Page 66

Eat Your Damn Apple Slices, Elijah

Isobel sat on the edge of the desk, right beside Elijah’s laptop.

His jaw flexed, his eyes darting up to her mouth, brows lowering. She gently closed his laptop and pushed it back.

“I was—” he started.

“Maybe.” She cut him off with a shrug. “But now you’re doing this.”

He levelled her with a look, and for the first time that night, he was actually seeing her. Not just her, but anyone . He shifted all his focus and attention to her, frowning slightly, before raising a single, elegant brow.

She slapped the paper cups down onto the desk in front of him. “Gabe made you apple slices.”

He didn’t even glance at the cups, but kept his attention on her, eyes slowly drifting over her features, fingers flexing against the desk. “What?”

Elijah could barely think straight. For days now, he hadn’t been able to drag himself out of the prison of his own regimented thoughts.

He barely registered the press of the paper cups into his palm as Isobel slid off the desk and wrapped her fingers around his sleeve, tugging until he rose to his feet.

“Wait here,” she said, “just need to tell the others where we’re going.”

He blinked at her retreating form. He was a smart man, but for some reason, he couldn’t figure out what was happening.

If she had asked him to fix the rusted plumbing system, all of his preparation work would have kicked him into autopilot, and he would be elbow-deep in a toolbox already, but the “wait here” command had him at a complete loss.

He was prepared to feverishly monitor the news sites.

He was prepared to fix a filtration system.

For crying out loud, he was prepared to weave them all sleeping mats out of fucking leaves.

He wasn’t prepared to “wait here.”

When she returned, both of their hoodies were slung over her arm, and she held a torch.

“What happened?” he asked, trailing her through the first steel door. She tossed him the hoodie, and he pulled it on as she did the same.

“Nothing.” She stole one of the paper cups and slipped her hand into his freed grip, pulling him toward the second door. Her palm was warm and small, her skin so much softer than his, the sleeve of her hoodie bunching at her wrist.

She was pulling him down the dim, metal-lined corridor toward the exit.

He felt the kiss of the cold air as she pushed the door open, and then they were outside, the musty, recycled air of the bunker instantly replaced by the sharp bite of wet leaves and rain.

The forest around them rustled and whispered, the occasional droplet of water falling from the dark leaves above.

Isobel glanced back at him, and he noticed that her braids were beginning to unravel. He stopped allowing her to pull him, but she only sighed and shifted the torch into his hand.

“Where are we going?” he asked, turning the light on and directing it through the trees. He assumed she was fetching something from the vans, so he was surprised at her words.

“Anywhere. It’s not like you were going to sleep or anything.”

She picked a pretzel from her cup and blinked up at him as she chewed on it, waiting for him to lead the way.

“It’s the middle of the night,” he said.

She plucked out another pretzel and scoffed. “Like you don’t have this entire forest mapped out in your head. ”

The next pretzel she handed to him, and he finally understood the concern he could feel through the bond. She was worried about him. He was such a dense idiot .

He took the pretzel and shoved it into his mouth, leading them across the damp, mossy ground. “How bad do I look, then?”

“Even your dark circles have dark circles,” she quipped, following him.

His eyes flicked upwards, not that she could see his face.

He considered being annoyed for half a second, but it was quickly overtaken by the little spark of pleasure he felt at her attention.

Gabriel, Niko, Kalen, and Mikel all took care of him.

He was used to them trying, and he was used to ignoring them.

He wasn’t used to Isobel trying to bring him back from one of his manic states, and his inability to resist her attempts landed him in entirely foreign territory.

Being torn from his preoccupation made him antsy and confused, but Isobel was another of his preoccupations.

As disorientating as it was, it also felt natural to allow all his attention to shift to her.

“Where are we going?” she asked. If he had the energy, he might have laughed.

“No idea,” he admitted. “This part of the woodland has no hiking trails.” He skimmed his hand over his pocket, making sure he still had his phone so that they wouldn’t get lost, and they meandered through the tall trees, their boots crunching against wet leaves and snapping the occasional twig.

Their path twisted and climbed, winding through the hardwoods, the ground becoming rocky, stepping up higher and higher.

He finally stopped as they reached a small stream, the water gurgling softly, flowing over stone.

Isobel crouched down on a moss-covered boulder, reaching out to dip her hand into the water.

She hissed quietly, drawing her fingers back and shaking them out, droplets scattering everywhere.

“Cold?” Elijah asked, his voice a low rumble, rough from their silent walk through the forest.

“Freezing.” She grinned up at him, her mismatched eyes glinting in the half-light.

She straightened and nudged him in the side, jerking her chin toward the water.

“But it’s clean. Look.” She clicked on her phone light, angling it down into the stream.

The water was crystal clear, with every rock and pebble on the bottom visible.

The faintest flashes of silver flickered through the current as tiny fish darted away from the sudden light.

The stream cut through a rocky crevice just ahead, dropping down into a deeper basin on the other side, the water swirling gently before continuing its winding journey down the mountain.

Elijah’s jaw flexed as he watched the light play over the water, his mind already calculating the risk of infection, hypothermia, and the odds of something poisonous or parasitic hiding in the depths.

It was unseasonably warm for Burgundy in late January, but it still wasn’t advisable.

His thoughts twisted and spiralled, tangling themselves into knots he couldn’t unravel.

He barely noticed when Isobel took the paper cup out of his hand and set them both down on a nearby rock.

She stepped closer, her hand sliding around his wrist, fingers slipping beneath his sleeve to rest against his bare skin.

“Elijah,” she said softly, and his gaze snapped to hers, his heart giving a dull, painful thud against his ribs.

She reached up, plucked the torch from his other hand, and turned it off, setting it down beside the cups.

“You’re not getting me in that stream,” he said, as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight.

As soon as he could see again, the first thing he noticed was her smirk.

“You can watch,” she said, reaching for the hem of her hoodie. She tugged it up over her head in one smooth motion, her half-unravelled braids swaying as she tossed the fabric aside, the cool night air immediately raising goosebumps along her bare arms.

“You’ll get sick,” he growled at her, fingers itching to sweep up the garment and force it back over her head, even as his eyes became riveted to those unravelled ropes of her hair, the incessant need to pick them apart and bury his hands in her waves throbbing through his body.

She wore a thin, loose shirt beneath, the fabric clinging to her skin, already damp from the wet air around them.

Her fingers moved to the waistband of her tights next, and he caught her wrist.

“Wait,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper, his pulse hammering against the inside of his skull. She froze, her wide eyes fixed on his face, her chest rising and falling in shallow, nervous breaths. He could feel the heat radiating off her skin, the rapid, panicked beat of her heart.

“Stop,” he said, his grip tightening fractionally, though she had made no other moves.

Her breathing hitched, and she went still, her fingers still hooked into the waistband of her tights, her eyes locked on his, lips parted slightly.

The moonlight cut through the trees behind her, casting her pale skin in a silver glow as her head tilted back, her pulse flickering visibly in the hollow of her throat.

He suddenly realised he was standing at a crossroads, and he didn’t want to take the path he always did.

His chest tightened further, a slow, dangerous heat spreading through his limbs.

He released her wrist and took a step back, his eyes trailing over the curve of her collarbone, the sharp angle of her jaw, the faint, damp curls at her temples.

“Off,” he said quietly, his voice roughened, the single word slipping out before he had a chance to reconsider.

She blinked, her pupils expanding, and then, without a word, she slid her tights down her legs. She kicked off her boots, her socks following .

“The shirt too,” he said.