Chapter 7 — Routines That Shouldnt Intersect #2
And I knew, with growing panic, that if I got used to this—to him like this, human and accessible—the fall when all this ended would be fatal.
The afternoon dragged on in a strange truce.
We did work, yes. But it wasn't like the day before. We sat on the living room floor, papers spread across the plush rug in front of the fireplace. The formality of the office desk had been abandoned.
I translated paragraphs from Richard's emails, reading aloud, while Gabriel typed up the framework for the complaint we'd file with the Brazilian Bar Association and the Department of Justice.
The rain outside intensified, turning into a windstorm that rattled the windows. But inside, with the fire crackling and the warmth of the hearth, it felt like a cocoon.
Sometime around four in the afternoon, I stopped reading. My eyes burned.
I stretched my back, rolling my neck to ease the tension. The sweater slipped off my shoulder a little.
I felt Gabriel's gaze on me.
I turned my head. He'd stopped typing. He was staring at the bruise on my neck, now fully visible.
The silence stretched, heavy and charged.
“Does it hurt?” he asked again—the same question as yesterday, but the tone was different. Less clinical. More... guilty?
“Only when I move my neck,” I lied. It hurt all the time. A dull, throbbing ache that reminded me of him with every beat of my heart.
He set the laptop on the floor and crawled toward me. The movement was predatory, smooth. He stopped beside me, sitting back on his heels, invading my space.
“Let me see.”
This time, I didn't pull back. I turned my body toward him, exposing the mark. It was a test. I wanted to see what he would do.
Gabriel raised his hand. His fingers hovered over the bruised skin, not touching. I could feel the heat radiating from his palm.
“It looks bad,” he murmured, brow furrowed. “I don't usually leave marks.”
“I don't usually let myself be marked,” I replied, holding his gaze.
“Why did you let me?” The question was a whisper. “In the elevator. You could have pushed me away. You could have screamed. I would have stopped.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn't you?”
I swallowed hard, the truth scratching at my throat.
“Because I wanted to know what it was like,” I confessed, my voice trembling. “I wanted to know what it was like to feel something so strong it could erase the fear.”
Gabriel's eyes darkened. His pupils swallowed the iris.
“And did it work?” he asked. “Did it erase the fear?”
“No.” I shook my head. “It just moved the fear somewhere else. Before, I was afraid of being arrested. Now...”
“Now?”
“Now I'm afraid you'll stop.”
The confession hung between us, dangerous and irreversible. I had just handed him the loaded weapon. I had told him my resistance was a farce.
Gabriel let out a shaky breath. He closed the hand hovering over my neck into a fist and pulled it back.
“We're walking a very thin line, Elena.” He moved back, sitting on the rug, creating a safe distance of about a foot between us. “Richard is the target. Destroying his life is the priority. What... what's happening here between us is a chemical reaction to stress. It's misdirected adrenaline.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I asked, feeling a stab of bitter disappointment. “That it's just stress?”
“It's what I need to tell myself.” He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it. “Because if I admit what it really is... if I admit that the only thing I can think about while writing this legal defense is how you'd look lying on this rug, wearing nothing but that sweater...”
He stopped, cutting himself off with almost violent abruptness.
My heart raced. The air rushed from my lungs.
“...then I'll lose focus. And if I lose focus, Richard wins. And if Richard wins, you go to prison. And I won't let that happen.”
He stood abruptly, grabbing the laptop and papers as if they were on fire.
“I'll finish this in the office.” His voice went cold, professional—the lawyer reasserting control over the man. “Dinner's at eight. Make something simple.”
He left the room, marching toward the hallway, fleeing from me and the tension he'd created.
I stayed on the rug, staring at the fire he'd lit.
Misdirected adrenaline.
It was a lie. We both knew it was a lie. What existed between us wasn't stress. It was recognition. It was his darkness calling to mine, and mine answering with a cry of relief.
I touched the bruise on my neck again.
He said he was holding back to save me. To maintain focus.
But as I listened to his heavy footsteps upstairs, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, I realized something.
His patience was running out. So was mine.
And when Richard Hale finally fell, when the external threat disappeared and there was no longer any “focus” to maintain... there would be nothing left standing between us and the collision.
I stood up and walked to the window, watching night fall over the forest. Outside, the darkness was absolute.
I had never felt so safe and so endangered at the same time.
Tomorrow we would return to the city. Tomorrow we would begin the war against Richard.
But tonight... tonight we were still here. Alone. With unlocked doors and truths left half-said.
And I knew, with a certainty that made my hands sweat, that I wasn’t going to lock my bedroom door.
Because the scariest part wasn’t him coming in.
The scariest part was that I was beginning to wait, in the dark, for the sound of the doorknob turning.