Chapter 179

Elena

The guest room felt smaller than it should, the walls pressing in as I stood facing Étienne in the doorway. My heart hammered so hard I was sure he could hear it—could see it, even, pulsing at the base of my throat.

Why didn't he sleep with me but instead chose to sleep in the guest room?

"Uncle," I heard myself say, and the word scraped against my throat. "Do you... not like me anymore?"

The question sounded pathetic even to my own ears—small and vulnerable and desperate—but I couldn't take it back. I watched his face, searching for any sign of the truth, and what I saw made my chest constrict. His expression fractured for just a second before he caught himself, but I'd seen it. The way his eyes darkened with something that looked like pain. The slight hitch in his breathing.

"Elena." My name sounded like both a prayer and a warning. He stepped into the room but kept his distance, one hand braced against the doorframe. "I need to be certain—absolutely certain—that what you feel for me isn't born from loneliness. Or habit. Or just the fact that I've been here, taking care of things."

Something hot and defiant flared in my chest. "You're afraid I'm lonely," I said slowly, each word deliberate. "Afraid I'll regret this. Afraid I can't tell the difference between gratitude and—" I stopped, swallowing hard. "And something else."

"Yes."

"You're making decisions for me," I continued, my voice rising. Heat crept up my neck. "Just like she does. My mother. You're both so convinced you know what's best for me that you don't even ask what I want. You just decide, and I'm supposed to accept it because you're older, you're wiser, you know better."

His jaw tightened. I could see him struggling with the comparison, hating it.

"And what if I'm not careful?" I pressed, stepping closer despite the warning bells in my head. My hands were shaking, so I balled them into fists. "What's the worst that could happen? You'd send me away? Tell me I was wrong? That I imagined everything?"

"No." The word came out almost violent. "God, no. I would never—"

"Then what are you so afraid of?"

He just looked at me, and I felt stripped bare under his gaze. Then, quietly: "That I'll fail you. That I'll take something you're not ready to give, and I'll ruin everything we—" He stopped, shaking his head. "I'm afraid of myself, Elena. Of what I want. Because it's not what a guardian should want."

The confession settled between us, and I felt something inside me crack. All the anger drained away, replaced by something worse—a bone-deep fear that maybe I really wasn't enough.

"What if I'm not good enough?" The words came out barely above a whisper, my voice breaking. My eyes burned. "What if you decide I'm not worth—"

I couldn't finish. I looked down at my hands, my vision blurring, and felt the full weight of every conditional love I'd ever known crash over me. My mother's cold approval, given only when I landed every jump perfectly. The coaches who only valued me when I was winning. The certainty that affection was something I had to earn, over and over, and that one mistake could cost me everything.

"Elena." Étienne's voice had changed, gone soft and desperate. I heard him move toward me, then stop abruptly. When I glanced up, I saw his hand half-raised, hovering near my hair but not quite touching, trembling in the space between us. "You are—" He stopped, his expression anguished. "You're everything. Don't you understand that?"

But the words weren't enough. They couldn't be.

"Then why won't you—" I broke off, my breath hitching.

Before I could think better of it, before the fear could stop me, I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around his neck. I pressed myself against him, my face buried in the curve where his shoulder met his throat, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne and something underneath that was just him.

For one suspended heartbeat, Étienne went completely still. Then his control shattered.

His arms came around me with a force that stole my breath, one hand splaying across my back between my shoulder blades, the other cradling the back of my head. He pulled me against him so tightly it almost hurt, his face buried in my hair, his breathing ragged against my scalp. I felt the tremor that ran through him, felt the way his fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt like he was afraid I might disappear.

"Elena," he said again, but this time it sounded like surrender.

I pressed closer, feeling the solid warmth of him, the way his heart hammered against my chest. This was what I'd been craving—this certainty, this weight, this proof that I mattered to someone not because of what I could do but simply because I existed.

"I don't know how to separate it," I admitted, my words muffled against his shoulder. "Dependence. Gratitude. Love. I don't know where one ends and the other begins."

His arms tightened. "Elena—"

"I've tried to figure it out," I continued, the confession spilling out. "I thought maybe I loved someone before. In Bulgaria, before I came here. There was a boy—he was nice, he made me laugh. But it lasted a few weeks, maybe a month. And then it just stopped. Like turning off a light."

I pulled back just enough to look at him. "But this—you—it's been five years. Since the day you pulled me out of that car. And it hasn't stopped. It hasn't even faded. If anything, it just keeps getting stronger, and I don't know what to do with it."

His eyes were dark, unreadable. "What are you asking me?"

"I'm asking..." I took a shaky breath. "Can you give me space to feel this? Without analyzing it to death? Without deciding for me what it means?" My fingers curled into his shirt. "I want to be with you. I'm miserable when I can't see you. Can that be enough, for now? Can I just think about you, the way I want to?"

"How do you want to think about me?"