Page 51 of Fractured Loyalties

“And you’re just showing me now?”

“I wasn’t ready for you to see the way I saw you. Then I realized the problem is that I was seeing youinsteadof knowing you.”

He clicks a file. Surveillance footage. Grainy. Distant. Me walking from the clinic to the café across the street. Anothershows me standing on my balcony. Wrapped in a towel. Drinking wine.

It should feel invasive. But what I feel is closer to grief.

“You watched me,” I say, “like I was a problem to solve.”

“No,” Elias says. “Like a pattern I couldn’t stop learning.”

I exhale sharply. “So you thought if you knew every angle of me, you could control the outcome?”

“No,” he repeats. “So I wouldn’t lose you.”

The room quiets. I move toward the screen and watch myself reach for my keys in a still frame. My head bowed. My shoulders are drawn in.

“This isn’t who I am anymore,” I whisper.

Elias steps beside me. “It never was. It’s just what you looked like while surviving.”

I turn to face him. “Delete it.”

He doesn’t hesitate. Click. Delete. Confirm. Gone.

“I want you in my sight,” he says. “But not like that.”

“Then how?”

His voice is low. “Close enough to stop pretending I don’t need you.”

I don’t move. Neither does he. The tension between us thickens.

And then I speak before I can overthink it: “Then touch me like you mean it.”

I think he’s going to deny me. Tell me I’m too vulnerable, or he’s too volatile. But he just looks at me like I’m something burning—hot enough to fear, too vital to abandon.

Then his fingers lift, hovering near my jaw. He doesn’t touch yet.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Say it again.”

“I want you to touch me.”

His hand lands lightly on my face, palm to cheek, thumb brushing the hinge of my jaw. I feel it in my knees.

He breathes in, like he’s trying to memorize this moment. Then his other hand comes to my waist—no pressure, just placement.

His lips find mine slowly. No rush. Like he’s letting his body believe it’s real. The kiss is restrained, but it scorches. Because it’s him. And because I asked.

When he pulls back, his eyes are heavy. But he waits.

I nod. “Don’t stop.”

He takes it like an order he’s waited years to obey.