CHAPTER 0031- Not enough

I woke up to an empty bed.

The sheets on his side were cold. For a second I thought he’d left for work early, but then I heard the shower running in the en-suite. Steam was already seeping under the door. I lay there staring at the ceiling, the weight of yesterday still sitting in my chest like something I hadn’t finished swallowing.

Jenna.

The way she’d tasted. The way I’d come with her thigh pressed between mine. The way I’d decided—stupidly, deliberately—not to tell him.

The water shut off.

A minute later Elias stepped out with a towel around his waist, hair damp, skin still flushed from the heat. He didn’t look surprised to find me awake. He just walked to the dresser, pulled out clothes, and started getting dressed with his back to me.

“You’re up early,” I said.

“Couldn’t sleep.” His voice was flat. Controlled. “You were restless all night.”

I sat up, pulling the sheet higher. “I didn’t mean to keep you awake.”

He turned around while buttoning his shirt. His eyes moved over my face like he was still searching for whatever he’d sensed the night before.

“You going to tell me what’s going on,” he asked, “or are we still doing the waiting thing?”

My stomach tightened. “There’s nothing going on.”

He finished with the last button and walked over to the bed. He didn’t sit. Just stood there looking down at me.

“You’re a bad liar when you’re nervous,” he said quietly. “Your mouth gets tight. You did it last night when I asked if you missed me. You’re doing it again now.”

I forced my expression to stay neutral. “You’re reading into nothing.”

“Am I?”

He leaned down, bracing one hand on the mattress beside my hip. Close enough that I could smell his soap. Close enough that the air between us felt thinner.

“I’ve been patient,” he said. “But patience isn’t the same as blindness. Something happened yesterday while I was gone. I can feel it on you.”

My pulse was loud in my ears. “Elias—”

“Was it someone?”

The question landed like a hand around my throat. I didn’t answer fast enough. His eyes darkened.

“Who.”

It wasn’t a question anymore.

I could have lied. I could have said the plumber again, or invented something safer. Instead I heard myself say, very quietly:

“Jenna.”

He went completely still.

For a second the only sound was the low hum of the air conditioning.

“The delivery girl,” he said.

“Yes.”

He straightened up slowly. His expression didn’t change much, but something behind his eyes went cold and sharp.

“You fucked her.”

“Yes.”

“In my house.”

“Yes.”

He laughed once—short, humorless—and ran a hand over his mouth. Then he looked at me again, and the calm was gone.

“Get up.”

“Elias—”

“Get. Up.”

I stood. The sheet fell away. I was only in underwear. He looked at me like he was deciding something irreversible.

“You’re going to tell me everything,” he said. “Where. How. How many times you came. And then you’re going to listen while I decide what happens next.”

My mouth was dry. “You’re angry.”

“I’m past angry.” He stepped closer. “You kept it from me. You sat on my lap last night with her still on your skin and let me kiss you. That wasn’t a secret, Riley. That was a choice.”

I lifted my chin even though my heart was slamming. “You don’t own every part of me.”

“Don’t I?”

The silence that followed was heavy enough to hurt.

He reached out and brushed his thumb across my lower lip. The touch was almost gentle. The look in his eyes wasn’t.

“You have until I get home tonight,” he said. “To decide how you want this to go. You can tell me the truth in detail… or I can find another way to get it out of you.”

He dropped his hand and stepped back.

“I have meetings until six. Be here when I get back.”

He picked up his keys and wallet from the dresser. At the door he paused without looking at me.

“And Riley.”

I waited.

“Don’t leave the house today. Don’t call her. Don’t try to clean anything up. I want you exactly as you are when I walk through that door tonight.”

Then he left.

The front door closed downstairs a minute later. The garage door rumbled. His car pulled away.

I stood in the middle of his bedroom in nothing but underwear, the confession still hanging in the air, and realized I’d just handed him the one thing he’d been waiting for.

The waiting was over.

Whatever came next would be on his terms.