✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER FOURTEEN】

—chapter fourteen.

  ❛ a thank you might be in order. ❜  

A RATHER DANGEROUS THOUGHT had poisoned Elodie's half-asleep mind the next morning. She had tried to ignore it, suppress it, drown it out before it could take hold, but despite all her efforts, it still remained, just as he did.

And unfortunately, Elodie agreed with it. Diego Hargreeves did look fucking adorable that morning.

She hadn't even wanted to leave.

She had to, of course, but a part of her wanted to curl right back into the comforters and his arms and ignore all the warning signs blowing gaskets in her head. She missed how he had held her close to his chest, and the fingers that had curled into her hair, a symbol of intimacy she hadn't really experienced before. A symbol she hadn't even thought she wanted, before then.

But Elodie reigned in the stubborn desire and groaned her way through her morning routine, all grumbles and frowns as she washed up and made her morning tea. And by eight-thirty she was out the door.

Diego was left in her room still asleep. Maybe she should have woken him, but Elodie didn't mind leaving him alone; it wasn't like he didn't have a million other ways into her apartment. And he needed the sleep, right?

"See ya," she whispered, patting the blanketed form gently. "Sleep...uh, sleep tight." 

And with that, she was gone, taking only her travel mug and her quickly-growing doubts with her.

They had slipped into a routine of shared nights and intertangled limbs, romantic without any titles or qualms given to those who would ask. She hadn't ever meant for that -- she hadn't planned on telling him more than her last name and where she kept the toilet paper. But he was just too...too something, too addicting to push away. He was easy to talk to despite his own boundaries, and Elodie honestly had not even realised she had grown so close until she had forced herself to step back. He was funny, and he was good even if he went about it a little odd -- and he was like any other man that she had ever met before.

She was quite certain they were not meant to be anything more than slightly acquainted strangers. And she was also sure that they should not work, and that she should not be feeling what she did.

But no matter what, Elodie did know what she felt. There was no denying that a part of her had grown to care deeply for Diego Hargreeves. It was peculiar and unexplainable but she did and she had for quite a while, even if she would argue quite adamantly otherwise. Maybe it was just the desire of physical touch, or the presence of another person in her quite lonely life, or just...