Eternal [HS]

Chapter Twenty-Six

THEY WAIT AN APPROPRIATE DURATION of time for him to get halfway down the hallway that leads to the front entrance of the club, then set off after him in a half-hurried, half-relaxed pace that can be mistaken as two lovers who are desperate to find a place alone together.

If they weren't here for the purpose of tailing Elias home, perhaps that would be them. Perhaps they would be those people, like that of the company around them as they stroll down the hallway with their arms linked together, if they weren't suppressing every inescapable urge they have for the sake of their task.

She expected it to stop at one point, needing him, wanting him in the way that only she is allowed to have him, yet it hasn't. Part of her wonders if it'll ever stop or if they'll be this way forever, or, at least, her version of forever. The distinction between his idea of the word and hers isn't lost on her, especially since it makes his relationship with her that much more special. Knowing that she isn't like him, that she could be taken away at any second just like his last love, makes his feelings for her braver than anything he has done thus far in life.

To come out of a relationship that can only end one way and knowingly reenter another, albeit centuries of grief and mourning later, is insanity. He doesn't pretend to not know that this is the prime example of why people say history often repeats itself, but it's too far gone now. One moment, he was holding himself at bay, the next, he was diving forward without a scrap of restraint left. As soon as he decided to throw caution to the wind and rest his hand on her thigh that night in the living room, it was over. One way or another, they were going to happen.

The wind puffs around them and blows the perfectly styled hair back from her face on her first step through the doors of the club.

Wordlessly, Harry shrugs the suit jacket off of his body and drapes it over her shoulders for her, knowing how cold she gets in the naturally low climate they have here. In the process of slipping into the car as quickly and secretly as possible, the quiet gesture lingers with her. Even after they sit down and buckle their seatbelts, she cannot help but reach up and run the fabric between her fingers.

It's only when their seatbelts are clicked into place and the car is rumbling to life a safe amount of vehicles behind Elias' that either of them speaks after his instruction to remain silent and unassuming.

"Do you think he left because he knew someone was watching him?" she asks.

The city seems to gleam around them, all of the light that illuminates the interior of the car coming from passing headlights, streetlights, lights from the windows of the high-rise buildings, and the bright neon lights of other clubs that they pass.

His hand is lazily hung over the steering wheel while the other sits idly in his lap as if driving is a skill as instinctual as blinking after the years he has had to hone it. Now that she thinks of it, every car around them drives with a hint of perfection to them too.

So unlike the messy danger of inhabiting the road alongside inexperienced humans, it all flows together so nicely for being such a crowded area. A place like this would undoubtedly be an anxiety-inducing place to drive if it were the human world. She can hear the phantom sounds of undeserved honking horns and voices yelling obscenities out of their rolled down windows if she tries hard enough.

There are only one or two drunken drivers cursing people out on their way past, but it isn't enough to draw her attention from where it is always fixed—him.

Harry, with his eyes sharply focused on tracking the car ahead, says, "I don't know. None of us compromised the mission. He didn't see any of us, so I don't see how he'd know that."

It didn't look like Elias was leaving in a panic. Surely, if he thought he was being watched he would've bolted out of there as fast as he could, yet what she saw when her gaze drifted from Harry to the staircase that connected to upper and lower levels of the club was the opposite. His face was turned down to look at his phone while he took step after step with a half-finished glass of whiskey in hand. He appeared so unbothered, she almost didn't realize it was him.