Page 90 of Fractured Loyalties
I step inside.
"You okay?" I ask.
His answer is too long in coming. "Define okay."
I cross the room slowly, eyes tracing the curve of his spine, the edge of tension in his jaw. He looks like someone trying not to fall apart. Or maybe trying not to come undone.
"Is it Caleb?"
He shakes his head. "Not tonight."
"Then what?"
Elias turns toward me slowly, his eyes catching mine in the low light. "Ghosts."
I stop a foot away. "Yours?"
"They never really leave. Just trade names."
My fingers twitch at my side. "Show me."
He stares at me for a second too long, then nods.
I come closer, and he pulls up a screen. Names, files, encrypted threads spill across it in silent testimony. Nothing I understand. Nothing I need to. Because what matters is the way his hand curls into a fist at the sight of them.
"Tell me where it hurts," I say, softer now.
He doesn’t look at me when he answers. "It hurts in the places I let go of myself to survive."
I press my hand against his back.
"Then let me remind you what staying feels like."
He doesn’t speak. But when I step around to face him fully, there’s something in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
Want.
Not for my body. Not only. But for the quiet I bring when everything else is screaming.
He lifts a hand and touches my cheek. Just barely. A graze. Like he’s checking if I’m real.
And I am.
I lean into it.
"Come to bed," I whisper.
He closes his eyes.
And when he opens them again, the storm has settled.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay."
His hand lingers on my back as we leave the office, not forceful, just steady. The way you might guide someone through a dark hallway you know too well. We walk slow. Not because the house demands it—but because something between us does.
When we reach the bedroom again, I step in first. The sheets are still twisted from when I left. A crease where my body had been. The light in the corner lamp is low, but enough.
I sit on the edge of the bed, watching as Elias pulls the door until it clicks shut behind him. Not locked. Not guarded. Just…closed. And then he looks at me like he's memorizing something again. A detail he might need if I ever disappear.
