Chapter 23 Eliana
ELIANA
re-fire: /rē?fī(?)r/: verb
This is it. The moment my vision finally gives out, ninety days be damned.
I should’ve known this would happen. Overpromise and underdeliver—that’s what always happens to me. Honestly, given the track record of my life to date, how did I not see this coming?
“Eliana?” Bastian’s voice slices through the darkness. “Are you okay?”
“I—I think so.” I gulp. It’s eerily loud. “Are you?”
“Fine.” A pause. “The elevator just stopped. Power’s out.”
Not blindness, then. Not yet, at least. Just a regular, run-of-the-mill mechanical failure trapping me in a metal box with the man who makes my brain short-circuit on a good day.
Cool.
Cool cool cool.
Totally fine. This is fine. Everything is fine and definitely not on fire.
“Can you see anything?” I ask. I’m still not one hundred percent sure that this isn’t all some figment of my imagination.
“No. It’s pitch black.”
I hear rustling, then a click. A small glow appears—Bastian’s phone flashlight. The beam illuminates his face from below, casting shadows in the hollows of his cheeks.
“There,” he says softly. “Better?”
“Well, ‘better’ is relative.”
“How so?”
I force out a laugh. “I mean, we went from ‘actively trying to murder each other’ to ‘trapped in a small metal box together,’ so I guess that’s technically an improvement. Strictly speaking.”
Bastian doesn’t laugh. The flashlight beam stays steady on my face, and I wish he’d point it literally anywhere else because I’m pretty sure my expression right now is doing things that would get me fired if this were a normal workplace situation.
Which, let’s be real—this stopped being normal about three emotional breakdowns ago.
“We should call for help,” he says, already pulling up his phone. I watch his thumb swipe across the screen. Once. Twice. Three times.
“Let me guess,” I say before he can fill me in. “No signal?”
“Yeah. No signal,” he confirms.
“There’s an emergency button,” I point out, gesturing toward the panel I can’t actually see. “Red one. Usually near the—”
“I know where the emergency button is, Eliana.”
“Well, excuse me for trying to help, Bastian.”
He sighs, a sound that seems to fill the entire elevator shaft. “I’m sorry. That was—” He stops. Tries again. “I’m not great with enclosed spaces.”
Oh.
That’s… unexpected.
“Strange for someone who sleeps in a coffin.”
In the gloom, his confused expression is downright hilarious. “Huh?”
“You know, because you’re a vampire,” I explain. “Cold-blooded, immortal, sucks the life out of everyone around you…?”
A beat of silence. Then—is that a laugh? It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but I swear I hear the faintest huff of amusement. Barely perceptible. Not exactly blowing the top off the Richter scale.
But it’s there.
“I don’t sleep in a coffin.” He’s still growling, but it’s several notches less enraged than it was a few minutes ago. “I sleep in a king-sized bed with Egyptian cotton sheets, thank you very much.”
“Of course you do. Probably thread count in the thousands.”
“Twelve hundred, actually.”
“You know your thread count off the top of your head?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“No, Bastian. Normal people do not memorize their sheet specifications. Honestly, that explains a lot about you.”
And yet not nearly enough. Because, like I’ve been doing way too often lately, I keep wondering about who made Bastian Hale tick the way he does.
To say I’ve never met anyone like him before is the understatement of the year. Perhaps the century. But my mind simply cannot fathom how his mind works. It’s completely incoherent for someone so snarly and growly and generally inhospitable to be capable of tenderness at the most random moments.
Like now, for instance.
“Are you going to press the emergency button or are we just going to stand here discussing your bedding choices?” I ask.
“Right. Yes.” More rustling. I hear him move, feel the air shift as he reaches past me. His wintergreen scent fills my nostrils, and I have to physically restrain myself from leaning into it.
Get it together, Hunter. This is not the time.
There’s a click, then a long, sustained buzz. We wait. We wait. We wait…
And a grand total of nothing happens.
Bastian presses it again. Buzz. Still nothing.
“Maybe it’s broken,” I suggest.
“The building is less than ten years old. Everything is up to code.”
“Well, clearly not the HVAC systems at Olympus…”
“Hunter.”
“Too soon? Yeah, probably too soon.” I scoot around him and try pressing the button myself, just in case I happen to have some magical command over electrical components that Bastian lacks.
But I’m no luckier than he was. Fourth and fifth mashes fail to summon a reassuring voice to tell us help is on the way.
“Okay,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “So the emergency button is broken, we have no cell signal, and we’re stuck in a dark elevator. On the bright side, at least we’re not arguing anymore?”
Bastian’s phone flashlight swings toward me again. “This isn’t funny.”
“I’m aware. But the alternative to laughing is screaming, and I’m trying to keep things professional here.”
“Because we’ve been so professional up until now,” he drawls.
“Well, one of us has been trying.”
“And which one is that, exactly?”
I open my mouth to fire back, but then the elevator shudders again. Just a small tremor, barely noticeable, but enough to make my stomach drop.
Bastian’s hand shoots out and grabs my arm. “Don’t move.”
“I’m not moving.”
“Good. Just—stay still.”
I can feel each individual finger through the thin fabric of my blouse, the same way I did upstairs.
My pulse kicks up another notch, and I’m suddenly keenly aware of how small this space is.
How close we’re standing. How his thumb is doing that thing again where it paints endless circles against my skin.
“Bastian—”
“I know.” His voice is rough. “I know.”
But he doesn’t let go.
The flashlight beam wavers slightly. I realize his hand is shaking.
“Hey,” I say softly. “It’s okay. We’re going to be fine.” Buildings have safety protocols. Someone will notice the elevator is stuck. They’ll send maintenance. “We’ll be out of here in—” I check my watch, but it’s too dark to see the face. “—probably twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.”
“I’m not worried about help,” he says in a choked voice. “I’m worried about what I’ll do if I’m stuck in here with you for much longer.”
Oh. My. Lanta. I swallow hard, though my cheeks are approximately the temperature of the sun right now. “We can keep it PG.”
He nods. “We can do that.”
“We can, right? I mean, can we?” I ask. “Because I’m not gonna lie—I’m starting to freak out a little bit here. You’re not the only one who’s bad with enclosed spaces.”
“Yeah? What’s your excuse?”
I don’t answer right away. Can’t, really, because my throat has gone tight and my brain is doing that thing where it yanks me backward through time without asking permission first. Very rude.
I’m seven years old, crouched in the back of Mama’s closet, wedged between a broken vacuum cleaner and a stack of shoeboxes that reek of mothballs.
The latest Derek is shouting in the living room. He’s using a lot of grownup words and I don’t know what they mean, but the meaning doesn’t seem to matter as much as the volume.
His keeps going up.
Mama’s is going down and down and down.
“Get in the closet, baby,” Mama had whispered when the fighting first started over dinner.
As she pushed me toward the bedroom, her hands were shaking so badly that the bracelets on her wrist were clacking like maracas.
“Cover your ears and sing yourself a song, okay? A nice loud one. Don’t come out until I say. ”
So I did as she said, because that’s what good daughters do.
I sang every song I could think of—”Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” that Spice Girls song from the radio that I didn’t really know all the words to.
I sang until my throat hurt, hands clamped over my ears, eyes squeezed shut against the darkness.
But I could still hear the crash of something breaking. Mama’s sharp gasp. Derek’s boots stomping across the floor.
And when I finally stopped singing and peeled my hands off my ears, I could hear the silence he left behind. In that silence, there was one sound. The smallest sob. My mother’s as she cried all to herself.
That was worse than all the noise put together.
Bastian’s thumb stops its circling. “Eliana?”
“I’m fine.” But no “I’m fine” has ever sounded less fine than that one. It’s strangled and wrong, and the walls are pressing in, and suddenly, the elevator isn’t just small, it’s tiny, shrinking by the second, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t fucking breathe—
My chest constricts like someone’s wrapped it in plastic wrap and keeps pulling tighter, tighter, tighter. The darkness isn’t just dark anymore—it’s alive, pressing against my eyeballs, filling my mouth, my nose, my lungs.
“Eliana.” Bastian sounds far away, like he’s calling from the other end of a tunnel. “Eliana, look at me.”
“Can’t—” I gasp. “Can’t see—too dark—”
The flashlight beam swings up toward the ceiling as he sets it on the floor and drags me down to a seat. I can half-see now, and Bastian is asking me if that’s better—
But it’s not better, because now, I can see how small this box is, how there’s nowhere to go, no escape, and the voices of all the Dereks who ever yelled at my mother are somehow bleeding through twenty years and a thousand miles to fill my ears with shouting and I hear Mama’s crying again and Twinkle, twinkle, little star and the sound of plates breaking against a wall—
“I need—” My hands scrabble at my throat, at the high collar of my blouse that suddenly feels like a noose. “I need to get out—”
“Hey, hey, no—” Bastian’s hands close over mine, stopping me from clawing at the fabric. “Don’t do that. You’re okay. We’re okay.”
“We’re trapped—”
“It’s fine—”
“I can’t—I need—” The words won’t come. Nothing will come except this horrible wheezing sound that can’t possibly be coming from me, but it is, it is, I think I might be dying—
“Fuck it.”
Bastian’s hands move from mine to my collar, and then I hear fabric rip.
Cool air hits my throat, my collarbone, the hollow at the base of my neck. I suck in a breath. Then another. Another.
“There,” Bastian urges. “That’s it. Breathe with me. In through your nose—yes, like that—hold it—now, out through your mouth.”
I try to follow his instructions, but my lungs are still doing their impression of a fish flopping on a dock. In, out, in, out, except nothing feels like enough.
“You’re okay,” he says again. His hands are on my shoulders now, grounding me. “You’re safe. I promise. Nothing’s going to hurt you here.”
“You—you just—you ripped my shirt—” I manage between gasps.
“I know. I’m sorry. But you couldn’t breathe.”
“It was—it was sofreakingexpensive—”
And then, because my brain has decided now is the perfect time to completely malfunction, I start laughing. Or maybe crying. Possibly both. It’s hard to tell when your entire nervous system is staging a coup.
“I’ll buy you ten new shirts,” Bastian says. “A hundred. Whatever you want. Just please keep breathing.”
I nod. Each breath comes a little bit easier than the one before.
It helps that Bastian is rubbing those circles again. They’re on the back of my neck this time, his huge hand cradling my head gently as he strokes tiny little laps around my nape.
“That’s good,” he murmurs. “You’re doing so good. Stay with me.”
The flashlight on the floor casts our shadows huge and distorted against the elevator walls. In the dim glow, I can see Bastian’s face, and my God, has anything ever looked more beautiful?
“Say that again,” I whisper hoarsely.
Bastian blinks. “Say what?”
My pulse kicks up another notch. This is a terrible idea. Possibly the worst idea I’ve ever had, and that’s really saying something.
But I’m so tired of being careful. So, so tired of swallowing back the things I want to say.
I had ninety days. I’m down to eighty-four now. What’s the point of having a countdown if you don’t do anything with the time you have left?
“Say ‘fuck it.’”
A pause.
Then Bastian nods slowly. Somehow, he understands what I’m asking.
His eyes search mine in the dim glow of the phone flashlight, looking for something; I’m not sure what. Permission? A sign that I’ve lost my mind?
He’ll find both if he looks hard enough.
“Eliana…”
“I know.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“I know.”
“You work for me.”
“I’m very aware.”
His hands tighten fractionally against my neck. “If we do this, everything changes.”
“Everything’s already changed,” I whisper. “It changed the second I put my hands on your chest.”
He’s so close now I can count his eyelashes. More importantly, I see the moment he decides to let go.
He nods again, just barely.
“Fuck it,” he growls.
Then he kisses me.