Eliott's confession hung heavy in the air, a devastating tapestry woven from grief, sacrifice, and an impossible choice. Maëlys stared at the jagged scar on his forearm, a silent testament to his own brush with death. The initial shock began to recede, replaced by a bewildering torrent of emotions. Anger, yes, for his deception, for withholding the truth. But also a strange, profound sorrow, and a terrifying flicker of understanding. He hadn't caused her pain out of malice, but from a desperate, misguided act of love and protection.
"You... you pulled me out?" Maëlys whispered, her voice hoarse, the image of twisted metal and broken glass from her nightmares suddenly imbued with a new, horrifying reality. "You saved me?"
Eliott nodded slowly, his eyes still raw with unspoken torment. "I had to. You were losing too much time. Every second counted." His gaze dropped to his hands, calloused and strong, the very hands that had wrestled her from the wreckage. "They told me you had severe head trauma. That the amnesia… it might be permanent. You wouldn't remember Léonie. You wouldn't remember Liam. You wouldn't remember us." His voice cracked on the last word, filled with an agonizing weight.
Us. The word resonated deep within her, triggering a new, unprecedented wave of memories. Not just flashes of the accident, but of before.
A shared laugh in a sun-drenched field.
His strong arms around her, not in comfort, but in passion, pulling her close, his lips on her neck, tasting of freedom and rebellion.
A heated argument, voices rising, a slamming door.
His tattoos, the exact raven, the intertwining thorns, etched onto her skin, but not in a parlor. They were on him, but somehow they felt like they belonged to her, too.
A face, young and vibrant, full of life, not of fear. Léonie. Laughing, her hand linked through Maëlys's arm, a sister, a best friend.
The fragments weren't just random images anymore. They were connecting, forming a coherent, agonizing narrative. Eliott wasn't just Liam's brother, the man who saved her from the crash. He was intertwined with her past in a way far deeper, far more intimate than she could have ever conceived. He wasn't just a stranger she felt drawn to; he was a pivotal, unremembered figure in her life.
Her knees buckled, and she reached out, grasping the doorframe for support. "We... we knew each other," she breathed, the realization a punch to the gut. "Before. We were... something."
Eliott's eyes, dark and haunted, confirmed it. There was a raw, primal grief there, mirroring her own nascent sorrow. "More than something, Maëlys," he whispered, his voice barely audible, filled with a desperate longing. "We were everything. And it was messy. Complicated. Dangerous." He took a hesitant step closer, his eyes pleading with hers, searching for any flicker of recognition beyond the pain. "The crash... it wiped out your memory. But it didn't wipe out who we were to each other. It didn't wipe out us."
Maëlys stared at him, tears finally overflowing, hot tracks down her cold cheeks. The man who had been her rescuer, her comforting anchor, her forbidden lover, was also the keeper of her lost history, a ghost from a volatile past she couldn't yet grasp. The invisible threads that had pulled her towards him from the very beginning weren't just attraction; they were the enduring, unbreakable ties of a love that had once been everything, shattered by tragedy, and now returning to haunt them both. The revelation was overwhelming, a tidal wave of lost emotion crashing over her, leaving her breathless and utterly, irrevocably exposed.