The letters continued to arrive, a relentless siege on Maëlys's fragile peace. Each one chipped away at her resolve, forcing her to confront not just Eliott's perspective, but the fragments of her own memory that now, terrifyingly, began to align with his desperate pleas. She saw their faces, intertwined in passion, in arguments, in shared laughter. She remembered the reckless abandon, the exhilarating danger that had once defined her life with him. It wasn't just Eliott's story anymore; it was theirs.
One evening, unable to bear the suffocating weight of her unanswered questions and his haunting words, Maëlys found herself walking. Not towards the ocean, but towards the only place she knew she could find him. The tattoo parlor. The light was on, a beacon in the encroaching dusk. She pushed open the door, the familiar chime a stark contrast to the storm brewing inside her.
Eliott looked up from his work, his stormy eyes widening at her unexpected arrival. His face was gaunt, shadowed, reflecting the torment she knew he'd been living. But there was also a flicker of desperate hope, a raw vulnerability that twisted her gut.
"Maëlys," he breathed, his voice barely a whisper, as if he feared she was a mirage.
"I read your letters," she stated, her voice flat, emotionless, trying to mask the tempest raging within her. "All of them."
He slowly put down his drawing, his gaze never leaving her face. "And?"
"And I still don't understand," she admitted, the lie tasting bitter on her tongue. She understood more than she wanted to. "I need... I need the rest of it. Everything. No more secrets, Eliott. No more lies. The whole truth, no matter how ugly."
He stood up, slowly, his posture radiating a mix of relief and profound apprehension. He knew this was it. The final, brutal confession. "Come here," he murmured, his voice husky with emotion. Not a command, but an invitation, a plea.
Maëlys hesitated for a moment, then took a step towards him, then another, drawn by an invisible thread she could no longer deny. She stopped just inches from him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, to inhale his familiar, intoxicating scent. His hands, large and scarred, reached out, cupping her face, his thumbs gently stroking her cheeks. His touch was hesitant, reverent, yet held an underlying intensity that made her tremble.
"Our love... it was a fire," he began, his voice raw, his eyes burning into hers. "It consumed us. We fought. We loved. We broke each other, and we put each other back together, worse than before, stronger than before. Liam... he was always trying to come between us. He was obsessed with Léonie, but he was fixated on our destruction. That night, Maëlys... he was going to expose everything. Ruin us. He was furious. Out of control."
His confession was a brutal dance, weaving between their fiery passion and Liam's escalating jealousy. He described their reckless joyrides, the dangerous thrills they'd chased, pushing boundaries, living on the edge. He didn't spare himself, detailing his own flaws, his possessiveness, his inability to control the chaos they bred. He revealed a love that was consuming, addictive, and ultimately, self-destructive.
"I couldn't lose you," he whispered, his eyes now blazing with a desperate, ancient pain. "Not to him. Not to anything. When that car crashed... when I saw you dying... I made a choice. To erase it all. To give you a chance at a different life. Even if it meant living without you, haunted by every single memory we shared, knowing you forgot it all." His voice broke, thick with the weight of years of unspoken agony. "It was the only way I knew how to save you. To protect you from the monster I was, from the monster we were."
His hand slid down, cupping the back of her neck, pulling her closer, inexorably. Maëlys felt tears streaming down her face, not just from the pain of the truth, but from the overwhelming realization of the sacrifice he believed he had made. He wasn't just a deceiver; he was a tortured soul, driven by a love so fierce it had broken them both.
His lips found hers, not in a gentle kiss, but in a desperate, consuming plunge. It was a kiss of raw passion, of long-suppressed grief, of a connection that transcended memory. Her body arched against his, responding to a primal need she could no longer deny. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her flush against his hard, aroused body. This was their fire, burning hot and dangerous, igniting a hunger that had been dormant for too long.
The room spun, the boundaries between past and present dissolving in the inferno of their kiss. This wasn't just reunion; it was a re-ignition of a love forged in flames, a love that had caused immense pain, but also an undeniable, addictive pleasure. In that moment, Maëlys knew, with terrifying clarity, that even broken, even haunted, their love was a force too powerful to escape. She was no longer running. She was burning.