Chapter 46: The Misunderstanding
Rosalie:
I sneaked another glance toward Eiden, and despite the darkness filling the inside of the car, I didn’t fail to notice the tightness of his jawline or the way his fingers were gripping the steering wheel just way too hard.
He was clearly unhappy.
Not being able to hold myself back, I finally found my voice to ask, "Why are you mad?"
For a moment it seemed like he might not answer, but then he suddenly stopped the car. And all of a sudden, we were surrounded by an unnatural darkness and the storm sounded like a distant noise. It wasn’t until he switched off the engine and turned the headlights on that I noticed we were in a tunnel.
I turned my attention back to him, but he had his eyes fixed on the empty tunnel ahead. My heart was hammering in my chest, not from fear but from the sheer confusion about what exactly was happening.
Then he finally spoke.
"Why escape when you still clearly care about them so much?"
The question caught me completely off guard. For several seconds, I could only stare at him, struggling to understand where that conclusion had even come from. Outside, the storm continued raging against the mountain roads, but inside the tunnel everything felt unnaturally quiet. And somehow the silence pressing around us felt far more overwhelming than the thunder ever could.
"What?" I finally managed.
Eiden still hadn’t looked at me. His hands rested loosely on the steering wheel while his gaze remained fixed on the road beyond the windshield. To anyone else he might have appeared calm, but I could feel the tension rolling off him. It lingered in every line of his body and every second of silence that followed.
"You stopped me." His voice was low and controlled. Far too controlled. "When I wanted to confront them."
It took me several painfully long seconds to connect what he’s trying to say. But once it did, I was left confused. I frowned and asked, "What does that have to do with anything?"
Finally, he turned his head and those blue eyes landed on me with enough intensity to steal my breath for a moment. "If you didn’t care about them," he said quietly, "then why stop me?"
The question hit me harder than it should have. Because now that he said it out loud, I could see exactly how it must have looked from his perspective. The Alphas had chased me through a storm. They had locked me up. Tried to stop me from leaving. Yet the moment Eiden was ready to confront them, I was the one who stepped in and stopped him.
For a second, I was too stunned to respond. Then I realized what he genuinely believed, and suddenly I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
"Eiden..." I shook my head.
His gaze didn’t waver.
I leaned back against the seat and exhaled slowly, trying to gather my thoughts. "You think I was protecting them?"
The silence that followed was answer enough.
I stared at him in disbelief. Then, despite everything, a small incredulous laugh escaped me. "I wasn’t trying to protect them."
His expression shifted ever so slightly. Not much, just enough for me to notice. I continued before he could interrupt. "The reason I stopped you had nothing to do with them."
For the first time since parking the car, something uncertain flickered through his eyes. "Then why?" The question came immediately as if he needed the answer. As if it mattered far more than it should.
I looked away for a moment, suddenly finding the tunnel wall far easier to look at than the man sitting beside me. Because the answer felt embarrassingly obvious now that I had to say it aloud.
"I didn’t want you getting into trouble because of me."
The words sounded smaller than I intended, almost insignificant. Yet the effect they had on him was immediate. Silence filled the car after that. Then I looked back at him and froze.
The anger was gone, and in its place was something else. Something that looked suspiciously like shock. For several seconds, he simply stared at me. Then slowly, very slowly, the corner of his mouth lifted.
The sight nearly made my heart skip a beat. It wasn’t a large smile, not even close. But somehow that made it worse. Or better. I wasn’t entirely sure. Because every time he smiled like that, it transformed his entire face. It made him look younger, softer, and dangerously handsome.
"So," he said quietly, breaking the silence.
"So?"
His smile deepened, just slightly. "The one you were worried about wasn’t them."
Heat rushed straight to my face. "Eiden-"
"It was me."
It wasn’t a question, but a statement. And somehow that made it infinitely harder to answer. I opened my mouth, then closed it. And then cursed myself internally.
Why was wrong with me?
All I had done was tell the truth. Yet now, under the full force of his attention, even breathing felt harder. I blamed the bond. Because nothing else made sense.
His gaze never left mine. He was waiting patiently, looking certain as if he already knew the answer and simply wanted to hear me say it.
Finally, I gave up. "Yes." The word came out embarrassingly quiet. But he heard it.
Of course he did.
The smile that followed was enough to make my pulse stumble. And suddenly I became painfully aware of how close we were sitting. I became aware of the confined space inside the vehicle, the way his eyes hadn’t moved from my face, and the way mine seemed incapable of looking anywhere else.
The air felt heavier somehow. Warmer. My heart was beating far too fast, ready to jump out of the confinement of my chest the first chance it get.
I turned away first. Because somebody had to.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be a mistake. The next thing I knew, his hand reached across the space between us and then warm fingers gently wrapped beneath my chin.
The touch wasn’t forceful. Wasn’t demanding. Yet it immediately stole every coherent thought from my head.
Slowly and deliberately, he turned my face back toward him. And the moment my gaze met his once again, my breath got caught.
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