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He doesn’t smile. Just breathes, and that feels like a confession in itself.
“So,” he says, dragging out the word like it physically hurts him to say it. He scratches the back of his neck, rocking back slightly on his heels, then forward again like the ground beneath him is too unsteady to stay still on. “I got all these… gross feelings inside me about you.”
I blink. That’s it. That’s all I can do because, what the hell kind of sentence is that?
He watches my reaction carefully, eyes narrowed like he’s waiting for me to laugh or punch him or maybe both. I do neither. I just stare at him, trying to figure out if he’s having an actual emotional moment or if this is just another one of his catastrophically terrible jokes. He clears his throat, glances away, then back at me with an almost pained expression, like he’s forcing the words out through sheer will.
“And I don’t mean, like… normal feelings. I mean, it’s not just the you’re-hot-and-I-wanna-see-you-naked kind of thing. Though, for the record, you are. And I do.”
I cross my arms, raising an eyebrow.
He groans. “Right, no, that’s not helping. What I’m saying is, I think about you all the damn time. And not in a normal, healthy way. In a ‘Luna smiled at me today, and I haven’t stopped replaying it in my head like a lunatic’ way.”
“You are a lunatic,” I say dryly.
“Exactly!” he says, pointing at me like I’ve proven his point. “And now you’re part of it. So really, this is your fault.”
I stare at him, unblinking, and he sighs, dragging a hand down his face.
“Okay, okay, let me start over. I like you. Like, really like you. And I don’t do that. Not because I’m emotionally stunted, which, okay, I am, but because every time I have before, it ends badly. I end badly. And with you…” He swallows hard. “It feels like I’m finally something real. And that scares the shit out of me.”
My stomach twists. He’s not joking anymore. Not really. There’s humor laced through it like a defense mechanism, but underneath is that rare thing Elias tries so hard to bury, honesty.
I take a step closer, and his eyes lock on mine.
“You think this is gross?” I ask.
He shrugs, hopeless. “Feelings are gross. But you? You’re... unbearable.”
He means it like a compliment. I can hear it in the way he says it. The way he almost smiles, but doesn’t.
I reach out, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and pulling him just close enough to hear my voice drop. “Good. I hope I haunt you.”
“You already do,” he breathes.
The way he jerks back like I’ve slapped him, and I blink, stunned by how quickly the heat between us dissolves into something brittle and chaotic.
“I mean, we shouldn’t, fuck, okay, okay, it’s not like that,” he stammers, backing up a step like I’ve become a threat to his precious equilibrium. His hands are everywhere scrubbing through his hair, gesturing like he’s trying to sculpt words out of the air. “This isn’t about sex. Well, I mean, it was, in the beginning. And it’s good. It’s really good, like, send-me-to-an-early-grave-and-bury-me-happy good, but now it’s… you know. You’re in my bloodstream or whatever. And not in a hot,vampire way. In a, you’ve-made-your-home-in-my-ribcage-and-I-hate-it, way.”
I blink at him, trying to follow the sharp turns in his speech, but he just keeps going, faster now, as if pausing would kill the momentum and make him process what he’s saying.
“And the bond. Fuck. Yeah. That thing. That disaster waiting to happen. Do I want it? I don’t not want it, which is worse somehow, right? Because I’ve always said I wouldn’t. Ever. And now here I am, sweaty-palmed and emotionally compromised like an idiot with a crush and no exit strategy. And you, you, you look at me like I matter. Like you see me. And I don’t know how to be seen like that, Luna. I’m used to being the punchline, not the fucking, main character.”
He finally stops, panting like he just ran a marathon of emotional self-sabotage. He opens his mouth again, probably to make it worse, and I press a finger to his lips.
“Stop,” I murmur. “Just… breathe.”
His lips part under my finger, and for one charged second, the world stills.
“I’m already in your bloodstream,” I whisper. “We passed the point of no return a long time ago.”
He exhales, shaky and stunned, like he hadn’t realized how close he’d come to unraveling until I didn’t let him. His gaze drops to my mouth, then back up to my eyes, uncertain, vulnerable, wrecked in a way that makes me want to hurt and heal him at once.
“Gross,” he mutters.
But he leans in anyway and he blurts it like a confession and an accusation all in one breath, voice pitched too high, words stumbling over each other as if he’s afraid I’ll interrupt him, afraid if he stops, he’ll never say it again.
“I love you, okay?! There, I said it! And I want to bind to you, Luna, I want to do the whole stupid forever thing, the bleed-for-you, die-for-you, bond-you-to-my-soul-and-hope-I-survive-it thing, even though it’s the dumbest fucking decision I’ve ever made in my life, and I’ve done some really stupid shit, like that time I tried to prank Orin and ended up covered in sentient moss for a week, but this is worse! This is so much worse because it’s real and it’s you and you ruin everything, in the best, most infuriating way possible!”