Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
“Elias …”
“I’m such a hypocrite, right?” Elias laughs suddenly. “I’m the one who’s been escaping who I am since the day we met. And here I am, arguing with you, telling you to be what you are and drink me like a glass of sangria.” His smile fades. “Maybe you’re right not to listen to the words of some guy who can’t even be fully honest with you. What do I know? I’ve got nothing on a century of Tristan’s superior rulebooks and mind dominance. Sorry,” he quickly adds, lifting a hand, “I won’t get ugly, I don’t know him and hate to speak ill of the dead. It’s tacky.”
Kyle comes up to him, nearly blocking the door. “This has nothing to do with Tristan. This was completely my decision.”
“Alright. And it’s my decision to not believe a word he said to you and, instead, believe what I see with my eyes. You are not a monster.”
“Elias, I’m warning you …”
“You never were and never will be. I think I’ll come back in a few hours, if that’s fine. I’m not done with you quite yet, Kyle Amos.” He rests his hand on the doorknob. “Hey, better take a step back, cutie. The sunlight’s aimed this way. See? I still care about you, even when you hate me.” Elias smirks. “You look sexy when you pout. God, I wish you’d bite me right now.”
Kyle bows his head, frustrated. Then he surrenders, takes a step to the side, says nothing more.
Elias cracks open the door just enough to slip out. Sunlight spills in like white-hot lava as Elias glances back at Kyle, as if to give him one last chance to say something. He doesn’t.
But just as the door closes, Kyle reconsiders, takes a step forward and says, “Elias?” The name comes too late. He’s left standing in front of the door, listening to Elias crunching across the rocks and dirt to the street, then away. Kyle relocates to the kitchen where the window faces the right direction to see Elias, but the sun is too bright, and he can’t pull the curtain.
Kyle sits on the couch in silence, stares ahead at the piano, and wonders what the hell went wrong. He still wears the jacket Elias brought to the clinic. Smells like him. “It’s for the best,” he tells himself. “For both of us.” He curls up on his side, closes his eyes.
It’s dark when he opens them again.
He sits up at once. Sometime after sundown. The house is quiet and still. “Elias?” he calls out.
No answer.
Kyle checks the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom. He looks out from the back patio, then heads to the front door. He stands on the end of the driveway and peers down the road.
Elias is still gone.
He heads back inside and fishes his phone out of a basket of their crap they leave at the end of the kitchen counter. No calls or texts. He drums his fingers on the counter, bothered. Then after flipping a coin in his hand, he decides to send a message.
> Hey. I’m sorry about earlier. Where are you? I just woke up. Let’s talk.
After sending it, he sets his phone down on the counter, then waits for a reply.
Four minutes later, he’s still waiting.
Nine minutes, he’s pacing the kitchen, still waiting.
It’s thirteen minutes later that he opens his phone back up to send another text—only to see a notification that the first was unable to be received.
Kyle stares at the words on his screen, irritated.
Did Elias turn his phone off? Or is it dead? Thrown into a chasm? Kyle grinds his teeth as he rereads the notification over and over. Two more attempts to send the same message, and two more times they fail to deliver. He tries calling instead. The call fails without answer, not even sent to voicemail.
Kyle throws on clothes without bothering to shower and heads out, mind racing, anxious. There is enough time before his shift, so he heads out to the desert, making the long trek to their special spot.
Elias isn’t there. Only dust, only stone.
Kyle doubles back, on a mission. Once within range, he pulls out his phone and checks it again. No messages. He heads the other way down the curving back road by the trailer park, taking the path he remembers to Elias’s house. It takes him a while to find the right street, seeing as he was only there once, wasn’t conscious when he arrived, and the departure was swift and chaotic. He recognizes the house by its appearance from behind, the fence they hopped, the window they clambered out of. Coming around to the front, he spots a truck, Elias’s, he has to assume, as he’s never seen it while conscious.
Kyle peers through the front window. All dark inside. He closes his eyes and attempts to use some kind of extrasensory strength to hear or detect anything inside.