Page 164 of Hurt

Roland stood and straightened his jacket. “Willow misses you.”

Noah pressed his lips together as he watched Jamie dealing with Quinn. “I know. I’ve been busy.”

They both seemed to think that was enough small talk and Noah turned to leave. His silent underlings following him without missing a beat.

He didn’t look at Elijah once.

So much time had passed. Elijah was the one who put the wall up between them, but he hated how tall it had grown. They had only spent a few weeks together but in that time Elijah had well and truly fallen for Noah. It didn’t matter that he didn’t recognize the man before him, deep down he was still the same. He was the same guy who got drunk on hard lemonade and walked around without shoes.

Jamie dusted his hands off and caught the look on Elijah’s face.

“Dude. What are you doing?”

Elijah shook himself. “What do you mean?”

Jamie sighed and shook his head. He came over to Elijah and slapped his hands on either side of his face. “You better get a condom for your heart, because I’m about to fuck your feelings.”

“Please never say that to me again.”

“I know that look on your face. For reasons I quiteliterallycannot understand, you love that scrawny kid. You love his dramatic ass so much you’ve been pining. Pining, Elijah. That’s not a good look on anyone outside a Shakespeare novel, and last time I checked you weren’t wearing pantaloons.”

He knocked his friend’s hands off his face. “You don’t understand.”

“There’s a lot of things I don’t understand, but I know that once someone leaves a hole in your heart you can’t fill it with other things.”

Elijah tsked and looked away from Jamie. How could he explain? Jamie didn’t know what it felt like to love someone you shouldn’t. Or to have ruined any chance you had with that person.

“Elijah, do you want to be the old guy sitting on his porch alone because he did what he thought was the noble thing, or do you want to be the old guy looking back at all the epic raunchy sex he had with the guy he was in love with?”

Normally it was smarter to ignore whatever Jamie said, but for some reason Elijah found himself thinking about it. He didn’t think about an older version of himself sitting alone on a porch or even Roland smiling down at his phone because Willow sent him a unicorn emoji for no reason.

No, he thought back to that day at the Catacombs. When he watched Kurt and Asher fall from the balcony. He was so stunned he couldn’t even scream. Distantly he heard Willow and Noah crying out, but the voice that cut through his fog was Grant’s.

The man had just about thrown himself over the ledge after Kurt. Jamie had shot a bullet just under his hand, sending a puff of cement up into his face. The impact had woken Grant up enough that he came to his senses, and he turned to run down the stairs.

Frozen in place, Elijah watched as he ran to Kurt. He didn’t say anything but Kurt’s name over and over again. He cradled that broken body to his chest and held him tight. Grant pressed his forehead to Kurt and howled. He howled with a pain that was unbearable to hear. A cry that cut through them all.

“Wanyin, please. Wanyin, open your eyes,” he begged.

To see the Grant who had just cut his way through a hundred enemies kneeling on the ground and begging was hard to take. The rest of what Grant said was stolen by the night. Even when Sid and Molly showed up to help, Grant refused to relinquish Kurt to them. He held him like a dog with a bone, unwilling to let anyone get near the man he loved.

Even as he fell, Kurt had kept hold of the trigger. He held it until Jackson ran forward and worked it free from his grip. The mercenary didn’t look at Grant as he took the trigger and set to disabling it.

No onelooked at Grant, but Elijah couldn’t look away. His eyes remained fixated on the hunched back and trembling shoulders.

He had grown up seeing Grant completely unflappable. He was always wearing a polite smile and had an aloofness about him that was comfortable yet distancing. Like he was holding everyone at arm’s length, so they didn’t see the real him. Yet there he was, showing his vulnerable side to a hundred people without caring. Holding a broken man so close they might not ever be able to part.

Elijah didn’t want to feel the pain of losing someone you loved. Even if it was his own fault. Even if this is what he thought he wanted. He had to try.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, turning to run after Noah.

“Don’t you dare come back a virgin!” Jamie yelled after him, followed by an ‘ow’ when Roland swatted the back of his head.

Elijah burst out the doors and startled a poor employee. He circled around her with a hurried apology and took off down the long narrow hallway that led to the elevators. He bypassed the stainless-steel elevator doors and crashed down the stairs two at a time. The elevator bottomed out at an underground parking garage. It was the only place Noah could go.

Hitting the bottom of the stairs he wrenched open the metal door and found himself in another narrow hallway. He caught sight of the two Mesa underlings holding open the door to the garage.

“Noah!” he shouted. His voice echoed around the hallway and sounded much louder than he intended.