Page 19 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
“I don’t care about their rules,” Elijah says.
“You will,” Lucian replies calmly. “Or you create another problem while you’re still dealing with the first.”
There’s a pause, not long, just enough to register.
“We keep it contained.”
It isn’t agreement. It isn’t compromise. It’s direction.
Christian’s phone buzzes in his hand and he checks it without breaking rhythm.
“You’ve been suspended,” he says, glancing at Elijah. “Effective immediately.”
“I don’t care.”
Of course he doesn’t.
The conversation moves on without slowing, shifting back into logistics, into people, into what can be pulled and what can be broken and how far they can push before it turns into something bigger than this.
I’m not part of that.
Not in the way they are.
I’m at the other end of the table with Lia’s phone in my hand, scrolling through it again, slower now, more deliberate, forcing myself to actually take in what I’m looking at instead of letting it blur past me.
There has to be something here.
Something she saw and ignored.
Something we missed.
Something that doesn’t belong.
The screen fills the second I unlock it, notifications stacked over each other in a way that makes it hard to separate one from the next, messages layered over requests and tags and mentions until it all starts to feel like a single, constant stream rather than individual pieces.
I open one of her social apps and wait half a second longer than I need to as it loads, like I already know what I’m about to see and still don’t want it in front of me.
Then it floods.
Messages from people I don’t recognise, names that don’t mean anything, all of them speaking to her like they know her, like they’ve been given access to something they were never invited into.
“Hey beautiful.”
“Been watching you for a while.”
“Let me take care of you.”
My thumb moves, steady, controlled, keeping the motion even so I don’t sit on any one thing for too long.
It doesn’t ease off.
“You’d look better with someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“I could treat you better.”
“You don’t even know what you need yet.”
My jaw tightens, but I keep going, because stopping means sitting in it, and sitting in it means thinking about how long this has been there, how much of it she just carried without saying anything.
