Chapter 25 Elias
TWENTY-FIVE
Elias
Andre’s warm, solid body is curled around mine from behind.
His arm has me locked in. I know he’s awake because his thumb is idly stroking my stomach.
I don’t think he’s slept the whole time we’ve lain here.
I haven’t either, but it feels good to rest with him.
It’s given me time to start coming out of the strange headspace I’ve been in.
It feels like emerging from a dream. And yet, this is a different reality than the one I lived in before that dream. A better one.
But when I put my hand over Andre’s, I feel the bandage, and I remember that not everything is better in this new reality.
A phone starts ringing. It’s coming from the bathroom. It must be Andre’s phone. He grumbles and draws free of me, getting up from the bed.
Daylight is streaming in through the windows, showing all the beautiful lines of his body as he walks around the foot of the bed. But then, as he crosses the room to the bathroom, I see his back. I see his ass.
My breath catches, and I wish it was catching because of the beautiful structure of his body, the muscled curve of his ass, but it’s not. Jesus Christ, who did that to him?
He vanishes into the bathroom.
“Yeah,” he says in a low, rough voice as he answers the phone.
Then, “We’re at The Axis. Piero Valenci paid me a visit.
No, I didn’t let him see Elias. He doesn’t know that Elias is here.
” There’s a pause then, “No, Elias isn’t working for him.
” Then, “What the fuck do you think I’m gonna do with him, Noah?
I’m gonna keep him safe.” Andre lets out a frustrated breath and says, “Sorry.” Then, “No, I don’t need anything. Yeah. Okay.”
Andre falls silent. The call seems to be over. I hear cloth rustling, and a moment later Andre emerges wearing gray boxer briefs and carrying his phone. His jaw is tight and his eyes are hard, but they soften as he looks at me. I sit up.
“I need to feed you,” he says. “You must be fucking starving.”
“Not really.”
His eyes harden again. “Then you’ve gone past feeling it.”
He walks out of the bedroom. I hear him walk into the kitchen. I hear the refrigerator door.
I get out of bed and go into the closet. Distantly, I hear Andre talking on the phone, but I can’t make out any of the words.
Dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, I go out to the kitchen. Andre has the electric kettle heating and he’s spooning coffee into the press pot.
“The Uppercut is making us steak and eggs, but it’ll take a bit,” he tells me. He grabs my favorite mug from the cupboard.
I sit on one of the stools at the counter. “You know where all my things are.”
“I already told you there are cameras in here.”
Andre fills a glass at the sink and brings it to me. His intensely blue eyes study me. He’s trying to figure out how much it bothers me. I’m trying to figure that out too.
Part of me is thrilled to know how much attention he’s actually been paying to me all along. But another part of me is trying to remember every embarrassing thing that I’ve done when I thought I was alone.
“I love watching you,” he says. “I’m not going to stop.”
“Is there a camera in the bathroom?”
“No.”
Another, nastier suspicion forms. I ask, “Are you tracking me online?”
“Some.”
“I don’t like that.”
“I don’t care.”
I slap the glass off the counter. I’m more surprised by it than Andre is. I thought I was back to normal, but I guess I’m not. I stare at the shattered glass and splattered water.
“Why does that bother you more than the cameras?” Andre asks.
“It just does.”
Andre is silent for a long time. He doesn’t budge from where he’s standing across the counter from me.
Then he asks in a low voice, “Is this something your father used to do?”
My throat tightens. The truth is that I don’t know how much my father tracked me online.
I thought I was invisible to him. That’s how he acted to my face.
But he deciphered my plans from my internet activity.
I didn’t think to hide it, and that’s why Rose is dead.
I had to run before she and I had planned.
She covered for me so I could get far enough ahead, and my father killed her for it.
But I’m not ready to talk about that.
“We’ll clean your laptop,” Andre says quietly. “But location tracking stays on. I have to be able to find you. Okay?”
I look at him, and I see that he accepts my boundary. I see that he understands even without the facts. He’s listening to me.
I nod.
Andre leaves it at that. He picks up the larger pieces of glass and puts them in the trash, then he tosses several towels on the floor and starts cleaning up the water and broken glass.
I calm down as I watch him. He doesn’t mind that I made a mess. He’s made them too. The mirror in his office. The desk.
I can express myself with him. He wasn’t even angry about what I did to the suit in his penthouse closet.
I should probably be embarrassed about that, but the fact that he didn’t react to it, just accepted it makes me feel .
.. free. Like in my fantasies. But this is an even better freedom because it’s real.
He finishes cleaning up and throws away the towels because they’re full of glass fragments. He crouches again and sweeps his bare hand across the floor, hunting for shards. I hiss in a breath. I don’t like that.
When he’s done with the floor, he goes back to work on the coffee, pouring the freshly boiled water into the press pot.
“I have to ask you something,” he says with his back still to me, “and I really need you to answer.”
I tense at the tone of his voice. I don’t like that his back is to me. I don’t like how the seconds are stretching.
“It’s about your father,” he finally says.
“I need to know if—” Andre cuts off. He’s completely still, not breathing.
I don’t know what he’s going to ask me, so I just stay still, like him.
I wait. Then he exhales carefully and says, “I need to know if he hurt you. Physically, I mean. Sexually. I know he hurt you in other ways. I can tell.”
A hot, sick feeling churns through me, not because the answer is yes but because it’s no, and yet, I know why he’s asking.
I know why there are whip scars on his ass, hidden now by his boxer briefs. I know what’s been done to him, even if I don’t know the details. I heard the things my father said in Andre’s office.
I say quietly, “I’ve never been hurt like that.”
“It’s not always … violent.”
“I’ve never been hurt like that, Andre.”
He nods his head, but his back is still to me. My eyes sting. I want to approach him. I want to touch him. But I don’t think he could handle it right now. I don’t feel like I’m allowed to touch him right now.
I whisper, “I understand if you hate me.”
Andre spins around. “I don’t fucking hate you.” His blue eyes are locked on me, intense and angry.
I hate that tears spill down my cheeks because this isn’t about me and I don’t want to make it about me, but I’m feeling too much and I can’t help it.
Andre walks toward me. I’m ready for him to hit me or storm past me, but I’m not ready for him to grab me off the stool and haul me up into his arms. I start crying harder, and I wrap my arms and legs around him as he carries me into the living room and sits down on the couch.
I sob against him, because I feel so fucking horrified and angry and overwhelmed.
Andre holds me tight. He’s breathing hard, his chest heaving against me. He’s shuddering.
I get a strange, sudden clarity. He needs my reactions. He needs my emotions, needs me to express them—because he can’t. He expresses anger, but that’s all. He doesn’t know how to cry. He doesn’t know how to say that he’s hurt. And it just breaks me open more.
I bury my face against him and let myself cry. For him. For myself. For everything that’s happened these past few days that I haven’t yet had time to sort through in my head.
It’s almost too much for Andre. I can feel him struggling, trembling, but he stays with me.
As it fades, I realize that I have a fist clenched in his hair.
I loosen my grip. I start to pet him. I start to hold him.
I don’t know if he notices the shift, but he accepts what I’m doing in a way I don’t think he would have earlier.
We’re still on the couch, finally quiet, when there’s a knock at the door. Andre jolts. I slide off him so he can get up.
“Stay here,” he orders.
I don’t know how he so quickly puts aside what he was just feeling, but I watch him do it as he stalks to the door and looks through the peephole. Then I watch him relax.
He opens the door and pulls in the cart that’s been left. As he secures the door, I get up from the couch. There’s a dining table at the edge of the living room, but I’m not surprised that Andre rolls the cart to the kitchen. He would know that I always eat there.
“Ah shit, the coffee,” he mutters.
I start unloading the trays while he goes to push down the plunger of the press pot. He makes my coffee how I like it. He knows more about me than I know about him. I’ll have to catch up.
My stomach wakes up when I smell the food. It’s steak and eggs with chimichurri sauce. There are potatoes and toast on the side, plus dressed greens and fruit.
“Oh my god,” I mutter and sit down. I forget my manners instantly, digging in before Andre even arrives.
He sets my coffee by my plate and pets my hair. I pause with my fork in my mouth. God, I love this affectionate side of him. I would never have expected it.
He sits beside me and starts to eat. When he swaps fruit bowls with me, I realize that I took his plate without knowing it.
I hunt for the differences. I got rarer meat than I’m used to, but I actually like it.
Andre didn’t complain about his being overcooked for his taste, but he did swap the bowls.
“You don’t like bananas?” I ask.
He shudders slightly. “No.”
“What else don’t you like?”
“Yogurt. It’s fine in things, but by itself it makes me gag.”
“Huh. What’s your favorite food?” I ask.
“I bet you can guess.”
“Steak.”
“True,” he admits, “but I guess I was thinking guilty pleasure.”
“Ah. Potato chips.”
“Especially the ones from—”
“Remy’s,” I supply.
He smiles a little, pleased that I’ve paid attention. I’m pleased too. I know him better than I thought.
When we’re done eating, we load the dishes onto the cart.
Andre says, “I’m gonna put this in the hallway, then I’m going up to the penthouse for some clothes. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“We could go up there,” I suggest, thinking he might prefer being in his own, larger space.
But he says, “No, I’d rather be here.”
He doesn’t look at me as he says it, so he doesn’t see my nod. Wearing only his boxer briefs, he takes the cart outside and leaves.
When he returns ten minutes later wearing black sweatpants and a white t-shirt, I’m drinking a second cup of coffee on the couch. He pours himself a second cup as well and comes to join me.
I don’t mean to have questions in my eyes, but I can’t help it. It makes the air thick between us. He feels it.
“The penthouse was Peter Grange’s,” he says quietly.
I take that in. I haven’t had time to process everything and put together all the pieces of the past few days, but I have gathered what Andre’s revenge was about.
I ask cautiously, “Is that why you don’t use the bedroom?”
“You could tell?”
I shrug. “It wasn’t lived in. Except for the closet, there was nothing that felt like you.”
Andre’s eyes drift away. “It … bothers me.”
“Why do you even keep this hotel?”
Andre frowns. He looks a little surprised. “I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what else to do. I didn’t have a goal beyond …” He trails off.
I frown too. I don’t like it. He shouldn’t be living and working in a place that was owned by a man who hurt him in ways that I’m not ready to really think about.
A disturbing thought occurs to me. “It wasn’t here, was it? With … What he …” I can’t finish the question. I can’t ask him, directly, if he was abused here.
Andre’s eyes unfocus. He goes still, like he’s not there. I set my coffee on the coffee table. I take his from him where he’s holding it on his knee. He’s starting to scare me.
“Andre—”
“No, it wasn’t here.”
He stands up from the couch. I expect a blowup like when he broke that mirror, but he walks out of the room and goes into the bedroom. There’s no crash or shout, only silence.
I get up from the couch. My heart is racing. My palms are sweating. I walk across the room to the bedroom door. Andre is sitting on the floor in the corner. His eyes are still unfocused. His face is blank. I don’t know if he even sees me.
I don’t know what I should do, but I do know that I’m not leaving him alone like this. I approach cautiously, but nothing flickers in his eyes.
His knees are drawn up. I kneel at his feet and rest my hands on his knees.
I’m ready for him to attack me or explode up, but he doesn’t, so I just stay there until he sees me.
It takes a long time because he’s a long way off.
His awareness flickers in and out, but I just wait.
Then he takes a breath and I can see that he sees me. I still wait.
Then, finally, I see an opening. It’s so fucking small. I only see it because I’m watching so closely. No—I see it because I know him. I know him so much better than I realized.
I know his anger when he fucks. I know his predatory stillness. I know his sharp intelligence and tight control and his ability to mask. I know he’s obsessive and possessive but also protective. I know that he’s affectionate when he feels safe.
So when I see that tiny opening, I know what it is. It’s a question: am I safe with you? If I let you into this space, what will you do?
He’s been in my private, intimate, dark spaces many times, but I’ve never been in his. I don’t think anyone has been in his. I don’t think he’s ever trusted anyone enough to allow it.
I don’t rush him. I inch closer to let that space ease open, and it does. He lets me move between his legs. He lets me crawl into his lap. He lets me join him.