✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE】

—chapter twenty-one.

  ❛maybe we're both just screwing up. ❜  

"THANKS FOR LETTING ME BORROW SOME CLOTHES," Elodie muttered. She tugged gently on the black hoodie. "I appreciate it, after mine..." she trailed off. "Thanks."

Diego just nodded.

It had been thirty minutes since he had brought her back with him, and he still hadn't dropped that odd expression he had worn when he saw her. His eyes were hooded and shadowed and under the dull gleam of his place's lights, practically unreadable. He was still Diego, the man she loved, but the edge that hung about him was foreign to her. 

But despite that, Elodie knew what he was thinking. She had seen the shock in faces before -- only, those times, they were also screaming and petrified of what the 'little freak' was going to do to them next. He wasn't yelling just yet, but she could still feel his fear just as she could her own. Thick, hanging heavy in the air between them, waiting to crush their still beating hearts between its teeth.

"I..." she looked away from him, staring at the wall behind. A series of knives sat plunged into a black and white silhouette; she wondered how many holes she could count. "I didn't think I'd see you. Or you me."

Diego's lips pursed. "You walked past the gym."

Elodie frowned, "what?"

"You looked like a zombie," he muttered, his tone dark and low. "Thought you were drunk, or high on somethin'. So I followed you."

She picked at her nail absent-mindedly. "You didn't have to."

"I thought you were gonna get hurt," Diego barked back, and she flinched at the harsh sound. "I thought -- well, it doesn't matter. Cause you obviously didn't."

"Should'a believed me, when I said I could hold my own."

He scoffed bitterly. "When someone says that, they generally don't mean they have fucking glowing shit that comes out of them."

The panic that had almost consumed Elodie nearly an hour before began to pour back in. It had left a sour taste in her mouth, and as the darkness trickled in again, she hoped she wouldn't throw up.

"I didn't want you to know."

"Yeah. I got that."

"You shouldn't have come."

"Dammit, Elodie, don't you dare do that."

"Do what?"

"Push me away again!" He shouted back. His hand came up, jabbing a finger her way; she didn't miss the way it trembled. "I know, and I know because I followed you, because I was scared you were gonna get killed. I didn't want to lose you."