Chapter 40: KEEP YOU ALIVE

Georgia

He warned me about Darcy without giving me a single reason to believe him.

Puck corners me the next afternoon outside the dining hall, catching my arm gently before I can walk past him. His grip stays lighter than I expect given the tension radiating off every other part of him. I pull back instinctively, still raw from the night before, from his silence, from the look on his face that told me nothing and everything all at once. My skin prickles where his fingers touched me, a warmth that lingers even after I’ve stepped out of reach.

"I need to talk to you," he breathes, urgent, his eyes scanning the hallway around us like he’s checking who might overhear.

"Now you want to talk?" I snap, bitter.

"Georgia. Please," he pleads, his voice cracking slightly, enough that I let him steer me toward a quieter corner near the stairwell, away from the flow of students moving between classes. I hate how easily I still follow him, how some traitorous part of me softens at the sound of my own name in his mouth.

"You have five minutes," I warn, arms crossed, still furious about last night, about weeks of half answers and cold silences and warnings that never come with any actual explanation attached. I dig my nails into my palm.

"Stay away from Darcy," he demands, blunt.

I stare at him, waiting for more, for anything else to justify the tension in his shoulders and the wildness behind his eyes. Something about the timing needles at me, the fact that he says nothing for weeks and then corners me the very day after I’ve spent a night alone, hurting, because of him. "That’s it? That’s what this is?" I ask, incredulous. "You go silent on me for days, and the second I move on, suddenly you have something to say?"

"I’m serious," he insists, his jaw tight, his whole posture coiled with the same barely contained tension I saw across the quad the day Mollie visited. "He’s not who he seems. You need to trust me on this."

"Trust you." I laugh, sharp and humorless, the sound scraping against the walls of the stairwell. "You won’t even talk to me half the time. You disappear for days without explanation. You tell me to stay away from you and then show up wherever I am like nothing happened. And now you want me to just trust you about someone else, with zero actual reason?"

"I can’t explain it to you," he says, fast, frustrated, his hands curling slightly at his sides, like he’s holding back the urge to reach for me again. "There are things I’m not allowed to tell you. Rules I can’t break, even for this."

"Rules." I seize on the word, turning it over like a blade. "What rules, Puck? Whose rules? You keep talking like there’s some entire world operating around me that I’m not allowed to see, and you expect me to just take your word for it that Darcy’s dangerous because you say so?"

"Yes," he states, flat, absolute, the kind of certainty that used to make me feel safe and now only makes me feel small.

"That’s not good enough." My voice rises despite myself, weeks of frustration finally breaking loose all at once, spilling out faster than I can control. "You don’t get to control who I spend time with. You don’t get to disappear for days and then show up demanding I follow your rules without giving me a single real reason. Is that what this actually is?" I demand, voice shaking. "You’re jealous that I said yes to him instead of waiting around for you to figure out whatever you’re too scared to say?"

Something flashes across his face, raw and wounded, gone almost as fast as it appears, though the echo of it lingers in the tightness around his eyes. "This isn’t about jealousy," he mutters, quiet, wounded.

"Then what is it about?" I press.

"I can’t - " He stops himself, and the struggle shows itself in his body rather than his words, a muscle jumping hard in his jaw, his throat working like he’s swallowing something back by force, his whole frame rigid with the effort of holding something in, like a wall straining against a flood on the other side. "You wouldn’t understand," he finally says, hoarse.

"Try me. For once, actually try me instead of just telling me to trust you blindly," I say, my voice softening despite myself, some quiet part of me still hoping he’ll finally let me in.

He’s quiet for a long moment, and I watch something war behind his eyes, some battle I don’t have access to, frustration and fear and something else entirely tangled together in his expression. The silence stretches long enough that I start to think he won’t answer at all, that he’ll simply turn and disappear the way he always does. When he finally speaks, his voice has changed, dropped lower, rougher, like a wall straining against a flood.

"I am trying to keep you alive," he confesses, raw.

The words land heavy, strange, and I go completely still, staring at him, my pulse suddenly loud in my own ears. His eyes flash gold, clear and unmistakable, holding steady instead of vanishing the way they always do, no trick of light or shadow to explain it away. The gold holds, steady and impossible, staring back at me with an intensity that makes my breath catch in my throat, and for one long moment the noise of the hallway seems to fall away entirely, leaving just the two of us and that strange, burning light.

*His eyes have never done that before,* I think, my thoughts scrambling to catch up with what I’m seeing.

He looks as shocked as I feel, his hand lifting toward his face as if to check whether the words truly came from him.

His whole expression shifts, some horror crossing his face like he’s just heard himself say something he never meant to say out loud, some door thrown open that he spent every ounce of effort keeping shut until this exact moment. His breathing turns ragged, and for a second I think he might reach for me instead of running.

"Puck," I start, reaching toward him.

He doesn’t let me finish. He turns, fast, and walks away, his pace controlled but urgent, disappearing down the stairwell before I can find any words at all, leaving me standing there alone with his voice still echoing in my head, strange and rough and utterly, impossibly real. My hands are shaking, and I don’t know if it’s from anger or fear or something far more complicated tangled between the two.

*Alive. He said alive, like there was ever a question of anything else.*

I keep replaying the words, the gold in his eyes, trying to decide if I believe him or if I only want to, and I can’t find the line between those two things anymore.