Elias hits every ball toward Mia, not with consistent force, but with the particular variability of someone running an experiment. Some arrive hard enough to sting her palms. Others float in slow and deliberate, like an offering.
His eyes don't leave her between either kind.
Mia's wrists are starting to protest.
She doesn't like this—the targeted attention that doesn't ask permission, the assumption that she'll keep showing up for whatever he decides to send her.
She steps back and lets Lucas take the next one.
"Are we invisible?" Lucas calls across the net. "We do exist over here."
Elias doesn't respond.
He's watching Mia's retreat with the expression of someone who has just heard something he needed to hear and doesn't enjoy it.
I made her pull back. The realization lands badly.
