تسجيل الدخولJust to be clear, Ellis is kind of like a tsundere.
ELLISJulian was just watching me, unwaveringly... but not impatiently, just observing, in that steady way of his that I’d noticed over the last few weeks, growing increasingly aware that my annoyance was likely rooted in everything I hadn’t quite figured out yet.He was waiting for an answer.The hockey tickets suddenly felt like they were burning a hole in my hands.As soon as Julian handed them to me, I glanced at them for a mere two seconds, just enough time to identify what they were, understand their implications, and come to a firm conclusion...before I shoved them right back at him."No."Julian looked down at the tickets, then back at me. He seemed completely unfazed, as if he already knew how this conversation would play out and just waited for me to come around to his way of thinking."Absolutely not," I said, pushing the tickets toward him once more. "Whatever weird rich-person mind game this is, I’m not interested. I’m out. Formally."The corner of his mouth twitched up i
ELLISJulian laughed, a deep, genuine sound that rolled through the apartment effortlessly, landing in my chest exactly how I’d been trying to prevent anything from doing. "Relax.""I am relaxed—""You look like you’re about to have a medical emergency.""I might. You might have triggered one with your stupid self.""That’s a bit concerning." His grin settled in easily, as if it was right at home. Then, with the calm of someone who knows they’re in control of the situation, he lifted one of the tickets and held it out to me."Hockey game," he said.I blinked. Once. Twice. The truth seeped in slowly, rerouting around everything I had already decided.How did this guy even know I liked, no... loved hockey? When I was a kid, my dad would spend weeks saving up money just to take me to a hockey game and buy the souvenirs.Though we’ve never had much, my dad loved me enough to sacrifice his free time for extra shifts for a sport he wasn’t even fond of. Just because I was, those days where h
ELLISFor three full seconds, Julian’s smile vanished from his face. Three beautiful, glorious seconds where I felt like I was ahead in some unseen game, even if I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I was winning.But then, just like that, it returned...not wider or more exaggerated, but somehow better positioned, like it intended to stick around."Oh," he said. Just that, two neutral letters, delivered with the kind of leisurely tone of someone who’s just had a thought and is weighing how much to relish it.Right then, I knew I’d messed up. The kind of mistake you make just before a situation spirals into a complicated mess, way more tangled than it was thirty seconds prior."Oh?" I echoed, wary, like I was trying to make sense of an unfamiliar noise in the dark."Nothing.""It’s obviously something.""It isn’t.""It is.""It isn’t."I narrowed my eyes at him. He mirrored my expression, which shouldn’t have been as infuriating as it was, yet here we stood. The standoff stretched for abou
ELLISHe turned it between his fingers, looking at it for a moment, and the touch was both incidental and charged enough to send my heart straight into my throat without warning."W... what are you doing?" My voice came out smaller than I meant.His gaze lifted from my hair to my face. Something was steady and deliberate in it. "Making a point."I slapped his hand away. Hard, like someone desperate to keep their composure while their heart raced."What is wrong with you?! Get the fuck away from me, shit stain!"What point was he making?! I wanted to scream.His grin kicked in and instantly became the most irritating thing in the room, which was saying something given the circumstances."See?" he said."See what?""That.""What that?""You’re flustered again, pretty cute."I reacted before I could think. "I am not flustered, don’t call me—""You are.""I’m not—""You really are.""Julian—""Ellis." He said my name with that annoying patience of someone who finds the situation genuinely
ELLIS Julian leaned back against the counter, looking relaxed, like someone who’s never had to question whether they belong anywhere, that effortless confidence that comes naturally to people who’ve always been allowed to take up space. It was infuriating. I’d been annoyed by it for weeks, and it was still getting on my nerves. "I apologized," he said. I blinked. "What?" "Earlier." His gaze remained steady on me, patient and doing way too much. "I apologized." "And?" "And," he said, with the smoothness of someone who had clearly been thinking about this for a while, "it’s your turn." I just stared at him, letting the sentence sink in. As I processed it. Then I laughed once again, genuinely, involuntarily, like someone hit with unexpected news. What the actual fuck? Then I laughed harder, then I looked at his serious face, and the laughter died in an instant. "W...why the hell do I have to apologize to you, huh?" A faint smile appeared, the one I had developed a complicate
ELLIS Julian moved back toward the kitchen, giving me space and distance, the escape route I’d been unconsciously requesting all night with my body language. And somehow, now that I had it, everything felt more complicated. Because here’s the thing about assholes: they’re pretty straightforward. You know where you stand with them. There are clear expectations, established reactions, a whole framework of responses that are right at your fingertips. Enemies are simple. Arguments come with defined sides. But someone who waits around with cold coffee and fumbles through an awkward apology and looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep-that isn’t easy. That wasn’t something I had a system for. I watched him move around the kitchen, going through the commonplace motions of making coffee, pretending not to notice me. I thought about Lucas’s voice at the café this morning and Sera’s eyes across the table, and the word they both seemed to arrive at that I was still unwillin







