My throat tightens.
I lift my shirt higher, peeling the bandage back from my side. The wound there is healing too.
Mostly closed now, the skin pink and new and no longer pulling the way it did at first. It’s not pretty, and it won’tdisappear completely, but it doesn’t feel like proof of fragility anymore.
That’s the thing no one seems to understand.
I am healing. I am not the same woman who came out of that cabin half-drugged and bleeding and barely able to stand.
My body is healing. My mind is healing. I am still me. So why is he still looking at me like I’ll shatter in his hands? I replace the bandage slowly, smooth my shirt back down, and stare at myself one last time.
I don’t look fragile.
I look angry.
Good.
By the time I step back into the living room, Christian is gone.
Elijah is alone on the couch, one arm stretched along the back, his phone in his hand, his gaze locked on the screen like whatever is there matters more than the space around him.
I stand there for a second just looking at him. At the hard line of his jaw. At the way he seems to occupy the room and remove himself from it at the same time. At the unbearable fact that I miss him while he is sitting right there. Then I walk over and sit beside him.
“Elijah.”
He looks up immediately.
“What do you need?”
The words hit wrong. Too practical. Too careful. Too removed. I hold his gaze.
“I need you, Elijah.”
Something shifts in his face, but not enough.
“I’m here.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You’re not.”
His brow tightens.
“I am here, Lia.”
“You’re in the room,” I say, and even to my own ears my voice sounds too close to breaking. “That’s not the same thing.”
He goes still.
“I love you,” he says, controlled and low, as if that should answer it. “I’m doing what I need to do. I’m protecting you.”
“But you’re pushing me away at the same time.”
“I’m not pushing you away.”
The frustration in me snaps hard enough that I have to stand because I can’t sit still under it anymore. I push to my feet and start pacing before I even realize I’m doing it.
“You need to sit down,” he says immediately, his voice sharpening. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
I whirl toward him.
