Chapter 13
Elias immediately lifted his gaze from the phone screen to her face, his brows rising sharply.
“Do I look jealous?” Elias shot back instantly.
He let out a scoff and leaned against the back of his chair.
“I have absolutely nothing to be jealous about. What exactly do you keep imagining all day and night?”
“Sureeeee,” Amara dragged the word out, disbelief clear in her tone.
Her gaze deliberately dropped toward the cutlery in his hands. The fork and knife were trapped in such a tight grip that his knuckles had turned pale.
Slowly, her eyes lifted back to his face.
“I can see it very clearly,” she muttered under her breath.
Elias pretended not to hear her.
He simply picked up his glass and took a slow sip of water while carefully avoiding her eyes, which only made her amusement deepen.
Amara reached across the table for her phone. Since she was still eating, she didn’t lift it to her ear. Instead, she tapped the speaker button and left it on the table beside her plate.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” Jasper’s voice came through immediately.
He sounded like he was outside somewhere. Faint traffic noises echoed in the background along with slightly hurried breathing.
“You didn’t come home last night,” he continued quickly. “I was actually looking forward to taking you to dinner at your favorite place across the street. You know, that charcoal restaurant you love.”
He let out a dramatic sigh.
“But you weren’t there, so I ended up eating alone.” His tone turned pitiful. “Honestly, it was depressing.”
A faint smile appeared on Amara’s lips.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Do you want me to come pick you up?” Jasper asked immediately. “Where are you? I’ll come get you, and we can go there tonight instead.”
The moment those words left Jasper’s mouth, Elias’s eyes slowly shifted from the phone toward Amara.
His expression darkened visibly.
His gaze lingered on the small smile resting on her lips while she spoke to Jasper, and something sharp flickered behind his eyes as if he wanted to punch a hole through that phone, grab Jasper by the neck, and wring him out like a chicken.
“Making plans to pick her up again…” he muttered under his breath, jaw tight. “Should just make a list of every damn place she likes and take her all over the country like he’s got nothing better to do than be her personal driver.”
His words were low, but Amara was sitting close enough that she heard every single one of them.
A faint smile tugged at her lips, but she quickly lowered her gaze to her plate, hiding it as she cut into her food.
“It’s fine, Jasper. I’ll come back on my own. You don’t need to pick me up.”
A brief pause followed as she shifted slightly in her seat.
“And yeah, that restaurant sounds good. We can go there tonight.”
“Great,” Jasper replied immediately. “I’ll wait for you.”
Amara tapped the screen to hang up the phone and set it beside her plate.
When she lifted her gaze again, Elias was still staring at the phone. But the second his eyes met hers, everything on his face shifted.
The anger, the irritation—gone in an instant. He forced a smile. Quick. Stiff. Stretched just enough to look real, but failing.
Amara didn’t react.
She simply lowered her gaze and continued eating, the faint smile she had been hiding vanishing behind the fork she lifted to her lips.
A few minutes passed in silence. She finished her meal and gently set her fork and knife down on the plate.
Then she looked up at him.
“I want you to tell me what really happened during my accident one year ago,” she said quietly, her posture straightening slightly as she held his gaze.
Elias’s expression shifted immediately.
Amara didn’t look away.
“Is there anything else I’m missing?” she asked, her fingers resting still against the edge of the table. “Anything else I should know?”
Her eyes sharpened slightly.
“What else are you hiding from me?”
Elias went silent for a moment.
His jaw tightened as he leaned back slightly in his chair, shoulders settling into a controlled stillness.
His fingers curled around the glass in front of him, the faint clink of ice shifting inside it breaking the silence between them.
He lifted it slowly, took a measured sip of water, then set it down carefully.
Only then did he look at her.
“You are perfectly healthy now. There’s nothing to worry about now.”
Her brows pulled together immediately.
She leaned forward slightly. “What about my accident?” Her voice sharpened with urgency. “Do you know how it happened? I can’t remember most of that night… not even what I did. I need to know if I made a mistake. If something went wrong.”
Elias exhaled through his nose, his gaze dropping for a brief second before returning to her face.
“I’ve looked into it,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were fine the entire night. You didn’t drink anything except a glass of water.”
His eyes stayed on her.
“You are not at fault for the accident.”
Her shoulders eased slightly at that. The breath she had been holding slipped out in a slow release, tension draining from her frame in uneven waves. She looked down for a moment, blinking as if processing it, then gave a faint nod.
“All right…” she murmured. “That’s good to know.”
But when her gaze lifted again, something sharper returned to it.
“Do you know what actually happened? Was it the other driver’s fault?”
Elias hesitated.
“There’s no real evidence yet,” he admitted. “We don’t know exactly what happened that night.”
Amara nodded. Then she pushed back her chair abruptly. The legs scraped against the floor with a sharp, final sound as she stood.
“It’s fine,” she answered quietly. “I can find it on my own. I don’t need your help.”
Her voice stayed calm, but her fingers were trembling slightly at her sides.
“I’m leaving now,” she continued, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “And I need you to respect my choice. I don’t want to stay here with you anymore.”
He clearly didn’t look pleased with her decision. His jaw tightened, and a dark look passed through his eyes, but after a long moment, he forced himself to loosen his grip around her wrist.
The second he let go, she quickly pulled her hand back against her chest, rubbing the spot where his fingers had been. Without saying another word, she turned around and walked away, her steps hurried and stiff.
‘I shouldn’t get close to him again,’ she told herself silently. ‘Getting close to him will only make me fall for him all over again.’
The thought hit her hard, making her chest tighten painfully.
She quickly stepped out of his house and called a cab back to the apartment. By the time she arrived, it was already late.
The moment she opened the apartment door, loud laughter echoed from inside.
Amara frowned slightly and stepped in.
Jasper and Juliette were sprawled across the couch together, laughing uncontrollably while staring at something on Jasper’s phone. The table in front of them was littered with empty beer bottles and half-finished glasses of alcohol.
Both of them were clearly drunk.
Amara blinked in confusion before walking closer.
“And here I thought you were going to wait for me,” she muttered, looking directly at Jasper. “Didn’t you say we were going to grab dinner together?”
Jasper looked up at her, completely drunk out of his mind. The second he heard her words, he burst out laughing.
“I am drunk as hell right now,” he slurred lazily, pointing at himself. “But if you want me to eat, I’ll gladly eat.”
Still laughing, he pushed himself off the couch while dragging Juliette up with him.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go—”
Before he could even stand properly, Amara immediately reached forward and shoved him back down onto the couch.
“You are in no condition to go anywhere,” she snapped. “You can barely walk to the bathroom. And you want to go to a restaurant?”
Juliette burst into laughter again while Jasper groaned dramatically and dropped his head back against the couch.
Amara crossed her arms and stared at him.
“Look at your face,” she said. “You’re about to drop dead. There are dark circles under your eyes, and you look like you’re seconds away from passing out. You don’t look like someone who should be anywhere near food right now.”
Jasper groaned louder in frustration while Amara shook her head helplessly.
“Let me get changed,” she told them. “I’ll come back.”
A little while later, she returned wearing a soft pink cotton nightdress that fell comfortably to her knees, the loose fabric making her look relaxed and at ease. She settled down with them on the floor beside the table, grabbed one of the glasses, and started drinking with them.
As they sat there together, she finally told them everything that had happened at Elias’s house.
By the time she finished, both Jasper and Juliette were staring at her in complete shock.
“I can’t believe your grandfather kept something this huge a secret from everyone,” Juliet said, her voice filled with shock. “And he asked Elias to hide it too?”
Jasper leaned back against the couch slowly, still trying to process everything.
“I wonder why he married you,” he muttered.
Juliette immediately looked at him.
Jasper rubbed a hand over his face before continuing drunkenly, “No, listen. I mean… why did he marry you if he didn’t like you?”
He frowned deeply, clearly trying to think through the alcohol.
“And even if he was only respecting your grandfather’s wishes… I still don’t understand what he was thinking. Why marry someone he knew he supposedly wouldn’t even be able to sleep with?”
He paused before adding bluntly,
“A marriage like that usually falls apart fast. And honestly, that man does not look like someone interested in men.”
The second the words left Amara’s mouth, Juliette burst into laughter so suddenly that she nearly spilled her drink onto the table.