15. Breaking Open #2
I felt my face burn with embarrassment, with the particular kind of shame that came from offering yourself to someone and being turned down.
“Right,” I said, my voice carefully neutral. “Of course.”
“It's not...” Elias started, then stopped, shaking his head. “You're not thinking clearly.”
“I'm thinking perfectly clearly.” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly aware of how exposed I was, how fucking pathetic I must look standing there in my underwear and t-shirt, practically begging for attention from a man who'd rather pretend I didn't exist. “Message received.”
“That's not what this is.”
“Isn't it?” I moved back to the couch, needing distance, needing something solid between us. “You can watch me fuck other men, but the idea of touching me yourself is too much. I get it.”
“It's not about wanting.” His voice was strained, desperate. “Fuck, Rowan, if it was just about wanting...”
He didn't finish the sentence, but I heard what he wasn't saying. The confession hidden in the silence, the admission that he did want this, want me, even if he was too much of a coward to act on it.
“Then what's it about?”
“It's about the fact that I'm supposed to be the adult here.” He sank back into his chair, head in his hands. “It's about the fact that I was married to your mother, that I'm old enough to know better, that this is the kind of mistake that destroys people.”
“Maybe I want to be destroyed.”
The words came out quieter than I'd intended, but they carried the weight of two years' worth of self-loathing and desperation. Because maybe that was what I wanted, what I'd been driving toward with every bottle and every stranger. Maybe destruction was the only honest ending to this story.
Elias looked up at me then, and the pain in his eyes was almost unbearable.
“She wouldn't want that for you,” he said softly.
“She's not here to want anything.” The familiar anger rose in my chest, hot and comforting in its predictability. “She left, Elias. She died and left us both here to figure out how to live without her, and I'm telling you I don't know how.”
My voice cracked on the last word, and I felt the familiar sting of tears threatening. I blinked them back violently, refusing to break down in front of him, refusing to give him that satisfaction.
But something in my expression must have gotten through to him, because suddenly he was moving. Not toward the door like I'd expected, but toward me. He sat down on the couch beside me, not quite touching but close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body.
“You think I don't see you?” he said quietly.
I swallowed hard, my throat tight with unshed tears and words I couldn't say.
Because the truth was, I didn't think anyone saw me.
Not really. I was good at being invisible, at slipping through life without leaving marks or making impressions.
The strangers I brought home saw my body, wanted my body, but they didn't see me.
“I see you,” Elias continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “I see how hard you're fighting just to keep breathing. I see how much it costs you to get through each day. I see how much you loved her, how much losing her broke you.”
The words hit like blows, each one landing in a place I'd tried to keep protected. Because he did see me, didn't he? Saw past the armor and the attitude and the careful distance I kept from anything that might hurt.
“I see how beautiful you are,” he said, and his voice was rough with emotion. “How smart and talented and absolutely fucking gorgeous, even when you're destroying yourself. Especially then.”
“Elias.” His name came out like a prayer, like a plea for something I couldn't name.
“And I see how much you need someone to care about you. Really care, not just want your body for an hour.” He turned to face me fully, his eyes intense in the dim light. “But I can't be that person. Not like this. Not when you're hurting this much.”
“Why not?”
“Because you deserve better.” The words were simple, final. “You deserve someone who can love you without it being complicated.”
The tears I'd been fighting finally won, spilling down my cheeks in hot tracks that I wiped away angrily. “I don't want someone better. I want you.”
The confession hung between us, raw and honest and completely terrifying. I watched Elias's face change, saw the exact moment when his resolve started to crumble .
“Rowan,” he said, and my name sounded like a warning.
But instead of pulling away, instead of lecturing me about propriety and appropriate boundaries, he reached out.
His arm settled around my shoulders, solid and warm and unshakeable.
It wasn't tentative or questioning. It was an anchor, a lifeline, the kind of touch that said I'm here without requiring anything in return.
I went stiff for a moment, every instinct telling me to pull away, to protect myself from the possibility of more rejection. But the fight drained out of me faster than I could hold onto it, and I found myself sagging against him, letting my head fall to his shoulder.
He smelled like cedar and rain and something uniquely him, warm and masculine and absolutely intoxicating. I could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, the solid presence of his body against mine, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt safe.
“I'm so tired,” I whispered against his shirt, the words muffled but audible.
“I know.”
“I'm tired of pretending I'm okay. Tired of pretending I don't need anyone. Tired of being so fucking angry all the time.”
His hand moved to my hair, fingers gentle as they combed through the tangled strands. The touch was soothing, paternal almost, if I ignored the way it made heat pool low in my belly.
“You don't have to pretend with me,” he said quietly.
“What if I let go?” The question came out small, vulnerable. “What if I stop fighting and just... break?”
“Then I'll help you put the pieces back together.”
The promise was simple, devastating in its sincerity. I believed him, which was terrifying in itself. When was the last time I'd trusted anyone enough to believe their promises ?
We sat there in the gathering darkness, his arm around me, my face pressed against his shoulder. Neither of us spoke, but the silence was different now. Softer, warmer, carrying the weight of things that couldn't be said but didn't need to be.
Outside, Harbor's End was settling into night, but inside my tiny apartment, something was shifting. Not healing, exactly, but breaking open in a way that might eventually lead to healing.
When Elias finally loosened his hold, I didn't move for a long moment. The loss of contact felt immediate and sharp, like stepping from warmth into cold. But when I finally lifted my head, when I met his eyes in the dim light, something had changed between us.
The air was still charged, still electric with possibility and danger. But underneath the want, underneath the complicated tangle of grief and desire, there was something else now. Something that felt like the beginning of trust.
“This doesn't solve anything,” I said, my voice hoarse from crying.
“No,” he agreed. “It doesn't.”
“I'm still fucked up. Still drinking too much, still sleeping with strangers, still carrying around all this anger I don't know what to do with.”
“I know.”
“And you're still married to my dead mother in all the ways that matter.”
He flinched at that, but didn't deny it. “Yes.”
“So where does that leave us?”
Elias was quiet for a long moment, considering. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured. “I don't know. But I know I'm not walking away from you again.”
The words settled in my chest like a promise, warm and terrifying and absolutely necessary. Because whatever this was between us, whatever impossible thing we were building out of grief and want and the shared experience of loving the same woman, it was the first real thing I'd felt in two years.
And maybe that was enough. Maybe it didn't matter that it was complicated, that it might destroy us both, that it violated every rule about appropriate relationships and healthy boundaries.
Maybe all that mattered was that I wasn't alone anymore.
“Okay,” I said, and the word felt like stepping off a cliff.
“Okay.”
The apartment was full dark now, streetlights casting long shadows through the windows. We should have turned on lamps, should have moved apart, should have retreated to the safety of distance and denial.
Instead, we sat there in the darkness, close enough to touch but not quite touching, balanced on the knife's edge between propriety and want.
And for the first time since I'd come back to Harbor's End, I felt like I might actually survive whatever came next.