Page 27 of Fractured Loyalties
“I don’t know.”
I stand. She doesn’t step back. Her eyes search mine, like she's trying to identify something dangerous and isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when she can't.
“You said earlier,” she starts, voice hushed, “that you won’t pretend you don’t want me.”
I wait.
Her voice wavers. “I want to know what that means to you. Want.”
I take a breath, long and even.
“It means you haunt me,” I say. “Not because you’re weak or broken. But because I see what you won’t show anyone else. The part that’s still fighting not to shatter. And it makes me want to devour you.”
Her lips part. Just slightly.
“I won’t lie to you,” I say. “I won’t hide the way I look at you. But I also won’t touch you unless you ask me to.”
She stares at me like she’s trying to figure out if the danger she feels is from me—or from herself.
Her fingers twitch at her sides.
And then she whispers, her voice a thread pulled tight between curiosity and caution, “What if I want both? To run, and to stay.”
For a beat, she just stands there with her words suspended between us—an echo waiting for an answer.
I don’t speak.
Instead, I lift my hand to her cheek. My thumb drags a slow, deliberate line from just beneath her eye to the edge of her jaw. She leans into the contact like she’s been waiting all night for permission to do it.
“You can run,” I murmur. “If that’s what you decide. But you won’t be able to unknow this”—my fingers drift down her throat, pausing at the pulse hammering there—“how I look at you. What it feels like when I’m this close.”
She trembles. Doesn’t pull away.
A gust of wind shifts her hair across her face, and I catch a strand, smoothing it behind her ear. Her breath catches. Her eyes hold mine.
Then she whispers, “Don’t make me choose yet.”
I nod once. “Then don’t.”
I back away slowly, watching her expression as I do. She doesn’t mask anything. Not the confusion. Not the longing. Not the fear of what she might do if I moved an inch closer.
After what seems like forever, we move inside, and the house is dim. The warmth from the fireplace spills across the open living room like a promise. I don’t offer her a seat. I don’task what she wants. I let her follow me at her own pace. She does.
She walks into the room behind me and stops, her eyes taking in the space again, as if it looks different now.
Maybe it does.
I drop onto the low leather sofa and rest my elbows on my knees. She hesitates a moment, then sits across from me, folding one leg under herself.
“I keep thinking about what you said,” she starts. “That I need choice.”
I meet her gaze. “You do.”
“What if I’m not used to having it?”
“Then you start with something small.”
She nods slowly, almost absently. “Like deciding to stay.”
