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But I wanted to.
Eventually, I sat up. My muscles ached. My skin still hummed from the rawness of everything—the sex, the fight, the grief I hadn’t wanted to name. I pulled a hoodie from Elias’s dresser and slipped it on. Then a pair of his sweatpants. Then socks. I braided my curls with shaking fingers and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the closed door like it might reveal his intentions if I glared hard enough.
And because waiting is a cruel sport, my mind went where it always does when it’s unguarded.
Home.
If you could call it that.
It wasn’t the place that haunted me, really. It was the people. The ones who’d made a thousand choices I never understood.
Emmaline, for one.
God, Emmaline.
Seeing her in my apartment today had shocked me more than the intervention itself. My sister was the kind of woman who knew exactly how many cents were in her checking account at any given time. She clipped coupons. She reused foil. She once declined a wedding because it was outside the city limits and gas was too expensive.
And yet, she’d shown up in Charleston.
That meant airfare. Time off. Maybe a hotel, unless she was crashing with one of my friends. It meant she’d rearranged her life—the brittle, carefully budgeted one—for me.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
It would’ve been easier if she hadn’t come at all.
I could’ve kept resenting her from a safe emotional distance. Could’ve kept pretending I was the only one who’d tried, the only one who’d broken herself to keep Mom afloat.
But Emmaline’s presence today complicated the narrative.
And I hated complications.
Especially the kind that cracked open old wounds and whisperedmaybe you’re not as alone as you think.
Maybe they do care.
Maybe love looks different when it’s limping.
I swallowed hard, blinking up at the ornate ceiling again, wondering what the hell Elias was planning, and why—despite everything—I wanted him to walk back through that door more than anything else in the world.
Finally, the door opened with a soft click.
Elias stepped inside, slower this time. His expression wasn’t unreadable—far from it. I saw it in the tightness around his mouth, the way his shoulders squared like he was bracing for rejection. But beneath all that was something softer. A question. An offering.
“Come with me,” he said gently, holding out his hand.
I stared at him.
And then—almost in spite of myself—I stood.
I placed my hand in his, and he curled his fingers around mine like it meant something. Like I meant something.
He led me down the corridor, past the suite and through a quiet wing of the mansion I hadn’t seen before. Polished floors, gilded sconces, windows that framed the Charleston harbor like it was a painting.
“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice hoarse from disuse.
“You’ll see.”
He opened a tall double door at the end of the hall, revealing a room bathed in warm light.