Page 69 of Stolen Harmony

Outside, Harbor's End was settling into night, but inside my tiny apartment, something was shifting. Not healing, exactly, but breaking open in a way that might eventually lead to healing.

When Elias finally loosened his hold, I didn't move for a long moment. The loss of contact felt immediate and sharp, like stepping from warmth into cold. But when I finally lifted my head, when I met his eyes in the dim light, something had changed between us.

The air was still charged, still electric with possibility and danger. But underneath the want, underneath the complicated tangle of grief and desire, there was something else now. Something that felt like the beginning of trust.

“This doesn't solve anything,” I said, my voice hoarse from crying.

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn't.”

“I'm still fucked up. Still drinking too much, still sleeping with strangers, still carrying around all this anger I don't know what to do with.”

“I know.”

“And you're still married to my dead mother in all the ways that matter.”

He flinched at that, but didn't deny it. “Yes.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Elias was quiet for a long moment, considering. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured. “I don't know. But I know I'm not walking away from you again.”

The words settled in my chest like a promise, warm and terrifying and absolutely necessary. Because whatever this wasbetween us, whatever impossible thing we were building out of grief and want and the shared experience of loving the same woman, it was the first real thing I'd felt in two years.

And maybe that was enough. Maybe it didn't matter that it was complicated, that it might destroy us both, that it violated every rule about appropriate relationships and healthy boundaries.

Maybe all that mattered was that I wasn't alone anymore.

“Okay,” I said, and the word felt like stepping off a cliff.

“Okay.”

The apartment was full dark now, streetlights casting long shadows through the windows. We should have turned on lamps, should have moved apart, should have retreated to the safety of distance and denial.

Instead, we sat there in the darkness, close enough to touch but not quite touching, balanced on the knife's edge between propriety and want.

And for the first time since I'd come back to Harbor's End, I felt like I might actually survive whatever came next.

Chapter 16

Off Balanced

Elias

Nothing says small-town authority quite like the municipal building—varnished wood, stale coffee, and the faint scent of frustration that seeped into every hallway. Places like this existed to remind people how little power they actually had; you could smell it in the recycled air.

I pushed through the frosted glass door to Victor’s office without bothering to call ahead, my footsteps echoing down the empty corridor.

Victor looked up from behind his polished mahogany desk, his smile already sliding into place with the practiced ease of a politician who’d spent years perfecting sincerity in front of a mirror. His office was a shrine to self-importance: leather-bound books he’d never read, diplomas from schools he liked to name-drop, and framed photos of himself shaking hands with people whose names carried more weight than his own.

“Elias,” he said warmly, though his pale eyes measured more than they greeted. “Please, sit.”

I remained standing, hands loose at my sides but ready.Victor had summoned me here with a text that was casual enough to sound innocent but pointed enough to feel like a threat.

Nothing was ever convenient when it came to Victor.

“Coffee?” he asked, gesturing toward the expensive machine that probably cost more than most people in Harbor's End made in a month.

“I'm fine.”