“I’m aware.”
His voice dips into something that makes me forget how to breathe for a second, and I hate how easily my body betrays me.
Actually… no, I don’t. I’m fully enjoying it. Relaxing into it. Letting it happen.
My pants are still caught at my calves when his mouth finds my inner thigh as he speaks quietly against my skin. “It’s alright to admit that you care for someone else, you know? Our hearts are big for a reason.”
His hands slide up the backs of my legs as he speaks, thumbs pressing slow, grounding circles, like he’s keeping me here with him.
“Are you trying to tell me that you still love Gabriel?”
Elijah doesn’t answer right away. His lips move higher, then pause. One hand squeezes my calf before he finally looks up. “I love you,” he says first, like he needs to put it somewhere solid. “And yes, I still love him—but not in the way you’re thinking. There isn’t a version of my life where he disappears. There are too many years there. Too much shared air.”
He kisses the inside of my knee, light, almost absentmindedly, his hands steady where they hold me.
“If you hadn’t walked into my bar when you did—” He stops, shakes his head, fingers tightening briefly against my skin. “It doesn’t matter. You did. And I chose you. I’m still choosing you.”
His palms smooth upward again, slow and familiar.
“But Gabriel’s life will always be tied to mine. We have a child. We have a past I don’t want to pretend didn’t matter because it did. But you came along, and you changed everything. And the only place Gabriel has now is beside us, not between us.”
He leans his forehead against my leg. “He’s not a threat, Alex. He’s part of the ground I stand on—part of the ground you stand on too. He’s family, my love.Ourfamily.”
For a second, my body believes him. Believes all of it. I lean into him, relaxing under his touch—his truth.
And then my brain clocks back in.
Oh.
Shit.
No underwear.
No way in hell am I walking out of this room free-balling. Not when I’m pretty sure Gabriel is on the other side of this door.
I slap his hand away—not hard, just enough to regain control—shuffle over to the armoire, yank out a pair of briefs, and grab a different pair of jeans. The motions are sharp, automatic, like I’m afraid that if I pause for even a second, everything else will rush in.
After everything Noah told me yesterday—on top of what happened between him and Elijah, and now what Elijah just said—the fact that I can still move, still think, feels like a small miracle. My body runs on muscle memory alone, as if it hasn’t caught up to what I know.
I keep circling the same impossible truths, unable to make them settle: that someone is dead, that Noah is the reason—and that the man who once held him captive is the same one who took my parents from me. And then… there’s Meera—his sister.
The connections knot together in my head, refusing to make sense. Every time I try to grasp the shape of it, my mind slips away. Like it’s protecting me from something too large to hold.
Teya’s jaw is going to drop when I tell her. And knowing her, she’ll want every detail, word for word, pause for pause. That thought alone tightens something in my chest. I don’t know how to explain that there are some things you only survive once, and only if you don’t say them out loud again. That speaking them gives them weight, history, a permanence I’m not ready for. They become real in a way you can’t undo. Then again… something tells me she’ll understand.
At least I slept. That, too, feels undeserved. If it weren’t for Gabriel—his steady presence, the quiet way he anchored the room—I’m not sure my mind would have stopped spiraling long enough to rest. Even now, the truth presses in at the edges, heavy and unreal, waiting for the moment I won’t be able to look away from it anymore.
The shower helped. For a moment, it felt like I vanished—gone off the grid to some remote island where nothing exists but steam, cascading water, and the faint scent of coconuts. The ceiling spray worked its magic, easing the knots in my shoulders, quieting the static in my brain. Muscles relaxed. Nerves unwound. For the first time in forty-eight hours, I was able to breathe.
But peace, as usual, doesn’t last.
I glance over my shoulder. Elijah’s still kneeling on the floor, watching me—too handsome for his own good, the kind of sight that still steals my breath away in a way I don’t bother questioning anymore. Then I remember?—
“Where’s Gabriel?”
He smirks, flicking his gaze toward the bed. “Missing him already?”
“Ha. Ha,” I deadpan, tugging a shirt over my head. “The guyspikedmy coffee. Tried taking advantage of me.”
