My saving grace is that Byron doesn’t want to be caught in a scene of his own making any more than I do. He doesn’t yell or break into a run, though I catch a glimpse of him striding faster in my direction.
I hustle into the hall. The side door is just around the bend up there?—
Where two of the kitchen staff are blocking the passage, grappling with a huge box that must have just been delivered.
Footsteps thump behind me. I don’t have time to wait for the staff to clear the way.
I flee farther into the building. Maybe I can find a quiet room with a window that’ll open? Or somewhere private enough that I can conceal myself completely and slip past Byron later?
I dash past a half-open door I spot up ahead and cast a frantic glance around the room on the other side. It’s so small my skin clenches up, just a few mahogany chairs around a matching coffee table and a narrow sideboard along one wall.
Curtains hang over a window. I throw myself at them. Yanking back the fabric sends a whiff of dust into my nose.
The thick pane beyond the curtain is set firmly in the wall, no options for opening.
At the click of the door shutting behind me, the air whooshes from my lungs. I brace myself to try to bespell the glass aside, but Byron’s gloved hand catches my wrist before I can even finish picturing how the magic might work.
He spins me around so my back smacks into the leaf-print wallpaper next to the window. The magic wrapped around me shudders as he glares straight through the illusion into my actual eyes.
“I told you you’d better not come back.”
He’s pissed off enough that the faint British inflection already colors his voice. And he’s close—so fucking close I can count the coppery flecks amid the deeper brown of his eyes, feel the pounding of my pulse against his thumb. His crisp, fresh scent wafts over me like a magic of its own.
Every nerve in my body peals out with the insistence that this is my match.
Fate must tug at Byron too. His stance stiffens, and he pulls back a few inches. A twinge of what I think is confusion crosses his face.
His uncertainty only shows for a second before it hardens with renewed accusation. “What are you doing here now, Elodie?”
My lips part, an instinctively defiant response leaping up my throat. Tell him off, grasp for any handhold I can reach to shift the balance of power.
The memory of Cole’s rage-twisted face halts the words at the back of my mouth.
How well has defiance worked so far at keeping my would-be matches at a distance? Somehow hassling Salvatore got him hooked on me with no way to cut the line. I riled up Cole right over the line between fury and passion.
Isn’t there some saying about the insanity of doing the same thing over and over when you haven’t liked the outcome?
Maybe it’s time to try a different tactic.
The first time Byron caught me, it wasn’t mouthing off at him that convinced him to let me go. It was when I softened my approach a little and played to his sympathies.
I draw in a shaky breath and speak as earnestly as I can. “I didn’t plan on coming back. I didn’twantto.”
“Then why are you fuckinghere?” Byron demands before I can finish the thought.
I manage not to grimace at him. “There are… a lot of things I’m trying to figure out. That’s why I came in the first place. Finding answers hasn’t been going all that smoothly. Coming back was a last-ditch effort to make some progress.”
“That sounds like a whole lot of nothing. What could you need to figure out that has anything to do with The Eclipse?”
I don’t know what to say to him.
As I grapple for the right response, it occurs to me, like a blossom unfurling, that maybe it’d be okay to tell him the truth. One small piece of it, anyway.
My Byron has always been the steadiest of my matches. The one who’s able to look at a problem with logical consideration rather than flying off the handle. Nothing I’ve seen in this reality suggests this Byron is much different.
I don’t want to send him all the way from wanting to call law enforcement on me to wanting to call themforme. I choose my words carefully. “I think someone is looking for ways to hurt me. And they might be connected to this club. I just wanted to know who and why.”
Byron knits his brow. His grip on my wrist loosens just slightly. “What? Hurt you how?”
