Chapter 2: The weight Of Wanting

(Eli Pov)

I knew Lena Moore long before she knew me.

Not in the way men usually claim to know a woman not through fantasies or distance-softened admiration but through files, patterns, and the quiet gravity of her choices.

I read everything she wrote.

Not for pleasure. For survival.

Lena Moore didn’t just expose corruption; she dismantled it. She didn’t rage for spectacle or chase easy villains. She waited. She listened. She followed threads other people ignored until the truth unraveled itself in her hands.

That made her dangerous.

That made her necessary.

And that made her the one person I should never have allowed near my life.

The café wasn’t an accident.

Driftwood sat three blocks from her apartment, close enough to feel like coincidence, far enough not to raise alarms. I’d tested it weeks earlier timed her routines, watched how often she changed patterns, learned which mornings she was sharp and which nights she looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

I told myself it was research.

That lie tasted familiar.

The truth was worse: I wanted to see if the woman behind the byline existed the way I imagined her to. I wanted to know if her courage was real when no one was watching.

The first time she noticed me, I felt it like a shift in air pressure.

She was good. Better than most. She didn’t look long but she felt me. Her spine went rigid. Her breathing changed. A predator recognizing another presence in the dark.

When she spoke to me, my plans nearly fell apart.

Her voice wasn’t sharp the way I expected. It was measured. Curious. Controlled but not cold.

I answered honestly where I could. Carefully where I couldn’t. I told myself that restraint was strength.

It didn’t feel like strength when her knee brushed mine.

That touch burned. Small. Accidental. Intimate in a way that felt undeserved. I wanted to lean into it, to let my body betray everything my mind knew was at stake.

I didn’t.

Wanting her was easy.

Letting myself be wanted would be catastrophic.

When I kissed her, it was a mistake I’d rehearsed a hundred times and still couldn’t control. Her mouth was warm, responsive, restrained in the same way mine was, two people holding back oceans.

Stopping was the hardest thing I’d done in years.

Walking away was worse.

That night, alone in my apartment bare walls, no photographs, no evidence of a life I stood by the window and watched the city pulse below me. I imagined her reading, pacing, replaying the encounter the way I was.

I imagined her suspicion sharpening.

Good, I thought. Let her doubt me.

What I didn’t anticipate was how deeply she would stay with me.

The next morning, my security chief warned me that her latest investigation was circling too close to one of my shell companies. Not enough to see the truth yet but close enough to feel its heat.

I should have pulled back then.

Instead, I adjusted the board.

I redirected a leak. Planted a partial truth. Something that would slow her without stopping her something that would make her question the shape of the story.

And all the while, I waited.

Not to trap her.

To see what she would do when the path became unclear.

Because if Lena Moore followed the truth even when it hurt her, if she refused the easier narrative then maybe, just maybe, she was the one person who could see me clearly and still choose to stay.

That hope was reckless.

It was also the most alive I’d felt in years.

I told myself one thing, and one thing only:

I would not touch her again until I could stand before her without hiding.

And if that day never came

I would learn to want her quietly.

From the shadows.