35. Eli
Eli
The drive feels endless.
Every mile drags me closer to a place I spent years trying to forget. Or maybe it feels endless because Finn still hasn’t woken up.
I sit in the back seat with Finn slumped against the door beside me.
Adrian finally moved my restraints to the front, a small, calculated kindness he still makes sure I acknowledge.
My wrists throb as blood slowly returns to my fingers.
The pins and needles fade, but the pain remains. Every nerve feels raw and awake.
I look at Finn. His breathing is shallow, uneven. Every few seconds, my eyes drift to his chest, tracking the rise and fall, needing the reassurance that he is still here. Still with me.
Adrian sits in the front seat, calm and relaxed, like this is nothing more than a normal drive home. Like kidnapping someone is just another routine task.
I stare out the window as the dark forest rushes past. Snow-covered hills dissolve into night, broken only by distant lights that remind me civilization still exists somewhere out there.
Adrian follows my gaze in the rearview mirror.
“They won’t find you,” he says.
I don’t answer.
“They don’t even know where to start.”
Still nothing. I feel him watching me, waiting for a reaction that doesn’t come.
The silence irritates him. Good. Let it.
I spent years filling his silences, years trying to make him happy, years apologizing for things I didn’t break and fixing things that were never mine to fix. Not anymore.
His hand settles on my knee, and my head snaps toward him before I can stop it. I force myself to look away.
A sigh leaves him. “Look at me.”
I don’t move.
His fingers tighten. “Look at me, Elijah.”
Slowly, reluctantly, I lift my eyes. His dark gaze locks onto mine.
“You will choose me,” he says.
The words twist something bitter in my stomach. “No.”
The smile disappears immediately. “Don’t lie to me, sweetheart.”
“I chose Finn.”
Silence drops through the SUV, heavy and suffocating. That is the truth he didn’t want spoken out loud. I chose Finn. I chose survival. I chose anything but him.
I watch it land in him. His jaw tightens as understanding settles in.
“You always do this,” he says.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it, sharp and disbelieving, even to my own ears. “What do I do, Adrian?” I ask, still riding that edge of disbelief.
“Twist things.” His expression hardens.
“You tell yourself whatever story makes you feel better,” I say.
His hand tightens on my knee, but I don’t stop.
“You didn’t save me.”
Silence.
“You didn’t love me.”
Silence again.
“You owned me.”
The slap comes fast, too fast to prepare for. My head snaps sideways into the door. Pain bursts across my cheek, and my mouth fills with hot, metallic blood.
For a moment, everything rings.
Then I turn my head back and spit the blood directly at Adrian. My cheek throbs, but the stillness in Adrian feels like a victory. For once, he doesn’t know what comes next.
Adrian reaches across and grabs my chin, forcing me to face him. His fingers dig in hard. Blood drips from my mouth onto his hand.
“Careful,” he says quietly.
The word is controlled, measured, but something in him has shifted. For the first time, I see it. There is uncertainty there now, because I am not following his script anymore, the one he built, line by line, over years.
And I have cut the fucking strings.
Adrian lets go, leaning back into his seat.
I turn away from him and look at Finn again. His chest rises and falls, steady enough to anchor me, fragile enough to terrify me. I watch him, and I let the car carry us forward toward whatever comes next.
Hours later, the SUV finally stops, and my heart stops with it.
Not here. Not yet. Please. I’m not ready.
The black iron gates appear, and the SUV rolls forward as they open.
This is my hell, my nightmare. Suddenly, I’m twenty-one again, standing beside Adrian, believing he loved me.
Believing I had finally found somewhere I belonged.
Believing he was going to give me a home.
But he never did, and the memory makes me sick.
The driveway stretches ahead, winding through the trees.
Snow clings to the branches, the ocean barely visible beyond the darkness.
Everything looks the same. Every turn of the driveway, every shadow hanging in the trees.
I see every place I hid and cried, hiding the fear, the bruises, hiding myself.
The house appears at the end of the drive: glass, stone, timber. I used to think it was beautiful. I was wrong. It was a house, never a home.
* * *
The SUV stops, and Adrian turns to me.
“Welcome home, sweetheart.” He hears my breathing quicken. “You remember.”
He leans over and grips my chin again. “Good.”
A coldness breaks out over my skin, crawling down my spine. He wants me to remember every bruise, every lie, every moment he broke me.
He opens the door and steps out. Cold air rushes into the cabin, and the smell hits me first: salt from the ocean, pine from the trees that border us.
Adrian reaches in and pulls me from the vehicle. My legs fail me, and I hit the gravel hard. Pain shoots through my knees as the stones cut into my skin, but he hauls me back up before I can stay down. I can feel blood seeping into my jeans.
Behind me, Finn is dragged from the SUV and carried toward the house.
“Be careful with him,” I say before I can stop myself.
One of the men laughs. Adrian looks amused as we start walking.
He opens the front door, and suddenly I’m back there. It’s real again. The smells and sounds of the place I escaped flood back into me, wrapping around my skin like something alive. This is the place that destroyed me.
A numbness settles over me then. Not peace. Not acceptance. Something quieter. A surrender of the fight. I’ve seen it before in patients who know there is nothing left to resist, a stillness that comes before the end.
Deep down, I know this is it. There is no hiding anymore.
Adrian could have taken me anywhere. We could have disappeared. But no. He brought me here. His house, his territory, his stage.
I understand then that this is the final act of Doctor Adrian Blackwell, because he knows I will never bow to him again.
“You know why I brought you back, sweetheart.” His smile is slow.
My blood runs cold.
“Because you’re going to kill me.”
The words hang between us. For once, Adrian doesn’t smile wider.
“Not yet, sweetheart.” He nudges me further inside. “Come inside.”
I walk beside him quietly, watching as the man carrying Finn drops him onto the couch. My gaze drifts through the room, then out through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the cliffs beyond and the dark water waiting below.
This is the place where it all started. This is the place where it will end. Not because he brought me home, but because he brought me back to finish what he started.
* * *
“Walk with me.”
Adrian’s voice is too quiet. Calm, almost careful, like something is already breaking beneath it.
I look at him, and for the first time since he took me, I see it all clearly. I see how his eyes are empty. I know then, he isn’t fully here anymore.
His hand hangs close to his side, too still, too deliberate. I follow the angle of his arm, then his gaze. I’ve seen enough. I know what he is holding. I know why he kept me away from everyone else.
The weight of the gun settles into the air between us, heavier than the silence.
My feet move before I decide to move, habit more than choice. He moves, I move. But another part of me already knows. This is it.
We follow the path down toward the beach.
The sand crunches beneath my shoes as the wind sharpens, salt thickening in the air. Adrian walks beside me, speaking softly now, like he is trying to convince himself more than me.
I stay silent, eyes on the water ahead, on the mountains cutting into the sky. There is a strange peace in it. Finn is safe. Deck will find him; he will take care of him.
And CJ…
My chest tightens. CJ will move on. He has to. He has to find someone who can love him the way he deserves. Just like Charlie loved him. Just like I did.
“You know I tried, Elijah,” Adrian whispers.
His voice cracks just enough to feel real. “I really did. I tried to give you everything. I tried to be everything you needed.” His words scrape against old wounds. His version of love was a cage, and I lived in it for years.
I watch him, unable to speak, my breath shallow as my heart pounds so violently I’m convinced even the devil standing in front of me can hear it.
He glances at me, waiting. Waiting for me to fix this, like I always used to.
“You still left.”
I swallow hard, and there it is, the blame.
“You don’t understand,” he continues, stepping closer. “You think you can just walk away and I’m supposed to be okay? You think I can watch you choose someone else after everything?”
His fingers tighten around the gun, and my eyes flick down for half a second.
He notices. Of course he does. The man standing in front of me still believes he owns the ending, that he owns this stage.
His voice drops lower. “What am I supposed to do with a world where you’re not mine?”
Fear settles deep in my chest then, because I finally understand. Adrian didn’t bring me here to say goodbye. He brought me here because he wants me to be the one who understands him when he does it. The one person who can stop him. The one person who never will.
I watch as he raises the gun.
“Kneel.”
The word lands like a command carved into bone.
I close my eyes and lower myself into the sand. It is colder than I expect, sharp against my skin. The wind wraps around me, but I barely feel it anymore.
My mind slips away from here.
CJ. My Sunshine.
I picture his smile. Hear his voice. The way he looks at me like I matter. Like I am wanted without conditions. I smile faintly at the memory of his dimple, the feel of his fingers in my hair, the warmth of him when everything else went quiet. I remember his scent.
He is mine.
And now I hope, I wish for him, he will find someone else who will love him just like I did.
My fingers sink into the sand one last time, letting it slip through them. A sliver of hope breaks through the fear.
I hope he comes. I hope he finds me. I hope he saves me.
Because I’m not ready to leave him. Not yet. Not ever.
“I love you,” I whisper into the wind.
The gunshot cracks through the air, and I hear someone scream.
Then there’s nothing.