Free Web NovelChapter 202: Chapter 202: Who’s Not Being Honest?
Chapter 202: Who’s Not Being Honest?
Elias sounded worried. His face matched it, too: red eyes, damp lashes, brows drawn together as if Giselle’s bruise had personally wronged him.
So even though Giselle found his posture a little...
Strange.
She could not bring herself to say anything. She only sat there with her shirt open, back straight, jaw tight, and let him kneel in front of her with the ointment.
At least he looked serious.
That helped. A little.
Men and women should not do this. That much Giselle knew. She should not be sitting half-undressed in front of him, and Elias should not be kneeling between her knees with medicine warming in his palms. The situation had crossed too many lines at once.
But there was no shame on Elias’s face.
No nervous glance. No attempt to take advantage of the moment openly. He looked focused, almost stubborn, as if the only thing in front of him was an injury that needed treatment.
Maybe, in his mind, this was normal between Besties.
Elias glanced up and caught the tiny shift in her expression.
His mouth curved before he lowered his eyes again.
He knew exactly what she was doing. She was trying to explain away the discomfort in her chest, trying to give it a clean reason, a safe name. She did not realize that every explanation only led her farther down the crooked path he had built for her.
It was not really Giselle’s fault. In love, she was blank paper.
A girl raised that high above ordinary people had never had to learn this kind of thing. She had never loved someone close enough to be touched. The old Lucien Hart obsession had looked intense, but it had been worship from a distance. Worship was easy. It asked nothing dirty of you. It let you kneel without ever reaching out.
[System Theta: Didn’t Giselle love Lucien Hart before?]
That wasn’t love, Elias said.
[System Theta: Huh?]
Love is wanting to be with someone even if you have to fall from the clouds to do it. Or drag them into the dirt with you. Either way, you stay together. His fingertips pressed more ointment into his palm. Putting someone on an altar and refusing to touch them? That’s not love. That’s being a pathetic devotee.
[System Theta: I don’t understand...]
Then here’s the simple version. Don’t be a simp.
[System Theta: ...]
So yes, Elias continued, calm as anything while kneeling before Giselle like a worried little saint. To me, Giselle is blank paper. Whatever I write on her now, she’ll learn as truth.
He spread the ointment across both hands, then lifted his head.
His eyes were still red. His voice was gentle. "I’m going to put it on now, okay? Try to hold still."
Giselle nodded.
Then she sucked in a sharp breath.
Elias stopped at once. "What is it? Does it hurt?"
Giselle shook her head. Halfway through, she seemed to reconsider. Then she looked as if nodding would be wrong too, so she froze with a rare, trapped expression.
Elias almost laughed in her face.
That was not pain.
The ointment was cool against her heated skin, but his palms were warm. Worse, his hands were soft. Too soft for someone who smiled like that after starting fires. The contrast slid across her bruised abdomen in a way that made Giselle’s brows pinch together.
She pressed her lips shut.
Elias watched every tiny piece of it. The faint crease between her brows. The tight line of her mouth. The way sweat gathered at her hairline and slipped down along the side of her face. She did not make a sound.
Did she know how much that made him want to bully her harder?
His lips lifted.
He added the slightest pressure.
Giselle’s lashes lowered, but she did not react enough. The bruise itself was real, and the pressure had to hurt at least a little, but pain was not the thing she was fighting.
Fine.
Elias’s palm drifted lower as if by accident, passing over the small, neat dip of her navel. At that exact moment, he pressed down with the heel of his hand.
Giselle’s body gave the smallest shiver.
It was barely there, but Elias was touching her. He felt it.
Still trying to hold out against me? Cute.
[System Theta: How are you this good at this?]
I studied, Elias said.
[System Theta: Studied what?]
In one world, I had to play the most expensive companion in a private women’s lounge. Knowing how to serve rich women was a required skill. Massage was basic coursework.
[System Theta: ...]
System Theta was beginning to suspect there was no profession Elias had not somehow survived.
Elias kept working the ointment in with the restraint of a model patient caretaker. He did not dare show too much skill. That would break the image. A helpless boy should not know exactly how to make a proud girl lose her composure under his hands.
So he kept it soft. Concerned. Almost clumsy.
Even then, Giselle’s breathing changed.
He pretended not to notice.
When the last slick trace of ointment disappeared from his fingers, Giselle caught his wrist.
"That’s enough."
Her voice sounded steady, but relief threaded through it. The medicine had started to work, heating the bruised area until her skin felt almost feverish. Unfortunately, it was not only her bruise that felt warm now.
Elias looked at her with open suspicion. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." Giselle nodded once, then reached to pull him up. "You’ve been kneeling long enough."
Elias let her guide him.
That was the plan.
Except he really had been kneeling too long. The moment he rose, blood rushed through him wrong. His vision darkened hard and fast.
His body tipped forward.
Giselle caught him on instinct, but the momentum carried him into her. Elias was lighter than most women expected, but not weightless. His shoulder hit her chest, his hands caught at her, and Giselle fell backward onto the couch with him on top of her.
The frame groaned beneath them.
Then the apartment went quiet.
For a few seconds, neither of them moved.
Their eyes met.
Giselle’s eyes held a flicker of surprise.
Elias’s widened with something much stronger: shock first, then panic, then a fragile kind of confusion that looked too innocent for the position they were in.
The room seemed to shrink around them.
A boy and a girl, alone in the dark. Her shirt open. His hand still trapped near her bare abdomen, warm from the medicine. Her fingers locked around his wrist. His knee pressed into the couch beside her. Their breathing too close.
They should have separated immediately.
Neither of them did.
It was exactly like Naomi’s balcony. The same ridiculous logic, wearing a new shape.
They were Besties. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
What was there to be guilty about?
If one of them moved first, if one of them looked away first, then that person was the one with something dirty in their heart.
Giselle stayed still.
Elias stayed still too.
He could feel her hand around his wrist. Her fingers were cool, but her palm had warmed from touching him. The skin under his hand was even hotter. His glasses had slipped again, and through the crooked lenses, Giselle’s face looked almost unreal in the darkness: silver hair spilled across the couch, blue eyes fixed on him, mouth pressed flat as if calm could be forced into existence by discipline alone.
Elias let the silence stretch.
Then he lowered his gaze first.
A flush rose over his face in a visible wave. He bit his lower lip, tried to speak, failed, then tried again.
His voice came out thin. "Let go of me..."
The words landed like a trigger.
Giselle released his wrist at once.
No, she did not release it.
She threw it away.
Her face remained composed, but the motion betrayed her. Too quick. Too sharp. Too panicked for someone who had been perfectly calm.
Elias stayed where he was for one more breath, looking down at the hand she had flung aside.
Then, very slowly, he lifted his eyes back to her.
Giselle looked away first.
