Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ella
Please Notice - Christian Leave
W e return to Silver Falls before the end of the business weekend. Of course, when they had to retrieve a paralyzed man from the Aphrodite’s room we were in, we had to leave. Chris was informed Zeus would be in contact with him, and I wasn’t told anything. Chris asked for us to be dropped at his Stoneview house, and he’s now driving his own car.
I’ve been silent, refusing to put words to the insane moment we shared, but I’m forced to talk when the anxiety becomes too much.
“Are you going to get in trouble?”
“Don’t worry about me getting in trouble. I can handle the Circle. And you won’t get in trouble either. ”
I didn’t ask about me, but he can probably sense my stress. I’ve got enough shit to deal with. I don’t need to add the Circle thinking I was involved in a crime.
“You missed the entrance to the highway,” I point out, as I watch him drive past it.
“I know.”
“Chris,” I insist. “Where are we going?”
“To a place where it can be just the two of us. I want to rest my mind.” His eyes dart to mine before they go back to the road. “Don’t you?”
I nod, and even though he’s not looking at me, I know he can feel it.
“Plus, your stomach is rumbling, and I know what you need right now.”
I automatically wrap my arms around my stomach. My reflex is to hiss that he doesn’t know what I need. But he sounds exhausted, and so am I. For someone who finds comfort in being in control, I know making decisions for me is going back to a safe spot.
So I don’t take it away from him.
“Okay,” I simply say.
I feel his sigh of relief all the way to my bones. It’s been tiring having to fight him every step of the way. Maybe we can just forget about everything for tonight.
He parks in front of a beautiful building I recognize immediately.
“Ms. Barry Dance School,” I murmur. “Talk about a place to rest my mind.”
“It’s just before five a.m.,” he says. “She won’t be here until six, as far as I know.”
“That’s right, but the place is locked.”
He turns to me, cocking an eyebrow. “You used to sneak in here at night. Don’t tell me you don’t know a way in.”
I don’t even bother to hide the shock on my face. He’s used to it by now. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Your passion was dancing. My passion was you.”
“You’re a creep,” I chuckle.
“If only I was just a creep. Come on. ”
He gets out, opening my door before I get a chance to, and helps me out of his car.
And I decide to share my little secret with him. I show him the stone wall I used to climb, and he does it in a swift, easy movement. I take him to the basement door hidden on the side of the building behind a hedge that hasn’t been trimmed since probably before Ms. Barry was born, and I lead him through the door I unlocked from the inside years ago. No one ever checked it, and it stayed that way for me to sneak in whenever I needed.
We walk up to the main area, and the first thing he does is go to the vending machine there. He pulls out his card and taps the card-reader on there, then presses a number, and a protein bar falls. Then another. Another…
“Chris?”
“You love these,” he says casually. He remembers everything.
“I do, but…” I tilt my head to the side, watching him repeat the process over and over again, until he ends up with fifteen of them in his arms and walks back to me with a grin on his face. “Seriously, what are you doing?”
“So you can bring them to the kids you teach on Saturdays. Is fifteen enough?”
I blink up at him, my heart swelling. “Uh…yeah. Yeah, it’s enough.”
“Let’s go to a rehearsal room. Lead the way.”
I do. I take him to my favorite one that has a single window with a view of Stoneview Forest. It’s the only rehearsal room with a window. Once we’ve closed the door, he sits on the floor and drops the bars. He takes one, rips it open, and offers it to me.
“Come. You’re hungry. ”
I am. So I don’t fight it. I sit down and eat in silence with him.
“This,” he rasps as he swallows. “This is the best thing ever.”
“I told you they were delicious.” I chew slowly on the sticky chocolate protein bar. “I tried to order them online, but I can’t find them anywhere. Only in this vending machine.”
“I’m not talking about the protein bars, Sweets. I’m talking about spending time with you, doing something simple without anyone stopping us.”
I swallow thickly, and my heart skips a beat when he wipes the corner of my mouth with his thumb. He brings his finger to his lips and licks the chocolate off it.
“I missed you,” he admits, his gaze still on mine. “For five years, I missed you, and it came with the regret of breaking up. I missed you when I came back to Stoneview and could see the way you avoided me, trying to protect your heart from me. I thought being back and being in your presence would help, but I’ve missed you because you were right. I have your body but not your heart.”
Said heart begs to differ from how crazily it’s beating.
He nods to himself, and his hand falls to his lap. “Do you remember our first kiss?”
We’re sitting cross-legged in front of each other, and it looks almost ridiculous for such a huge man to sit like this. I observe his face. He’s got eye bags, and for the first time I notice the way everything in him seems tense. He looks older, tired, stressed.
“I’m not sure talking about our first kiss will help, Chris.”
He ignores my advice, his beautiful whiskey eyes shining with nostalgia .
“It was my eighteenth birthday. I found you in the bathroom at my house party, I walked in, and I locked the door. I approached you and I told you that I only?—”
“—make mistakes when you think they’re worth it,” I cut him off. “I remember that night like it was yesterday.”
“Fuck, Ella,” he huffs, running a hand at the back of his neck. “I knew you would be the biggest mistake of my life.”
When my eyes widen from shock, he adds, “Not because of your brother. Not because of the consequences of dating you.” He licks his lips, his eyes on mine. “I knew you would be a mistake because you would never give me my heart back if I offered it to you. And look at what you did. You stole it, you kept it to yourself. You became the only person it could beat for.”
This vulnerable side of him is the hardest to resist. Harder than lust and memories of us. Because it’s him now telling me the things I’ve been longing to hear.
He takes a deep breath, his gaze roaming over my face and stopping on my eyes. “Now you don’t want me. You hate me. You think I’m a coward. Now you swear you won’t give me a second chance, and look at me…I still don’t want my heart back. Because I know its rightful place is in the palm of your hand.”
There’s nothing but the sound of my staggered breathing. He leans closer, but I put a hand on his cheek to stop him.
“Ella,” he rasps. “You know I’ve always had two sides of me. I’m sorry about the person that comes out when I can’t have you. It’s dangerous. But it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do absolutely anything for you.”
My heart beats painfully, oscillating between giving in and knowing I could regret it more than anything I ever have .
I push the curls away from his forehead, and our lips hover close when I speak.
“It isn’t about the two sides of you, Chris. I’ve known about that since I’ve known you, and I accepted it when we were together. But I can’t erase the last five years. I can’t forget the heartbreak and the sadness. That you chose Luke over me. And that you left. Those things don’t just go away, and especially not when you come back with a girlfriend. I don’t know who you are anymore, and I might not understand your relationship—or deal—with Megan, but what I know is that man you are for the Circle isn’t the man I loved.”
His eyes won’t leave mine, and I could swear I see the very definition of regret in them. It feels like an eternity before he opens up some more.
“The man I’ve become from the pressure and the suffering isn’t who I want to be. I want to be the person I was with you. Just like I know you’re not the whiny queen bee you’re showing to everyone. I know the real Ella. The empathetic girl, who cares about the people around her. The one who has feelings and doesn’t care whether her reputation is intact or not. My Ella is so beautiful inside and out it radiates on the rainiest days. I know who you are, and you know who I am. The masks we put on to survive shouldn’t fool the ones who truly love us. And I truly l?—”
“Don’t say it.”
He nods. “I understand why you don’t want to hear it, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Chris,” I rasp, barely breathing. I know this is going to hurt, but I can’t keep it to myself. “I don’t want to know the man I gave my all to and who abandoned me loves me . Because if you truly did, you wouldn’t be with her.”
This is what makes him pull away. The hurt in his eyes breaks me, but I can’t deny the truth. He’s already doing that.
“One of us has to be realistic,” I admit painfully. “This is beautiful, honest, but it’s bittersweet. Once it’s over, you’ll go back to her, and I’ll be alone again. We can enjoy it while it lasts, but it won’t last forever.”
Turning away, he scratches his throat, and I don’t have to see his face or his thoughts to know this is hard. I feel it too. The pull between us feels like it will never go away, never die. It’s so strong it feels inevitable, yet it’s not the reality of our situation. And that hurts like nothing else.
He runs a hand across his face and looks at me again. “Dance for me.”
“Dance?”
Showing me the way his face lights up when he talks about me, he smiles. “We’re in a dance studio, aren’t we? Please.”
He’s beautiful, vulnerable, exactly the man I know he is for me. So I smile in return, unable to hold back how content I truly am with him. “Okay.”
I stand up, stretching my arms, and then my legs. “Pick a song. And you’ll have to excuse that I’m dressed in jeans and sneakers.”
He pulls out his phone, stands up, and plugs it into the speakers. “Lucky me, your talent doesn’t depend on your clothes.”
Going to the bar, I use it to stretch my spine and legs again. I startle when the first note of “The Scientist” by Coldplay resonate in the room. My heart squeezes, but I don’t look at him. It would be too hard to look at him. Instead, I dance.
I go through whatever my body tells me. I become an instrument for the song. I straighten my spine, roll back my shoulders. I hold my head high and do a grand jeté across the room. I almost forget where I am and start pirouetting. The same movements I couldn’t do a few weeks ago become as easy as breathing. I twirl, losing myself in the music and losing count of how many I do until two hands grab my waist, pull me closer, and lift me off the floor.
He lifts me so high, the tips of my fingers barely graze his shoulders, and he holds me tightly against him as he slowly brings me down.
I know where this ends, but still, I let him touch me, heart beating crazily in anticipation. My stomach drags against his chest as every single sensation creates a burning need inside me. His strong arms don’t struggle for one second, taking all my weight until I’m right above his face, and in the next second, our mouths are nearly brushing.
Neither of us speaks. He waits. Our eyes searching the other’s. Breaths mingling. The seconds elongate into a magical moment…and I’m the first to break.
My lips crash against his, and I hear him moan. Probably with a mix of surprise and joy. He holds me tighter, fingertips digging into my skin as he turns the kiss ravenous.
This man missed me, and there’s no other way he could have shown it. This kiss is more than the lust we’ve shared until now. This kiss is more than owning me, or my body. This kiss…is the second chance he so desperately talks about, the proof that I didn’t mishear when he said Megan and him had a deal. One I don’t understand, but that surely doesn’t involve the things he and I share.
His tongue dances with mine, creating waves of butterflies within me, and I forget why I even refused him something so beautiful until now.
I never want it to stop, but I do pull away to catch a breath. Instead, I catch pure happiness in his eyes as he slowly lets my feet touch the floor.
“Ella,” he rasps. His gaze bounces between my eyes, and his eyebrows pinch. “I’m so sorry for the things I will do to get you back.”
“What?”
“Please, forgive me for them. But after this kiss…I’ve never been more sure that you and I are meant to be, and that it doesn’t matter what I have to put us through to achieve that.”
I swallow thickly, something pushing at my chest. A mix of hope that he will do anything it takes so we end up together, and of fear. Because I know it will probably destroy me.
And I think I want him to destroy me.
With my heart sinking, I take a step back. “We should head back.”
“To reality,” he says with a hoarse voice.
“To reality,” I confirm.