Chapter 15 Elle
Elle
Sometime later
Time blurs in streaks of pain—some cutting, some dull, all unrelenting.
I can’t tell how long I’ve been floating in it.
But through the worst of it, there are still things that catch the light.
Sterling. His voice is low and steady next to me, the warmth of a blanket tucked tighter around me, the faint smell of bitter earth on the stove.
Everything hurts, unbelievably at times, but I’m not alone, never alone, really.
With Sterling by my side at all times, the pain becomes bearable.
At this very moment, sweat uncomfortably clings to my skin, dampening the sheets beneath me. My whole body feels like it’s burning from the inside out. It’s a feverish, crawling heat that coils through my bones and won’t let go.
My hair is plastered to my forehead. When I lift a hand to brush it away, my fingers tremble. A helpless, dull frustration wells up. I sit up, or try to. The movement feels heavier than it should be.
I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, maybe minutes, or hours. I feel stretched thin between fever dreams and the soreness twisting through my muscles.
“You’re awake.”
I don’t need to look up to know who it is. I could tell it’s his voice since I hear it often in my dreams. He’s my only comfort in those nightmares. “Barely,” I whisper. My throat is dry and raw, like I swallowed sand.
He presses the rim of a bottle gently against my lips. “Drink.”
I do. I’d do anything he said right now. The drink soothes the scratch in my throat, and my body relaxes at the taste. It’s mineral-heavy and faintly citrus. I can feel it soaking into the cracks left behind by the withdrawal.
“Electrolytes,” he says. “It’ll help. Trust me.”
Of course I do. I want to tell him that I’ve been trusting him this whole time.
He lowers the bottle once I’ve swallowed, and my eyes adjust. His hand lingers at my back as he helps me sit upright.
Everything hurts in small, sharp ways, but he moves with care, explaining what else he’s giving me—painkillers, a bit of broth, a damp cloth to cool me down.
Then tea. The same type as before. Familiar, woodsy, something I associate with him now.
At some point while I was out, he must’ve gone to get all this. He brought what would help just like he said he would.
“You’re worse than before,” he says. His eyes are on mine, calm and focused. But the line in his brow tells a different story.
I nod. I know he’s right. I can feel it.
There’s no point in pretending. The withdrawal is heavier now.
I can feel the grip of it behind my eyes and in my bones.
Kys doesn’t leave quietly. And even though every part of me feels slow and stretched thin, my thoughts begin surfacing again.
Memories stir at the edges, familiar and foreign.
Pieces of a past I lived but couldn’t hold on to until now.
They rise slowly, like driftwood breaking the surface after a storm.
Throughout the passing hours, Sterling stays close.
He keeps my water nearby, and helps me take the pills when I forget to.
He doesn’t hover, but he doesn’t leave either.
He makes sure I eat. He gives me time, but he doesn’t let me stall too long.
He’s silently relentless. I like that about him.
I like a lot of things about Sterling. I wish I could tell him that.
But speaking still takes too much effort, and I’m not sure the words would come out the way I mean them.
But soon, time loses meaning. I drift for a while, then I surface to the press of a cool cloth against my forehead.
His hand is careful and intentional, not calculated the way Clo’s were.
This isn’t a performance. This is Sterling, without his mask, showing the worry in the lines of his beautiful face.
I wish I wasn’t the reason. At the same time, I’m happy that he cares.
I fall asleep again. When I wake, it’s to the taste of broth and a spoon at my lips.
There’s warmth close to me, along with the glimmer of silver and the rousing scent of woodsy warmth.
It’s Sterling. His presence is quiet, but I know it’s him.
I can feel the calm he brings into a room, even when I’m shaking.
He doesn’t speak. He waits, watching me, and letting me decide.
I part my lips, and he feeds me without a word, slow and careful.
I think I speak to him in the quiet spaces between sleep and waking.
I think I say too much. Or maybe not enough.
Nothing feels right, and everything feels too loud.
I think I say Stan’s name. I’m afraid that I might’ve.
But I don’t ask. I already know how Sterling reacts when Stan comes up.
His silence changes. His expression hardens.
Something in his eyes shutters. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to be the reason.
So I try to stay still and silent, even when the sickness turns restless under my skin. Even when memories return in pieces piercing in the haze of my mind.
The bodies. Their eyes. The feel of shivers. The need to run.
***
I wake again sometime later. The light has changed. It spills in, golden from the window like honey across the floorboards. I feel clearer than I have in days.
Sterling is here. He sits beside me in the chair, quiet and unmoving. His presence is so constant, it barely feels like something separate from me anymore. He’s part of my world now. Part of the way I breathe. When I turn my head, his eyes are already on me.
Without the mask, his undeniable beauty is even more magnetic, drawing me in and inviting me to linger. There’s something about the way he watches me now that makes my chest ache, like he’s afraid to speak first. So I speak for us.
“Thank you,” I whisper, needing to say the words while my mind’s mine. “Thank you for helping me. I wouldn’t have known what Clo was doing if it weren’t for you.”
He doesn’t respond immediately. His expression doesn’t change much, but I can feel him listening. Then he leans forward and lifts a cup. “Drink,” he says.
He holds it near my mouth, and I obey because I trust him.
Even now, with the ache in my skull and the fog still trailing through my mind, I trust him more than anyone.
Something about him quiets the noise inside me.
He doesn’t fill silence to make it easier.
He lets it breathe. And I need that more than I realized.
I don’t know what that says about me. But I know what it says about him.
He didn’t have to save me. But he did.
He didn’t have to stay. But he did.
And I’ll be forever grateful.
***
A day or two pass before the first fever finally breaks. I know there will be more, but for now, my body begins to loosen its grip on the worst of it.
The ache in my bones fades enough for me to breathe again. The pressure behind my eyes eases, no longer blinding. The weight pressing down on my limbs begins to lift. Not all at once, but enough to feel like I’m slowly returning to myself, breath by breath.
And I know why.
Sterling.
It isn’t only the medicine or the tea, though they help. It isn’t the quiet way he encourages me to eat, guiding the spoon to my lips. It’s him. He’s never far. He’s always watching over me.
With him near, the weight I’ve been carrying doesn’t feel like it’s all mine anymore. The fog in my mind doesn’t scare me as much. Even the constant pain feels more survivable. Somehow, with Sterling here, I feel like I can stop pretending. I’m allowed to rest, to be weak, to heal.
I feel safe. And in that safety, I start to see him clearer. It starts with little things. How his every step is a silent vow. How he prepares for whatever nightmare might come next. But there’s a subtle gentleness under it all.
By the afternoon, I’m curled into the corner of the couch with a blanket wrapped around me. The same one he laid across my shoulders earlier, his fingers brushed my skin in passing. It still smells like him, cedar and oak.
Across the room, the bathroom door creaks open. Steam spills out, curling around the furniture and warming the air. Then Sterling steps through.
He’s rubbing a towel through his hair, water droplets trailing along his jaw and down the curve of his throat.
His hair curls slightly at the ends from the moisture.
He’s already dressed, but the shower’s mist still clings to him—his shirt darkened at the collar, clinging to his chest, his sleeves pushed to his elbows.
I don’t know why that gets to me, but it does. He looks different in this light. More real, more him, and less of the version of himself he guards carefully. Especially with more of the silver streaking through his hair like threads of moonlight woven through shadows.
Perhaps it’s the light, or the steam in the air, but when he glances at me, I feel that look in every part of my body. It lands like gravity, heavy and grounding. He stares like he’s afraid I might vanish if he blinks.
He doesn’t say a word. Neither do I. The silence between us holds something fragile and full.
My heart beats faster. There’s something about being seen by him like this—when I’m still weak, still recovering—that feels intimate in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
And I find that I want him to keep looking.
So I do the same. I let my eyes trace the lines of him, slow and lingering. The act alone is a balm for my aches and pain. The longer I look, the less I feel the throbbing in my limbs.
He stands there, half-lit, quiet and composed. The fabric of his shirt stretches across his chest in a way that does unspeakable things to me.
And for a moment, the withdrawal fades into the background.
The confusion dulls. I shouldn’t be looking at him like this.
Not after everything he’s done to help me.
Not when my heart still carries fragments of Stan—his crooked grin, his warmth, the way his presence used to make everything feel a little brighter. Stan was sunlight. Sterling is shadow.
But Sterling stays, even when the world gets dark. He is the figure that follows you home and keeps watch long after everyone else turns away. He doesn’t disappear when you turn off the lights. He’s already part of the darkness.
Everything about him is tension and restraint, quiet strength that never needs to announce itself. And somehow, that makes him even more impossible to look away from.
I shouldn’t be comparing them. They’re brothers.
It feels unfair, especially now, when everything inside me is still stitching itself back together.
But honesty rises like breath, and I can’t push it down.
Stan and Sterling share the same sculpted beauty, refined and striking.
Their beauty’s carved into their bodies, making them sculptures meant to be remembered.
But while Stan felt like the spark that started the fire, Sterling is the slow burn. He’s warmth that lasts.
My heart gives an unfamiliar stutter, much worse than before. Because Sterling catches me staring for far too long. Color touches his cheeks. He doesn’t call me out. So I don’t look away. I want to keep seeing him like this. I want to understand what he keeps buried beneath his silence.