His call went unanswered, and the line eventually fell silent. I stared out of the cab window at the passing streets, the city alive with shifting lights and distant scents carried on the wind, but my mind kept circling back to what I had seen earlier—too close, too intimate, too hard to ignore.
Nothing tied Elliot and me together. No bond, no claim, nothing that would give me the right to feel anything at all. And yet, a sharp, restless heat had settled in my chest, one that refused to be reasoned with.
Why does it bother me this much?
He could choose whoever he wanted to stand that close to him, to share that kind of proximity. Hayley, especially, seemed familiar with him in a way that suggested history—something deeper, something already accepted. My instincts latched onto that conclusion, twisting it into something heavier than it should have been.
A mate, perhaps. A companion already aligned with him. Someone who had long since earned that closeness.
