Page 20 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

I glance—just once—and my stomach twists.

It’s not Elias.

It’s not anyone I know.

But the way he scans the room doesn’t belong to someone looking for a table.

His eyes move like they’re checking exits. Counting heads. Weighing variables.

I look away fast. Back to my plate. I lift my glass to my lips and take a long, steady drink.

Alec leans in again. “Something wrong?”

“No,” I say, too quickly.

He looks toward the door. “That guy?”

I shake my head. “No idea who that is.”

But I feel Elias before I see him.

A pressure in the air. A static charge just behind my skin.

And when I glance at the window, I see him.

Not inside.

Across the street.

Parked.

Still.

Watching.

He knows.

The stranger doesn’t approach our table. Doesn’t linger near the bar. He takes a seat two rows down, alone. He doesn’t order, doesn’t take off his coat.

He just waits.

I pretend to laugh at something Celeste says. I nod at a joke I don’t hear.

But my body is wound tight around a center I can’t show.

The stranger checks his watch.

Once.

Then again.

It’s a signal.

And I know it.

My phone buzzes in my lap.

Elias: He’s not here to eat.

I type with one hand, beneath the tablecloth.

Mara: What’s the play?

Elias: Wait. Let him show his hand.

My blood feels too loud in my veins.

I set my phone down beside my plate. My hand itches to hold it.

Across the table, Alec watches me. “You’re tense.”

“No more than usual,” I say.

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I mean it. You’re somewhere else.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” I ask. “If people kept showing up like ghosts?”

That lands.

He doesn’t push.

I pick up my glass again, keep my hand steady.

The stranger across the restaurant stands.

He doesn’t linger, doesn’t wait.

He walks out the same way he came in—like he never intended to stay.

The second he’s gone, something settles in my spine—but it isn’t relief.

It’s anticipation.

The way you brace after the lightning, waiting for the thunder.

Across the table, Celeste’s laughing again. But her eyes keep flicking to me. Not pushy. Not even probing. Just…reading.

Like she knows I’m writing something under the table she won’t get to read.

The check comes. Alec pulls his card first. Casual. Automatic. A little too performative.

“No argument,” he says, smiling faintly. “It’s on the department. Technically, morale-building is billable.”

“I’ll fight you next time,” Celeste grins, nudging him.

One of the admin girls whispers something about after-dinner drinks. Someone else mutters about their early shift.

I stand a little too fast.

Celeste catches my wrist under the table as the others rise.

“You okay?”

I nod. Too sharp.

We reach the door. Alec’s holding it open like he’s forgotten how to just exist in a space without performing in it.

Outside, the air is colder. The wind picks up fast, tugging at hair and sleeves like it has its own agenda.

I glance down the block. Elias’s car is there.

Alec walks beside me. “You want a ride?”

I shake my head. “I’ve got one.”

He follows my gaze. Sees nothing.

Still, he nods slowly. “Good.”

The others disperse into laughter and Uber notifications. I stay where I am.

Then I turn.

“I’ll see you at the clinic,” I tell Alec.

He watches me. Not unkind. But not innocent.

“I’ll walk you to your ride,” he says.

“No need.”

I walk away before he can insist.

My boots click over pavement. Crisp. Even. The rhythm anchors me.

When I reach the alley beside the florist’s shop, I don’t stop. Just slide into the shadows.

He’s there.

Leaning against the wall like he built it. Coat dark. Eyes darker.

“Elias.”

“You saw him.”

I nod. “He didn’t eat. He didn’t drink.”

“He didn’t need to.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But he knew I’d be here.”

“Yes.”

I cross my arms. “So we were right.”

“I didn’t want you to come tonight.”

“You made that clear.”

His jaw works. “Then why did you?”

I step closer. The alley’s dim. The wind pulls at my coat.

“Because I needed to know if the danger was real,” I say. “Because I needed to feel the line under my feet instead of hearing you tell me it exists.”

He looks at me like he wants to shake me. Or kiss me. Or both.

“And now?”

“Now I know it’s real.”

Then he nods.

I follow him to the car.

And this time, when I climb in, I don’t look back.

Because I keep thinking about Caleb.

What does he want now? What is the endgame in all of this—these notes, these shadows, this constant circling like a wolf around a cage he built himself?

Part of me wonders if this is about control.

About reminding me that no matter how far I think I’ve come, he still knows how to find me. Still knows how to make me feel small.

I used to ask myself what broke in him. But maybe it wasn’t a break. Maybe he was always like that—cruelty in disguise, obsession masquerading as love. He didn’t need a reason to hurt me. He just needed access.

My hands tighten on my coat.

I don’t want to face him. Not now. Not ever. The idea of looking him in the eyes again—of hearing that voice tilt soft just before it twists into something sharp—makes my stomach knot. Makes my body remember things I’ve spent years trying to forget.

The way he’d apologize before the bruises faded. The way he turned my silence into proof. The way he always said I made him do it.

No. I won’t go back there.

I pull myself forward, back into the now. Into Elias. Into the dark leather of the seat and the steady hum of the engine.

I glance at Elias from the corner of my eye.

He hasn’t said anything since I got in the car. Just grips the wheel like it might try to leave him. His jaw flexes every time a streetlight cuts across his face, painting and erasing him in equal measure.

And I catch myself wondering—again—why I always end up here.

With men like this.

Men who burn slow but hot, who carry violence in their bones like it’s a second language. Who watch the world like predators, even when they swear they’re trying to protect it.

Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I keep circling men like Elias because danger doesn’t scare me as much as being unseen.

But even that thought feels too fragile, too revealing.

The truth is: I don’t know why I trust him. I just do. And maybe that’s the most dangerous thing of all.

He’s trying to protect me.

He’s not pretending to be safe. Not lying about who he is or what he’s capable of. But he’s also not asking me to be soft. Or smaller. Or silent.

I wrap my arms tighter around myself.

“Are you angry?” I ask, staring at the blur of buildings outside.

“No.”

He doesn’t look over. Just drives.

“But you wanted to be.”

“I still might be,” he admits. “But not at you.”

The silence thickens between us again. Not empty. Just full of all the things we haven’t said yet.

“You shouldn’t have had to face that alone,” he adds.

“I didn’t.”

His knuckles tighten on the wheel.

“You didn’t come in,” I say.

“If I had, it would’ve changed things. He would’ve scattered faster. We wouldn’t have gotten a look at what he wanted.”

“What did he want?”

Elias doesn’t answer right away. I think he’s weighing how much I need to know.

Finally, he says, “To be seen. He wanted you to notice him. He was bait.”

My stomach twists.

“So what now?” I ask. “I go back to pretending I can smile through a trap?”

“No,” he says firmly. “You go back with me. You stay somewhere I can control.”

The words snap something small inside me. Not because he’s wrong.

Because he’s right.

And that terrifies me more than whatever’s waiting out there in the dark.

We pull up to the safe house just after ten. The lights on the lower level are low, warm, already on, like the space is waiting for us. The ocean is a distant hum, less a threat now, more a constant.

He parks but doesn’t move.

I reach for the door handle.

“Mara.”

His voice stops me.

I turn. He looks at me, fully this time.

“I won’t let him get to you.”

“I know,” I say.

But I also know this isn’t just about Caleb.

It’s about me.

What I let in.

What I ignore.

What I survive.

I step out of the car. He follows.

The door clicks shut behind us.

And I try to breathe like I still know how.

Because tonight, the line between fear and want is too thin to name.

The house exhales around us, like it knows the difference between our footsteps and anyone else’s. Every surface gleams with the kind of stillness that dares you to disrupt it.

Elias unlocks the panel in the hallway and starts running perimeter scans, silent, methodical. I hover near the door longer than I should, my fingers brushing the frame like it could still hold meaning.

When I finally move, it’s toward the kitchen. I don’t bother turning on the lights. The glow from the hallway spills in just enough.

I fill a glass with water, cold enough to sting. But it doesn’t clear the knot in my throat.

Behind me, his steps slow. He stops in the doorway.

“You need anything?” he asks.

“Just a minute,” I say.

He nods, doesn’t leave.

We stand like that for a while—me with my back to him, him with a question he won’t ask.

Finally, I turn. “You think he’s going to escalate.”

Elias doesn’t answer. Doesn’t have to.

I place the glass on the counter. “If I stay here, am I bait?”

“You’re not a trap,” he says. “You’re the line in the sand.”

“I didn’t ask to be.”

“I know.”

Something cracks then—quiet, internal. Like a hairline fracture I thought had already healed.

“I used to think I was smart,” I say softly. “That I saw people clearly. That I could spot danger before it reached me. But I didn’t see him. Not until it was too late.”

“You saw enough to leave,” Elias says. “That’s more than most.”

I shake my head. “I still carry the way he looked at me. The way he rewrote everything with a word, a hand, a smile. You ever been rewritten like that?”

His voice is a low hum. “I’ve rewritten people. Not the other way around.”

I believe him.

And maybe that’s what scares me most.

He steps closer now, quiet but deliberate. The kitchen feels smaller. Tighter.

“You think I’m like him,” he says. “Even if you don’t say it.”

“No,” I whisper. “That’s the problem. You’re not. But you could be.”

Elias exhales like the truth costs him.

“I won’t be,” he says. “Not with you.”

“But you want to be something,” I murmur.

His eyes darken. “I want to keep you safe. I want the people who made you afraid to beg for breath.”

A beat of silence. Thick. Real.

Then he moves. One step. Two. And we’re inches apart.

I don’t back up.

His voice is a rasp. “If you tell me to leave this alone, I will. But it won’t change the fact that I’m already inside it. Inside you.”

I breathe him in. Salt, cedar, heat.

“Don’t stop,” I say.

He doesn’t.

His hands move slowly, one to my waist, one up the curve of my spine. My fingers catch his coat, drag him closer.

We don’t kiss. Not yet.

We just stay there, forehead to forehead, two storms circling the same eye.

Then I say it, because I need it to be real.

“I don’t know how to be safe.”

His breath skims my mouth.

“Then let’s start with danger,” he says.

And by the time his lips find mine, It’s not gentle.

It’s honest.