Page 76 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
“I know.”
That shouldn’t relieve me, but it does a little.
“Then what the fuck am I doing here?” I ask, the words coming out lower than I intend. “If I’m not him, and I’m not you, then what exactly am I supposed to be?”
That one makes him look at me properly.
“You are supposed to learn the difference between feeling something and obeying it,” he says. “Elijah obeys his body. It works for him because his body is where he puts everything. Rage. Fear. Grief. It all has somewhere to go. You don’t work like that.”
I stare at him, waiting.
“You go in the other direction,” he continues. “You don’t explode, you disappear. You numb. You fold in on yourself until there’s almost nothing left to hold onto.”
The words make my jaw tighten because hearing it said that clearly feels too close to looking in a mirror.
“So what,” I say. “I just stay miserable and call that control?”
“No,” he says. “You learn to keep your mind in the room even when your body wants to leave it.”
That’s all he says.
No lecture. No dramatic line. Just that.
And somehow that sits with me harder than anything else he could have said, because there isn’t anything grand about it. It’s not about becoming violent enough or hard enough or cold enough. It’s about staying in the room.
The lot comes into view a minute later, and the dealer’s car is already there.
Lucian slows and pulls in at an angle that leaves me a clean path toward him while keeping the second car behind us out of direct sight.
He doesn’t move to get out.
He just kills the engine and looks at me.
“Same rhythm,” he says. “You don’t act nervous. You don’t act brave. You don’t act like anything changed.”
I nod once.
“And if he spooks?” I ask.
“Then Elijah handles that.”
The way he says it makes clear there is no version of tonight where the dealer gets to walk away if he starts running.
I get out of the car.
The cold hits me harder than I expect, sharp enough to clear some of the static from my head as I walk toward the dealer. He steps out to meet me slowly, and I can see the difference immediately. He’s done cautious before. This isn’t caution. Thisis nerves. His eyes keep moving, scanning behind me, over my shoulders, across the dark.
“You’re early,” he says.
“So are you.”
He studies me for a second, and I force myself to stay exactly where I am, not tense, not loose, just as I’ve always been with him.
“You look rough,” he says. “You really go through that much that fast?”
“I told you I needed more.”
He doesn’t come closer.
