“I don’t remember my dreams,” I lie. My voice comes out too flat, too controlled.
Elio’s mouth curves. Not quite a smile. “Pity.”
I don’t ask what he means. Don’t want to know.
Instead, I reach for the coffee cup, my hands shaking slightly despite trying my hardest to keep my cool.
The silence stretches. He watches me drink. Watches me tear a piece of bread into smaller pieces without eating any of them. Watches me avoid his gaze like it costs me something.
Which it does.
Because every time I look at him now, I see dream-him. Hands tangled in my hair. Mouth hot on my skin. The heavy weight of him pressing me into the mattress while I arched up and begged for more, shameless, desperate, alive in a way I’ve never been awake.
Stop it stop it stop it?—
“Violet.”
I flinch.
He’s closer than I realized. Standing now, moving around the small table toward me with that quiet, deliberate stride that always makes the room feel smaller. His hand lifts, reaching for my face?—
I jerk back so hard I nearly fall off the bed.
“Don’t touch me.”
His hand freezes mid-air. Inches from my cheek.
Something flashes across his face. There and gone so fast I almost miss it, but I don’t miss it. I’ve spent too many days studying him, noticing his tells, searching for cracks in the marble.
Then the mask slides back into place. His hand drops to his side as he takes a step back, putting distance between us that feels wrong even as I’m grateful for it.
“My apologies.” The words come out clipped, too polite, like he’s reading from a script. Nothing like the low rasp that slips into my dreams and stays there long after I wake up. “I overstepped.”
The distance in his voice hurts more than I want it to, more than it has any right to.
Good,I tell myself.This is what you wanted. Boundaries. The monster staying on his side of this cage.
But my body doesn’t agree. My body noticed the hurt in his eyes and filed it away as something that matters. My body wants to close the gap he created, to lean into his warmth, to?—
Stop.
I don’t say anything. Can’t find words that won’t betray me.
Elio collects the breakfast tray, every movement so precise, so perfectly controlled, like he’s folding away whatever happened between us just now and putting it somewhere I can’t reach. That tiny bit of softness that slipped through a second ago—it’s already gone, tucked back behind whatever walls he keepsup, the ones I’m starting to know too well even though I don’t want to.
“I’ll have lunch prepared in the solarium,” he says without meeting my eyes. “The sunlight will be good for you.”
His voice is calm, almost gentle, but it’s the kind of gentle that feels like he’s already halfway out the door in his head.
Then he’s really gone. The door doesn’t lock behind him. It hasn’t locked in days. But I feel the click of it anyway, somewhere deep in my chest.
The solarium is bathedin afternoon light when I arrive.
Jasmine climbs the windows in spirals of green and white. The air is thick with humidity, warm and alive, and despite everything my shoulders loosen the moment I step inside. My body craves this. The sun, the green, the illusion of freedom even as guards hover just outside the glass walls.
The table is in its usual place, barely big enough for the plates arranged across its surface.
Elio is already seated, watching as I approach, his dark eyes tracking my every movement like he’s already decided how this moment ends.
