I sip my cold tea and just let myself exist for a few minutes after they all leave. Today hasn’t been a win, but it hasn’t quite been a loss, either.
A small creak behind me, so quiet that I wouldn’t have heard it if I weren’t sitting in perfect silence. The small hairs on the back of my neck rise. I’m facing the door. No one should be able to enter the library without me seeing them. And yet I am not alone.
I spin around, ready to throw my cup at the intruder’s head, and barely manage to check myself when I recognize the man standing there. Eli. He’s showered and changed and looks remarkably put together in a pair of slacks and a pale gray button-down. He’s still got one hell of a black eye, but the swelling’s gone down significantly in the last few hours. He always did heal quickly.
He’s not worth ruining one of my tea cups over. Then again, he’s been such an unforgivable ass, he deserves cold tea dumped over his head.
I study the wall behind him, but there’s no indication of where the fuck he came from. It’s not the first time he’s appeared in a room when he shouldn’t have been able to, but he’s never answered my leading questions about how the hell he gets around. There have to be passages built into these walls, but their secret is yet another one that Eli’s kept from me over the years. He won’t answer now. That’s for sure.
I turn back around. “Come to call me sloppy seconds again?” Damn it, I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I should be focusing on minimizing the antagonism between us, but I can’t quite manage it. I have too much anger pent up over too many years. I will be able to hold it together for public things—I don’t have a choice—but I refuse to fold into myself to make him comfortable. Not ever again.
“No.” He walks around my chair to drop into the one across from me. He moves without any stiffness at all. Either he’s faking it well, or Abel didn’t work him over quite as thoroughly as it appeared in the amphitheater and during the aftermath.
I sip my tea. It’s unsatisfying cold, but it’s better than sitting here with nothing in my hands while so much hurt spins out in the silence between us.
Finally, Eli sighs. “I fucked up.”
Of all the things I expected him to say, that doesn’t number among them. Still…this is Eli. I can’t take anything at face value. I focus on holding perfectly still. “Elaborate.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have challenged him to that second fight. I put my own feelings above the good of the faction. And then I kept fucking up by increasing the animosity between the three of us instead of trying to smooth things out to ensure Abel wouldn’t punish our people.”
I wait, but it appears that’s all. There’s no reason for the disappointment that sinks its claws into me and rips its way through my heart. Did I really think that Eli would come and tell me that he loves me, he’s sorry for boxing me in again and again over the last five years? Of course he has his eye on the endgame and the bottom line. That’s what he should have done from the beginning.
This is something of an olive branch, and if I’m willing to play with Abel, then I can’t turn away any resources. I stroke my thumb over the rim of my cup. “In hindsight, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. You might have handed him the faction on a silver platter, but he was already here and prepped for war. He and his brothers would have taken the compound regardless, and there would have been bloodshed. All with the same result.” Abel never would have been satisfied with only me as revenge. He always meant to take the faction back. He’s admitted as much.
No reason for that to sting, either. After all, I’m used to coming in a far second to the faction. One way that Abel and Eli are identical. The thought almost makes me laugh, but I swallow the sound down.
“You have so little faith in me, Harlow.”
I hold his gaze. “I have exactly the right amount of faith, I think.”
He doesn’t quite flinch, but he makes an involuntary movement. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.” Although I’m hardly blameless in this situation. I stayed, after all. I could have left at any time. Instead, I let the resentment grow instead of making a clean break. I stare down into my tea. “Why are you here, Eli?”
He leans forward and clasps his hands between his knees. “I want what’s best for our people.”