripples.
He doesn’t answer me.
“How, Elias? How?” My hand slides from his face to his shoulder. I shake him, desperation stabbing wounds into my chest. “Tell me.”
Another dead silence, thick and unrelenting.
A deep, tortured sound rumbles from his chest. A dark chuckle. A flash of teeth. His entire body shakes as if I’m the punchline to a joke I’m not privy to.
Then he stops. His nostrils flare.
He dips down, his lips inches from my ear.
“I think you know the answer, myzemër.” His breath brushes my face, and I shiver. “I guess puberty did find me after all…Elise.”
I flinch. Electrocuted. Death by surprise or terror.
Staggering back, I shake my head. Elias straightens slowly, his face lifting to the light, illuminating the strong, masculine jaw, the five o’clock shadow, and the rigid scar bisecting his cheek.
His eyes.
Those breathtaking green eyes. The ones that always seem like they can see through me.
No. It can’t be. How have I not noticed them until now?
Images of a beautiful boy flash behind my eyelids—his soft skin, even softer eyes, his dazzling smile, his gentle touch.
They morph into the man before me—all hard angles, tethered power, leashed control. He looks completely different, and yet, the echo’s there.
How could I’ve missed it? How did I not know the boy I never forgot was beside me all along?
“K-Kian?” I stumble toward him, driven by pure instinct. Moisture mists my eyes. “Kian? Wh-What happened to you? What’s going on?”
Click.
Gaze pinned on me, he flicks his lighter. But his usual grace isn’t there. His cheek twitches, chest rising and falling in a chaotic rhythm. The lighter clicks quicken.
Then he hurls it to the ground. The loud clang jolts me in place.
“Surprise,” he rasps. “Scared yet, Elise?”
Chapter 33: THE L?NE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE
