Chapter 49
forty-nine
Liana
The apartment has been too quiet for too long.
Not silent. Elijah is here, his presence moving in and out of the room like a shadow I can feel before I see him, the low murmur of his voice sometimes breaking the stillness when he takes calls, the soft vibration of his phone against the table, the faint scrape of a chair across the floor.
But none of that changes what sits underneath it.
Distance.
That is what the apartment feels like.
Distance stretched thin over everything, over the couch and the table and the ringless space my finger had felt bare in for days, over every careful look he gives me and every time I catch myself waiting for him to touch me and feeling that quiet, humiliating drop in my chest when he doesn’t.
I try to write through it.
That’s what I’ve been doing more and more, letting the words take what they can from me before the ache settles too deeply.
My laptop is open in front of me, my fingers moving slower than they had last night but steadier somehow, less frantic, less like I’m dragging my own insides out with every sentence and more like I’m finally learning how to hold what happened without letting it own me.
It helps.
That’s the part I hadn’t expected.
Not just the release of it, not just the private relief of putting things somewhere other than inside my own body, but the way it has been helping me feel like myself again.
The way each page reminds me there is still a part of me untouched by him, untouched by what he did, untouched by the dark room and the needles and the sick, breaking fog of those days.
I’m still here. I’m still me. And maybe that should be enough for now. Maybe it would be, if Elijah would just come back to me. A knock sounds at the door.
I look up automatically, my fingers stilling over the keyboard.
Elijah is already moving, already crossing the room before I can push my chair back. He opens the door, and Christian steps inside with that same calm, contained air he always carries, like the world never quite gets to him no matter what state it’s in.
His gaze finds me almost immediately.
“Hi,” he says, and there is something gentler in it than usual, something that makes me close the laptop without thinking.
“Hi.”
“How are you doing?”
The question is simple, but the answer catches in my throat for half a second because I don’t know how to explain any of it without saying too much.
“I’m okay,” I say finally, because it’s the closest truth I’ve got right now.
Christian studies me for a moment, then nods once, as if that’s enough.
“I have something for you.”
Something in my chest tightens. He reaches into his pocket, and when he pulls his hand back out, my breath catches so sharply it almost hurts.
My ring. And tangled beside it, the pendant Zach gave me on a fresh silver chain.
For a second, I can’t move.
I just stare.
The wedding band glints softly in the light, impossibly familiar, impossibly right, and the sight of it punches straight through me so hard that my eyes sting before I even realize what’s happening.
“We found them at the cabin,” Christian says quietly. “The chain was broken, so I had a new one made before I gave it back to you.”
I push back from the table too fast, emotion rising so suddenly and violently that it leaves me a little breathless, and by the time I reach him, I’m already throwing my arms around him.
“Thank you,” I whisper, the words breaking apart on the way out. “Thank you so much.”
He hugs me back, firm and brief and steady, then steps back just enough for me to take them properly.
The pendant sits cool and familiar in my palm.
The ring feels heavier than it should. My fingers shake. And then Elijah is there. I don’t hear him move.
I just feel the shift in the air, and when I look up, he’s close enough that my breath catches all over again.
His eyes are on the ring in my hand. For a second, neither of us says anything. Then he reaches for it. He doesn’t ask. He just takes it gently from my fingers, turning it once between his thumb and forefinger before his gaze lifts to mine.
My hand rises on its own, I let him take it. Let him turn it palm-up. Let him slide the band over my knuckle with slow, deliberate care.
It should be the simplest thing in the world.
It isn’t.
The heat of his hand around mine. The steadiness of his touch. The intimacy of him putting it back where it belongs.
It all lands at once, and I can’t stop watching his face, can’t stop waiting for the moment this becomes more than it is, for the moment he looks at me the way he used to and does something about it.
When the ring settles into place, he runs his thumb over it once, slow enough that it almost feels like a caress.
“Back where it belongs,” he murmurs.
My heart stumbles.
This is it.
This has to be it.
This has to be the moment he finally closes the distance he’s been holding between us with both hands.
I can feel it building already, the anticipation of it, the dangerous, aching hope, the way my whole body seems to tip toward him before he’s even moved.
But he doesn’t. He looks at Christian instead.
“Thank you.”
And just like that, the moment dies.
It doesn’t even fracture dramatically. It just goes out of it, all the heat draining from it at once until all that’s left is the ring on my finger and the ridiculous hollow ache opening back up in my chest.
I hate how quickly it hurts.
I hate that I let myself hope every single time.
Christian says something back to him, low and practical, and they drift immediately into logistics, into names and places and whatever fresh movement has happened in the Vargas mess while I stand there holding Zach’s pendant in my hand and trying not to let the disappointment show too clearly on my face.
I fasten the chain around my neck myself, fingers clumsy from the way they still want to shake.
The pendant settles against my skin. Another thing back where it belongs. Another thing that somehow doesn’t fix what matters. I can’t listen to them talk about warehouses and movements and plans for one more minute.
“Excuse me,” I murmur, and I don’t wait for either of them to answer before I head down the hall to the bathroom.
The overhead light is too bright when I flip it on.
It catches me immediately in the mirror, catches the flush high in my cheeks, the tension in my mouth, the way my eyes look bright and tired all at once.
I stand there for a second just staring at myself.
Then I wash my hands even though there’s no reason to, just because I need something to do, something simple, something physical, something that belongs to me.
Water runs over my skin. Cold. Grounding.
I dry my hands and then, almost without meaning to, tug the neckline of my top lower.
The scarred line over Jackson’s tattoo is still there.
Not raw anymore. Not jagged and angry the way it was at first. It’s becoming something quieter now, something my body is trying to turn into memory rather than wound, but it is still there, a pale slash over the words and the possessive mark that had once felt untouchable.
My throat tightens.
I lift my shirt higher, peeling the bandage back from my side. The wound there is healing too.
Mostly closed now, the skin pink and new and no longer pulling the way it did at first. It’s not pretty, and it won’t disappear completely, but it doesn’t feel like proof of fragility anymore.
That’s the thing no one seems to understand.
I am healing. I am not the same woman who came out of that cabin half-drugged and bleeding and barely able to stand.
My body is healing. My mind is healing. I am still me. So why is he still looking at me like I’ll shatter in his hands? I replace the bandage slowly, smooth my shirt back down, and stare at myself one last time.
I don’t look fragile.
I look angry.
Good.
By the time I step back into the living room, Christian is gone.
Elijah is alone on the couch, one arm stretched along the back, his phone in his hand, his gaze locked on the screen like whatever is there matters more than the space around him.
I stand there for a second just looking at him. At the hard line of his jaw. At the way he seems to occupy the room and remove himself from it at the same time. At the unbearable fact that I miss him while he is sitting right there. Then I walk over and sit beside him.
“Elijah.”
He looks up immediately.
“What do you need?”
The words hit wrong. Too practical. Too careful. Too removed. I hold his gaze.
“I need you, Elijah.”
Something shifts in his face, but not enough.
“I’m here.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You’re not.”
His brow tightens.
“I am here, Lia.”
“You’re in the room,” I say, and even to my own ears my voice sounds too close to breaking. “That’s not the same thing.”
He goes still.
“I love you,” he says, controlled and low, as if that should answer it. “I’m doing what I need to do. I’m protecting you.”
“But you’re pushing me away at the same time.”
“I’m not pushing you away.”
The frustration in me snaps hard enough that I have to stand because I can’t sit still under it anymore. I push to my feet and start pacing before I even realize I’m doing it.
“You need to sit down,” he says immediately, his voice sharpening. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
I whirl toward him.
“I’m not going to hurt myself.”
The words come out louder than I intended, but I don’t care.
“I’m healing, Elijah. My body is healing. You need to stop treating me like I’m made of glass.”
Something changes in his face. Not irritation. Pain. Deep and immediate and ugly enough that it makes my own anger falter for half a second.
“But you did break.”
The words come out like he hates them. Like they’re cutting him on the way out.
“And I wasn’t there.”
My chest tightens.
“I couldn’t keep you safe.”
“I’m here now,” I say, stepping closer. “I’m right here now.”
But he shakes his head once, like it doesn’t matter, like the fact that I survived somehow doesn’t erase the image he’s carrying.
And maybe it doesn’t. But I’m carrying something too. I’m carrying this distance. I’m carrying the way he looks at me and then looks away. I’m carrying the need for him so fiercely that it feels like grief.
“I’m your wife,” I say, and my voice drops because this is the truth of it, the core of it, the thing I can’t soften anymore. “You married me. You say you love me. But you treat me like I’m porcelain, and I can’t live like that.”
He doesn’t move.
His whole body looks tense enough to splinter.
“There is no point in you being here with me if you’re not actually with me,” I whisper.
His mouth tightens.
“I miss you.”
That lands. I see it. It flickers through him so sharply I almost reach for him then, almost close the distance myself, but I stop because I need him to hear me first.
“I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
The confession comes low. Raw. Not loud, not dramatic, but honest in a way he hasn’t been with me in days.
“You won’t.”
He lets out something halfway between a laugh and a broken breath.
“You know what I’m like with you, Lia.”
And I do.
God, I do.
I know the weight of his hand on my throat, the way he takes space without apology, the way he pins me under him and makes me feel like the centre of his world and the object of his hunger in the same breath.
I know exactly what he means. And it doesn’t scare me. It makes my body ache with need so deep it almost hurts.
“That’s what I’m craving,” I say, and my voice shakes because I’m so tired of trying to make this sound softer than it is. “That’s what I need.”
His eyes flare.
“Why can’t you give that to me?”
“Because I don’t want to break you.”
“I’m not going to break.”
“Yes, you are,” he snaps, and the force of it startles both of us. “You don’t understand—”
“Then make me understand!”
My own voice rises to meet his, desperation breaking through every last bit of restraint I had left.
“Because I don’t know how to get through to you anymore, Elijah.”
The words ring in the room between us. His chest is rising too fast now. Mine is too.
He looks wrecked.
Not angry.
Not cold.
Wrecked.
And somehow that hurts even more.
“Please,” he says, and it is the first time I have heard that note in his voice, that bare, cracking edge of emotion he has been fighting so hard to hold down. “Please don’t push me with this. I can’t—”
He stops, swallows, tries again.
“I can’t lose you again. You died. You were gone. And the idea of that happening again…” His face tightens. “It will break me.”
The room goes very still. And there it is. The truth. Not just fear of hurting me. Fear of loving me the way he always has and losing me after giving himself back to it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper.
My own throat burns now.
“But I feel like I’m losing you.”
His eyes shut for a second, like the words physically hit him.
“There’s this chasm between us,” I say, and now the tears are there, hot and humiliating and impossible to stop, because it is all of it now, all at once, the ring on my finger and the way he put it there, the thumb over it, the moment that died, the weeks of distance, the way he has stood near me without letting himself be mine.
“And I can’t live in it. I can’t. You say you don’t want to break me, but this is breaking me. ”
He looks at me like he wants to move.
Like he wants to put his hands on me so badly it is physically costing him not to.
But he still doesn’t. And I understand, all at once, with a kind of terrible clarity, that he is not going to come to me.
Not unless I drag him there. So I stop crying, force myself to take a deep breath. Not because it stops hurting.
Because I make a decision. I step closer. Then lower myself slowly to my knees in front of him.
The sound he makes is quiet. Broken.
“What are you doing?” His voice is barely a whisper.
I look up at him from the floor, at the man I married, at the man who once told me exactly what this meant.
“You told me once,” I say, my voice low and steady now in a way it wasn’t a second ago, “that I only ever kneel for you.”
His face goes still.
“So I’m kneeling for you.”
The silence that follows is so complete it feels alive. I can hear both of us breathing. I can feel the air shift between us. I can feel his gaze on me so heavily it almost counts as touch.
“I’m yours, Elijah,” I whisper. “You claimed me, remember?”
My fingers twist in the fabric of my own shirt to stop them from shaking.
“You made me yours.”
His throat works. He still doesn’t move. I hold his gaze.
“I’m here.”
And now my voice breaks again, but I let it, because there is nothing left to hide.
“Take me.”
He stares at me. Long enough that time stops meaning anything. Long enough that I can feel my own heart beating in my throat. Long enough that every part of me knows this is the edge of something, that one more breath might tip it either way.
And he still doesn’t speak.
He just looks at me, like he is about to shatter.