“You don’t want to be there,” he says finally.
“That’s not what I asked.”
He exhales through his nose. “Ellie…”
“You don’t get to tell me what I want,” I cut in. “You get to tell me why you’re scared of a hole in the ground.”
His head lifts slowly. His eyes are shadowed, the steady gaze I’ve come to expect now fractured with something raw. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.” He straightens, but the movement lacks its usual controlled grace. It’s jagged, like he’s fighting his own reflexes. “Go home, Ellie.”
“I found the patterns. The dates, the locations. It’s not random disappearances, Caleb. It’s a cycle. Something happens here every seven years. The last spike was in 2018. The next one is happening right now.”
He goes very still. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me. Explain it to me. Make me understand why three people went missing in 1985, another two in 1962, and why right now, people in this town are acting like they’re waiting for a storm to hit.”
He crosses the space between us in three strides. Not threatening—but the proximity is electric, charged with the frustration he’s been swallowing for weeks. “Understanding won’t protect you. Knowing won’t make you safe. It will do the exact opposite.”
“So I’m just supposed to pretend? To look at the gaps in your own records and call it coincidence?”
“Yes.” The word is torn from him. “For once in your life, stop digging. Stop needing to see everything.”
“Or what?”
His control snaps. I see it happen—a fracture running through the careful wall he’s maintained since the day we met. His hands come up, not to touch me but to frame my face, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones. The contact is startling, warm.
“Or you become part of the pattern,” he says, his voice low and rough. “I can’t watch that happen.”
There’s fear in his eyes. Real, undiluted fear.
For me?
I can tell that it’s the first honest thing he’s shown me.
I don’t pull away. “You’ve been trying to scare me off since I arrived.”
“It hasn’t worked.”
“No.”
His breath hitches. The air between us thickens, heavy with everything unsaid. The argument hasn’t ended—it’s just transformed, molten heat replacing cold frustration.
When his lips crash against mine, it doesn’t feel like surrender. It feels like another battlefield, mouths colliding with the same tension that’s been simmering between us for weeks—his kiss a desperate translation of all the warnings he couldn’t voice aloud.
Papers rustle as he backs me against the edge of his desk, the carefully arranged maps scattering to the floor in an unceremonious heap. My fingers twist into the fabric of his shirt, anchoring him to me, refusing to let him retreat even as his body presses me into the unforgiving wood.
“This is reckless,” he breathes, forehead brushing mine.
“So stop,” I challenge.
His hands tighten on my hips instead. “You know I won’t.”
“Good,” I whisper.
The sharp edge digs into the small of my back, but I barely register the discomfort, too focused on the heat of his mouth, the way his teeth graze my lower lip like he’s both punishing and claiming me at once.