His broad chest rises and falls, breath ragged, fingers white-knuckled around the doorframe.
I stand frozen, every nerve blooming toward him, like he’s the sun I’ve been missing.
Thunder rattles the windows, but I barely notice.
His eyes darken as he slowly uncoils from the threshold.
A muscle tics in his sharp jaw as he advances toward me.
Something clatters onto the desk, followed by a loud thud.
My brush. The stool I was sitting on.
I back up before realizing it.
My universe narrows to the five feet of air between us.
“E-Elias,” I whisper, “What’s wrong?”
Something’s different. I stand at the cliff’s edge, seconds away from plummeting, the ground ripped away from me.
He doesn’t answer me. He only swallows, his steps slow but measured. My back hits the wall by the bed.
Elias stops a foot before me, his gaze intent on mine, and slowly peels off his leather gloves.
“You know, Kian would still be alive,” he rasps, his voice thick, “if it weren’t for you.”
He braces one hand on the wall, the other grazing my cheek, the gentleness completely at odds with the fury in his words.
“What are you talking about?” I furrow my brows. Awareness lights low in my belly, liquid heat spreading with each graze of his scarred fingers against my skin.
My body cants toward him, craving his touch, his words, anything.
He lets out a hollow laugh. “You really know nothing, do you?”
Another shiver moves through me when he trails his finger down my neck, slowly and torturously, until it rests on my racing pulse.
His question finally registers, along with his accusation. A new fire ignites in my gut.
Indignation and fury.
“I don’t know what you think I did.” I push at his chest, but he doesn’t budge. “But I know what I went through.”
Tears sting my eyes as I relive those dark months after the great Saints Hollow fire—images of death and destruction from the news scorched into my memory. I bite back the sob crawling up my throat. I refuse to cry in front of him.
“I didn’t know if you were dead or alive! I called the hospitals so many times, they recognized my voice. Do you know how devastated I was when I found out your parents and little Beatrice died? How I was scared out of my mind every time I checked the casualties list, praying you and Sofia weren’t there?”
I shove him again. Hard. Again and again, the bottled-up pain from all these years bursts out of me like the storm outside.
Elias takes my hits like they were nothing. He lets me use his body to vent my anger, while dark emotions swirl in his eyes as he keeps his finger on my pulse.
Like he’s trying to catch me in a lie.
“Then one day out of the blue,” I choke out, “I get an emerald pendant in the mail. No note, no return address.”
I tug the pendant free from my neckline. His eyes flare. The gem flashes under the dim light. “I knew it was you!”
My throat burns, but I push through, because this torture, this injustice, I can no longer keep to myself.
