Chapter 19 Chapter 19
Violet
Elijah didn’t move. Not even a flicker.
He just stood there, staring at the table she’d slammed her hand against. His face was unreadable, but his knuckles were white, the muscle in his jaw tense enough to crack stone.
I swallowed, my throat dry. “She… didn’t mean all that,” I said gently.
His gaze finally lifted to me and I could swear I could hear his rapid breathing.
“She meant every fucking word.”
I wondered what to reply but he had already stormed away just like Cassie, leaving me standing in the living room all by myself.
I stood there awkwardly for a while, wondering what to do next.
The most logical option would’ve been to turn around and quietly walk out the front door, pretending I hadn’t just witnessed a heated argument between two people I barely knew existed until a few days ago.
But logic and I had never really been friends.
I sighed. I couldn’t just leave.
Cassie had called me her friend, and Elijah… well, I wasn’t sure what I was to him. A complication, maybe. A debt. A reminder of something he wanted to forget.
Still, both of them were probably stewing alone in their rooms right now, and the silence that hung over the mansion felt too heavy to leave untouched.
“I’m gonna regret this,” I muttered and made my way toward Cassie’s room first.
The door was locked, obviously. I pressed my ear against it and heard muffled sniffles from the other side.
“Cass? Hey,” I called softly, placing a tentative hand on the door. “You okay?”
The sound of ruffling sheets came next before she shouted back, voice thick with tears.
“Go home! Or sleep on the couch if you want!”
I frowned. “Are you sure? You sounded pretty upset.”
“Sorry,” she mumbled after a beat. “I’m in no mood to talk right now.”
I sighed, leaning my forehead against the cool wood.
“Alright. I’ll leave you alone. But call me if you need me, okay?”
No reply came, just a muffled sniff.
I turned away, lingering in the dimly lit hallway. One path led to the living room. The other—to Elijah’s room.
The door to his room was slightly ajar.
Of course it was.
I should’ve walked the other way. I really should’ve. But curiosity had always been my fatal flaw. So I found myself tiptoeing toward the crack in the door and peeking inside before my brain could protest.
The room was large, minimalist, all sharp lines and cold colors. The kind of space that looked lived in but never warm.
Elijah stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to me. The city lights bled through the glass, painting his silhouette in shifting shades of silver and shadow.
He held a glass in one hand, swirling its contents absently, the motion slow and controlled like everything else about him.
His black shirt clung to his broad shoulders and the defined curve of his back, the top button undone. A hint of dark ink coiled down his forearm and disappeared beneath the fabric like a serpent vanishing into mist.
I told myself I was only observing. Studying him, the way I might study the charts for my research.
But my heart wasn’t listening.
His reflection on the glass was faint, yet enough for me to catch the look on his face—something raw and quiet.
The anger I’d seen earlier was gone. What remained was the kind of hurt people don’t like to admit exists.
He looked… human.
And that realization did something strange to me.
“He’s your friend’s brother,” I whispered to myself. “You just want them to patch things up.”
Rain’s voice, snarky as ever, echoed in my mind. “He’s also your future husband.”
“Shut up,” I hissed under my breath.
“Just reminding you your marriage certificate only lacks a date.”
I rolled my eyes. If he really wanted to marry me, he wouldn’t have waited for so long. He had said that marriages weren’t his thing.
He didn’t believe in marriages or being tied down to one person probably.
My gaze flicked back to him, to that look of hurt on his face like it broke him to hear those words from Cassie.
I was not his girlfriend so I had no business to even think of calming him down. I didn’t even know how to do that.
Yet, I found myselfl debating how to announce my presence when his voice cut through the heavy silence.
“Why would you lie to me?”
For a second I looked behind to see if he was talking to someone else.
Maybe I wasn’t as stealthy as I’d hoped.
“Uh…” I cleared my throat. “Come again?”
He didn’t turn. “I told you I appreciated your honesty earlier,” he said, voice calm but sharp. “So why lie to me about Cass’s words?”
“I wasn’t lying.”
He raised the glass, the swirling liquid catching the light. “You think I’m a good person?”
“I know you are,” I said softly, taking a hesitant step forward.
That’s when he turned.
The motion was slow, deliberate, the kind of turn that made the air shift around him.
His eyes locked on mine, dark, and unreadable. His grip on the glass tightened just enough for me to hear it creak.
“I’m anything but good,” he said flatly. “I’m a control freak, Violet. Everything I touch, I try to own. Everything I care about, I cage.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I found myself wanting to vehemently deny those claims.
I swallowed, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “That’s not entirely true.”
“Really?” His lips twisted into something between a smirk and a sneer. “You’ve known me what, a week? Tell me, what part of me screams ‘good’ to you?”
I opened my mouth then closed it again.
His expression softened, just slightly, as if amused by my lack of an answer. “Exactly.”
He then began walking towards me and I was acutely aware of the fact that there was no room full of people dancing around me, no ladies hooting for the strippers.
Just him and me.
His voice was like a low caress when he asked.
“So tell me now, Violet. What are you thinking right now?”
My eyes focused on his face, my senses on the smell of alcohol in his breath alongwith the heady scent of his cologne. My gaze dipped to the tattoo peeking from underneath his shirt.
“Uh…that…you should take your shirt off..d-dirt, there’s dirt…on your shirt.”
I swallowed nervously as he took a step closer and I felt my back press against the wall.
He raised his hand to place it on the wall behind me, leaning into my space and I curled my fingers into fists as I felt the stubble on his jawline graze my cheek.
Oh. My. God.