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Chapter Nine – I Don't Want to Own You. I Want to Love You.
The rain had started again, soft and steady, tapping against the windowpanes like fingers too shy to knock.
Ava sat on Elias's couch, legs tucked under her, a blanket draped loosely around her shoulders. The room was warm, dim, and filled with that unfamiliar peace that came from not knowing what the next hour would bring—and not being afraid of it.
She looked up when Elias walked in, a steaming mug in each hand. He moved slower these days, more cautious. Not just because of his injury, but because something inside him had shifted.
He offered her the chamomile tea. Their fingers brushed, and he didn't linger.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
He sat across from her, not beside her.
The silence between them wasn't awkward. It was deliberate. Careful. Like the hush between the inhale and the exhale.
Then, finally, Elias spoke.
"I used to think love meant wanting someone so much it hurt."
Ava looked up.
His voice was low, thick with restraint, but clear. "I thought if I wanted you hard enough, needed you enough, it meant what I felt was real. That I was real. Because when I'm alone... I disappear a little. Every day."
Ava held her mug tighter.
"I know that sounds dramatic," he added. "But it's the truth. Since I was a kid, I've struggled with… I don't know. Emptiness. I guess. I'd latch onto people. Things. I needed something outside of me to make me feel whole. I thought that was normal. But then you came along."
She didn't speak. She just listened.
"I told myself I was protecting you. But I wasn't. I was wrapping you in my need, not your own. And when you started to pull away, even a little…" He swallowed hard. "It felt like drowning."
Elias set his tea down and looked at her, eyes rimmed in shadow but burning with truth.
"I don't want to own you anymore, Ava. I don't want to worship you. I don't want to make you my everything. I want to love you."
Her breath hitched. He went on.
"I want to learn how to love you in the way that lets you breathe. In the way that doesn't take from you. I want to love you in the quiet. In the stillness. I want to love you without needing to be the center of your world."
A tear slipped down Ava's cheek. She didn't wipe it away.
Elias's hands were clasped tightly in front of him, knuckles pale.
"I think," he said softly, "I confused possession with presence. I thought being wrapped around someone meant being close. But closeness isn't about suffocating. It's about being safe. About letting the other person have space—even from you."
Ava's voice was gentle. "Where did that come from? That need to hold so tightly?"
His eyes flicked away.
"My father," he said simply. "He was absent in all the ways that mattered. Not physically. He was there. A ghost in the room. Watching. Judging. Never once said he was proud of me. Never once showed affection. I spent my whole childhood craving acknowledgment. Any acknowledgment. Even if it hurt."
He paused. The room felt smaller, like it was folding around his words.
"So I learned to overcompensate. When I loved someone—even as a teen—I clung. Smothered. It always ended badly. But I never understood why."
He looked back at her.
"Until I hurt you."
Ava placed her tea on the table and leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees.
"Elias," she said, voice trembling, "you didn't just hurt me. You made me afraid. Not because you were cruel. But because the weight of your need felt exactly like his power over me. Ethane made me feel like I belonged to him. That my pain was his property. That if I breathed without permission, it was a betrayal."
Her eyes glistened. "So when you loved me the way you thought was right, it brought all of that back. And I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know how to say, 'Please love me quietly. Please don't look at me like I'm the answer to your emptiness.'"
Elias nodded. Pain flickered in his features—but he didn't interrupt.
Ava inhaled shakily. "But what scares me most is that I still want you. That even after everything, a part of me still reaches for you in the dark. And I don't know what that says about me."
"It says you're brave," Elias said. "It says you want to heal, not hide. It says you still believe in love."
"I'm not sure I do," she whispered.
"Then let me earn the chance to show you."
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was full.
Full of grief. Of longing. Of truths neither of them had ever spoken aloud before.
Finally, Ava reached out—slowly—and placed her hand over his.
His fingers trembled beneath hers.
"I don't need a savior," she said. "I need a partner. I need someone who can hold my pain without needing to fix it. Someone who can walk beside me, not drag me toward whatever version of love they believe I should want."
"I can try to be that," Elias said. "I don't promise perfection. But I promise presence. Patience. And I'll never call my obsession love again."
Ava's eyes shimmered. "Then maybe… we can start again."
He nodded, voice rough. "As equals. As two broken people trying to become whole. Not because we complete each other, but because we choose each other."
And in that moment—no kisses were exchanged.
No bodies tangled.
Only hands.
Joined.
Trembling.
Alive.
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That night, Ava didn't stay.
But as she left Elias's house, something had changed.
There was no pressure. No chase. No chains.
Just the soft, fragile thread of something being rebuilt.
Not from fire.
But from gentleness.
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