14. Eli #2
That’s the lie my brain wants because recognition is easier to justify than hunger. If she’s like me, then wanting her feels less like wanting something I have no right to touch. If she’s like me, then the way I look at her becomes understanding instead of appetite.
I know exactly what I am—known for a long time what lurks beneath my skin. I’m the bastard who builds the gallows and calls it justice. I’m the asshole who takes and rarely gives. I’m the man who can sit beside a crying woman and still catalog the ways she could be used, broken, protected, kept.
Monster through and through.
The difference is I know it.
The difference is I have rules.
Distance is a rule.
No touching unless there’s no other choice is a rule.
Keeping her watched but not crowded is a rule.
Keeping Knox between her and me is definitely a rule.
I contemplate a shower, but there’s a trace of her scent on me.
Vanilla. Coffee. Salt air. Something clean underneath the fear.
I should wash it off.
I don’t.
Another broken rule.
I go to bed instead, fully clothed, because lying down in the dark feels like a punishment I deserve. Sleep is elusive. The sheets are cold. The room is quiet. My body refuses to power down.
Every time I close my eyes, I’m back in the park.
Her hand on mine.
Her voice saying she felt like a monster.
My jacket around her shoulders.
My own mouth telling her sometimes you have to become one to be the hero, like that wasn’t the most self-serving bullshit I could have possibly offered a woman still covered in the aftermath of what we made her part of.
She believed me.
That’s the worst of it.
Not because I lied.
Because I meant it.
“Fuck this.”
At 2 a.m., I’m standing in my kitchen with my keys in my hand.
I don’t remember picking them up.
That scares me more than the wanting.
The next thing I know, I’m in the car, pulling out of the driveway and heading south.
This is how it starts.
Not with a decision.
With a deviation.
One broken rule. One unnecessary drive. One hour of sleep traded for a window I have no right to watch.
By the time I reach her building, Knox’s car is still there. Of course it is. He’s a stubborn motherfucker, and he gave me his word.
I park behind him, kill the lights, and text him.
Me:
Go home. I’ve got this.
A moment later, his reply comes through.
Knox:
Don’t you have work tomorrow?
Me:
Yep.
Knox:
Then go catch a few before then. I’m good to stay.
I stare at the message until the words blur.
He’s right.
He’s doing exactly what I asked him to do.
Watching over her, keeping distance between Sage and me.
I hate him for it.
Me:
I didn’t ask. Go home, Knox.
His headlights come on and he pulls away without further argument.
I settle in and watch her dark windows.
For three minutes, I feel better.
That’s how pathetic I am. Three minutes of looking at a rectangle of darkness and knowing she’s somewhere behind it breathing, sleeping, existing, and the pressure under my ribs eases like I’ve given the monster a scrap of meat.
Then the disgust catches up.
I grip the steering wheel again.
I try not to think about how good her hand felt in mine. How carefully she touched me, like she didn’t know she was putting her fingers through the bars.
I try not to think about the beach. About catching her when she ran. About all that fight trapped under my hands. About the sick, bright punch of want that cut through the panic before I had time to kill it.
I hated myself for that.
Still do.
Because she was terrified. Bloody. Freshly hurt. And some part of me still noticed the heat of her under me, the power in her body, the way she fought like survival was a language she’d learned young and fluently.
There’s a special place in hell for men who notice things like that.
I know.
I built the stairway down.
Less than an hour later, Micah strolls up to the car looking freshly showered. Without speaking, he opens the passenger door.
Fuck you, Knox, you interfering shit.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
He should be face-down in his own bed. The man has been going since Friday night, spent all day in the dirt with a shovel, and instead he’s here, sliding into my passenger seat in gray sweats and a hoodie with his eyes already half-shut.
“Nice to see you too.”
“You’re dead on your feet, Micah. I’ve got this.”
“I’m on watch tonight. You’re the one who’s not supposed to be here.” He covers a yawn with the back of his hand. “Don’t you have a room full of five-year-olds to face in a few hours?”
“I don’t mind staying.”
“I know you don’t.”
There’s something quieter under it when he says that. Something we’ve circled a hundred times and never landed on. Something that knows the difference between duty and compulsion, between guarding a door and using the door as an excuse to stay close to what you want.
“But you can’t run on nothing and stand in front of a class at nine,” he says. “I can sleep tomorrow. You can’t.”
He’s right.
He knows he’s right.
He’s too tired to gloat about it, which is somehow worse.
“Go home, Eli.”
For a moment, I don’t move.
It would be easy to stay. To sit in the dark beside him, convince him to sleep while I stare at her window and pretend this is operational. Pretend this is strategy. Pretend I’m here because Sage is a loose end and not because every instinct I have is trying to drag me closer to her.
But Micah is watching me with that patient, bottomless look, and I’ve never once won against it.
He sees too much.
He always has.
“Fine. I’m going.”
“You’re adorable when you’re grumpy,” he says. I roll my eyes, and he grins as he opens the passenger door. “I’ll let you know if anything happens.”
I nod, watching him yawn again. Concern tugs at my insides.
Another weakness.
Another thing I keep pretending is manageable.
“You sure you don’t want me to stay?” I ask.
“Go. Home.” He shuts the car door behind him. “You look like shit, Eli.”
“Fuck you, Micah.”
He laughs, but there’s something in the way he looks at me that pulls in my chest. Like even after all this time, after everything I’ve done, after every locked door and rationed piece of myself, he still thinks I’m worth worrying about.
That almost breaks something.
I start the car, and he steps back, giving me a little salute as I pull away. In the rearview mirror, he gets smaller, then smaller, until the dark takes him.
Cute little fucker.
Not that I’d ever say that to his face.
Not that I’d say any of it.
That’s the whole point of a lock.
You keep the dangerous things where they belong.
Even when they’re clawing to get out.