Chapter 317
Ellie’s POV
I didn’t go straight home after leaving campus. Instead, I drove around for a while with the windows down and the radio turned up, letting Sarah’s words settle in my mind as I explored the winding back roads.
“Don’t let your fear make your decisions for you,” she had said with such firmness and conviction that it made me rethink everything.
She was right. I had been operating from a place of fear since the moment I woke up in this timeline. Fear of dying again. Fear of being hurt. Fear of being wrong about everything.
But what if being afraid was the thing that was going to get me killed?
I had already hurt someone, an innocent man, out of fear. I had used Colt like a tool, a means to an end, all because I was afraid that something bad might happen to me. In my attempts to protect myself, I had hurt others, and I had spent little time actually considering the consequences of my actions.
I still didn’t know if I could trust Dominic. Despite what Sarah had said about whether she thought he was involved in my death or not, I had still been there in my past life, withering away in a bed while he was nowhere to be found, all the while putting a crown on my sister’s head like it had always belonged there.
But Sarah was right about one thing. He wasn’t the same in this life as he was in the past one. The Dominic I used to know never would have chased me like this. He never would have cleaned bathrooms at volunteer events. He never would have talked about his feelings in therapy or prepared sleepovers for us like we were kids again.
And yet, he was doing all of those things now. He was trying in ways he had never tried before. And yeah. Maybe it was because his old tactics to keep me under control, the coldness and distance that always had me spending all of my time chasing him before, no longer worked. Maybe it was that, and nothing more.
But maybe…
Maybe he was different. Maybe we both were.
Making my decision, I finally turned the car around and headed home.
When I pulled up to the house, I sat in the driveway for a long moment, staring at the front door. My hands were shaking a little. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, took a breath, and got out.
Inside, the house was quiet. I checked the sitting room first, then the study. Dominic wasn’t in either. I was about to head upstairs when I heard voices coming from the kitchen.
I walked down the hall and found him standing by the counter, talking to one of the cooks about dinner preparations. He looked up when I entered, and the conversation died immediately.
“Ellie,” he said. “You’re back.”
“Yeah.”
The cook excused herself quickly, sensing the tension, and disappeared through the side door. Dominic and I stood there, looking at each other.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
He nodded. “Of course.”
We moved to the sitting room. I shut the door behind us and turned to face him.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I started. “About the full moon.”
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Dominic straightened slightly. “And?”
I took a breath. “I’ll accept your offer. But on one condition.”
His eyebrows lifted. “What condition?”
“Make it magical,” I said. “Plan something special. Something that actually means something. And maybe-maybe I’ll consider spending the night with you. But no promises.”
Dominic stared at me for a long moment. Then, he asked, “What made you change your mind?”
I hesitated. There were a lot of reasons. Sarah’s words. The sleepover. The way he’d thrown himself under that falling man without thinking twice.
But the simplest answer was the truest one.
P
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