“I know you were followed,” he says carefully. “I had Cain pull the security footage of your building. We’re working on finding out who it was.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief. At least I don’t have to tell him that part.
“Do you know who was following you?”
I shake my head. No. No. I can’t do this. A sheen of sweat forms on my brow. Tears flow freely down my face as my breathing picks up the pace.
“I don’t need to know everything, Kat. Just give me a name.”
“I can’t!” I shout. The pain in my arm and the constant reminder of my fucking failure and brokenness fuel the sobs that wrack my body.
He slides into the bed beside me and holds my head against his chest. The steadythumpof his heartbeat grounds me until the sobs dissipate to shivers.
“I know you have your reservations about me and my life. But please believe me when I say that I will never let anyone hurt you. Ever again.”
“You can’t promise that,” I whisper as my eyes fall closed, pushing the residual tears onto my cheek.
“Then let me earn your trust. I know you don’t want to tell me what happened. But let me tell you why I am the way that I am. I am not him.”
“You don’t have to do that.” I shake my head.
He takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting my eyes up to meet his. They’re dark and full of resolve. “I want to. I should have told you this a long time ago.”
The air around us shifts. Elias has never been a closed book, but he’s never offered up information before. And now he’s sitting here, looking at me like he’s about to crack open the deepest, most painful part of himself. And I can’t give him a single fucking name.
He moves to the end of the bed and sits facing me. He takes my good hand in his and takes a deep breath. I open my mouth to protest some more, but his voice cuts me off.
“I had a sister. She was two years younger than me. I don’t remember her being born. I just remember her always being there. Her name was Iris. She used to follow me everywhere.” A faint smile touches his mouth, but it doesn’t linger for long. “She had this ridiculous laugh. It was loud. Completely unrestrained. My parents used to complain about it all the time because it echoed through the whole house.” He glances down at our joined hands, his eyes focusing on the point where our index fingers touch. “Iris was the kind of kid who couldn’t walk past a stray animal without trying to bring it home. Cats, dogs, birds with broken wings—it didn’t matter. If it needed saving, she was there. She once tried to hide a raccoon in her room.”
I blink. “A raccoon?”
He huffs a small laugh. “Yeah, that was a fun day.” The smile fades just as quickly as it appeared. “She drove me crazygrowing up. Always stealing my hoodies, barging into my room without knocking. And shealwaysasked a million questions. About everything, she was always so curious about everything. From how a computer worked to why the fucking sky was blue.” His thumb presses absentmindedly against my knuckles. “But she trusted me. Completely. If there was a monster under her bed, she came to me. If someone picked on her at school, she came to me.” His voice grows quieter. “And I always told her I’d take care of it.”
My heartbeat hammers against my chest as he takes a long pause, considering his next words.
“Growing up, our parents were the hands-off type. They let us do whatever we wanted, as long as no one was getting hurt or arrested, they didn’t care.” His smile breaks with a slight twitch of his jaw. “When you’re a teenager, it’s great. We went to parties, stayed out late. We loved it. We walked together every day to school. My school was a little further than hers, so I always walked her to the gates, said goodbye before going to school myself.” He takes a shaky breath, and I give his hand a small squeeze. “One day, after school, I waited outside her school for an hour. At first, I wasn’t worried. Iris was thirteen. She was old enough to hang out with her friends after school.” His gaze drifts toward the window, like he’s watching the memory play out somewhere in the street outside. “I leaned against the fence and waited. Kids poured out of the gates in waves. I kept expecting to see her blonde hair in the crowd.”
My chest tightens as my thumb runs circles over his knuckles.
“But the crowd got smaller and smaller.” He swallows. “And eventually, the teachers started locking up the building.”
A cold knot forms in my stomach and fresh tears sting behind my eyes.
“I walked home thinking she just got out early and walked home with some friends. She’d done that before. Or maybe she’d caught a ride with her friends’ parents. She’d also done that before.” His voice drops lower. “But when I opened the door, the house was empty. That’s when I knew something was wrong. For two weeks,” he continues, his voice now gravelly. “Every time the phone rang, we thought it might be news. Two weeks of a sick cycle of hope, fear, and hope again. Over and fucking over. My parents stopped sleeping. Stopped eating. They just sat by the phone waiting to hear which part of the cycle it would be that day.”
His fingers tighten around mine, and I tighten mine around his in return.
“And when the police finally showed up, I knew before they said a word. There’s something about the way people look at you when your world is about to end.”
“Pity,” the word comes out of my mouth before I even register it.
His eyes flick up to mine, a knowing look there. “That’s the moment everything broke,” he tells me. “They found her raped and mutilated and dumped on the side of the highway like fucking trash. They never found the person who did it.”
Silent tears fall slowly down my face.
Elias pauses, his throat bobbing gently before he continues. “It tore the family apart. My parents started using drugs—heroin mainly. When they got really bad, they couldn’t leave the house to get their supply, so they turned me into their drug runner. If there was anything worse than my parents on drugs, it was my parents coming off drugs, so I didn’t really havea choice. Not if I wanted to survive.” His face contorts in disgust as he relives the memory. “I spent a lot of my late teen years in drug dens. I made friends with the wrong people and got into drug running before I turned seventeen, and I was running the place before I turned twenty. I saw the effect that drugs have on people. We were dealing to kids too.”
He scoffs, his eyes returning their focus to our joined hands.
