Knock, knock, knock.
Three steady taps against my front door, and I immediately know who it is. Not only is he the only one who ever comes out to see me, but he delivers the same greeting every time.How cute.
I push away from my desk and head to the front door. I don’t bother changing out of my basketball shorts and my beater—I wasn’t meant to have company anyway. He should get used to seeing me dressed so casually.
I’m excited to see him—I was disappointed that my work and my desire to watch him from a distance were pushing our next date to the weekend.
Pulling the front door open, I find Elijah standing in front of me dressed for work, which is where heshouldbe right now.
“Hey, angel. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be…” My voice trails off as I finally catch his expression.
He’s panting slightly, as if he raced here in a panic. Wide eyes follow my every movement, and a steady flush is spreading over his soft skin.
“I’m sorry about this,” he mumbles, and before I can blink, Elijah is pushing past me and into my house.
“Hey!” I shout, my entire body dropping in temperature as I realize what’s happening. What he might see. “Elijah, what are you doing?”
“If I’m wrong, I’m more than happy to apologize,” he says, and I trail behind him as he quickly moves throughout my living room.
His hazel eyes are taking in as much of his surroundings as they can at the speed at which he’s moving, and I find myself inches from him as I panic.
“‘You can’t just—”
“If I’m letting him get to me, you can be mad all you want, Rowan. But I have to check for myself.”
“Letting him get to you?” I repeat in question. Oh, no. Oh no, no, no.Bennett. “What did he say? Don’t let him drive a wedge between us, Eli.”
“How do you know who I’m referring to?” he demands, and I don’t respond as he hurries down the hallway to poke around my darkroom.
I try to remember if I have any photos of him lying around inside, but my mind is too scattered. Of course I can’t explain how I know that he’s talking about Bennett.
My palms rub anxiously at my shorts as I watch him, and Elijah seems to grow more and more relaxed with each moment he finds nothing incriminating.
And with every second he relaxes, my body locks up.
As he leaves the darkroom and enters my bedroom, I grab his arm.“Elijah, no. You’re invading my privacy.”
But I’m too late.
With his head on a swivel, Elijah takes in the state of my bedroom. The unmade bed, the notebook thrown on top of my dresser, my shoes lying discarded by the closet, and most importantly, the corkboard hanging by the door.
Elijah freezes when his eyes fall upon it, and I let go of his arm as he steps forward. All that can be heard throughout the silence of my bedroom is the sound of my own pounding heart.
There is nothing I can do now. I’ve been caught.
I shouldn’t have opened the fucking door. But I had no way of knowing he’d barge right in, and what’s worse than turning him away is completely ignoring him when he can clearly see my truck sitting out front.
Damnit. Fuck!
“Rowan,” he whispers, and I watch the horror spread over his features as he studies the different angles of him heading into work, eating at the diner, or walking across the grass in the town square.
Then he reaches forward and grabs one of the hanging sheets of notebook paper, ripping it from its thumbtack.
It’s the one that documents my past self, Aaron, confessing his love to Benjamin. Elijah’s eyes skim the page, and they progressively widen with each word.
And when he catches sight of the last sentence, I can see his worst fears confirmed.
It felt the same. Being inside of Elijah felt exactly the same.
