Chapter 24
Elena
By the time the elevator doors opened, she was already wondering if this was a good idea.
She stepped out anyway, fingers faintly restless at her side. Caroline’s words kept slipping back in, uninvited, tightening something in her chest without fully naming what it was.
When Carter opened the door, surprise flashed across his face. It lasted only a second before it was replaced by something softer, something that irritated her even more because it made him look genuinely happy to see her.
Elena brushed past him before he could say much of anything. Behind her, his amused voice reached her ears.
"Well, come on in."
The apartment was exactly what she should have expected from Carter and somehow still wasn't. Everything looked fancy without trying too hard.
The furniture was elegant, the space enormous, and every detail looked carefully chosen.
Then her attention snagged on an open doorway across the room, revealing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a massive desk.
Elena pointed toward it. "Is that a library in your apartment?"
Carter followed her line of sight, glancing over as if he’d never quite thought of it that way. “More of a study,” he corrected.
"It’s a library."
A faint curve touched his mouth. “Alright,” he said, easy and conceding without resistance. “Library it is.”
Without waiting for permission, she wandered inside. The room somehow made perfect sense the moment she saw it. Books lined every wall, papers were neatly organized across the desk, and Carter looked entirely at home standing in the doorway behind her.
Only then did she notice the glasses.
The sight almost made her lose track of why she'd come. Carter rarely wore them, and somehow that made them worse. Between the glasses, the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt, and the slightly messy hair that suggested he'd been working before she interrupted him, he looked really hot.
Her own reaction to him made her want to roll her eyes at herself.
"Nerd," she informed him.
His mouth curved into a smile. "I've been called worse."
Unfortunately, that smile did absolutely nothing to help her concentration.
Elena leaned against the desk and crossed her arms, forcing herself to remember the reason she'd shown up in the first place.
She hadn't come here to admire Carter in glasses.
She had come here because he had dropped a grenade into her life at the celebration party and then acted as though she was supposed to simply live with it.
"We need to talk about what you said at the party."
His expression shifted immediately.
"About wanting another chance?" he asked quietly.
"Yes." She shook her head. "That was cruel, Carter."
His one eyebrow lifted. "Cruel?" he repeated. "Really? There are much worse things people can say to each other."
The answer only irritated her more. It was exactly the kind of frustrating response he always gave when he was avoiding the real issue. Carter took a step closer, studying her with an expression that was entirely too knowing for her comfort.
“You don’t have to fight it so hard,” he teased.
The frustration she'd been carrying around all week came rushing back so fast it almost stole her breath.
Every unanswered question. Every conversation that ended before it began.
Every time he'd decided what was best for her without giving her a choice.
Caroline had unknowingly poured gasoline over all of it.
“I ran into Caroline today,” Elena said. “She gave me more truth in a few minutes than you've ever given me.”
The amusement vanished from his face.
“You never told me why,” she continued. “You never told me why you stopped loving me. You said you wanted to earn my trust back, right? Well, here's your chance. Your only chance.”
For a moment, Carter didn't say anything.
The hurt that crossed his face was so raw and unexpected that it knocked the anger right out of her. Elena had expected guilt. Maybe defensiveness. Maybe another carefully controlled answer. What she hadn't expected was for him to look as though she'd just punched him in the stomach.
Her confidence faltered.
"That's fair," he said.
Carter looked away briefly and took a slow breath before meeting her eyes again. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, but she could hear the strain underneath it.
"I had a whole night planned," he said finally.
Whatever she had expected him to say, it wasn't this.
"I was going to ask you to marry me that night."
Elena's breath caught.
For a second, she genuinely thought she'd heard him wrong. Her mind took a while to process the words.
Marriage?
Carter had been planning to propose?
Back then, she'd been young enough to think their future was guaranteed, yet she'd never imagined he'd already been carrying a ring in his pocket.
"Whoa," she whispered before she could stop herself.
Carter still wasn't looking directly at her. His attention remained fixed somewhere beyond the bookshelves as if the memories were easier to face than her eyes. The distance in his voice made it sound like he was reliving every second of that night.
"I was about to leave for Castelli's when I got a call," he said. "Caroline and my mother had been in an accident."
His jaw tightened.
"I rushed to the hospital. Mom had a fractured hand. Caroline was unconscious." He swallowed hard. "I thought..." He stopped for a moment before forcing the words out. "I thought I was going to lose them."
The room felt strangely smaller.
Elena had never heard this story before. Caroline had mentioned the accident so casually that Elena had assumed it had been a terrible but ordinary event. Hearing Carter talk about it now made it sound like something entirely different.
"Later, when everything settled down, I couldn't stop thinking about it," Carter continued. "I kept telling myself that I should've been there. That it was my responsibility to protect them."
His laugh was humorless.
"They got hurt because I put my own happiness first."
Something inside Elena immediately rebelled against that.
"Carter, no," she said softly. "You can't blame yourself for that. It was an accident."
The second the words left her mouth, she knew she'd said the wrong thing.
His expression changed.
"It wasn't an accident, Elena."
A chill crawled down her spine.
Carter finally looked at her then, and she hated the pain she saw in his eyes.
"A car with fake plates hit them," he said. "The driver's face was covered. The police never found him."
Elena stared at him.
For a moment, she forgot about every question she'd come here to ask. Forgot about trust and heartbreak and old resentments. Her mind snagged on a completely different horror.
"Who would do something like that?" she asked.
The question sounded small compared to what she'd just heard. She couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hurt Caroline. Or his mother. Or Carter. The idea left a sick feeling twisting in her stomach.
"Did the police ever find out who was behind it?"
Carter looked away again.
"No."
The answer came too quickly.
"I don't have proof of anything," he continued. "Every lead disappeared. Every trail went cold. Eventually the investigation went nowhere."
Elena didn't know what to do with that information.
This wasn't what she'd expected when she'd stormed into his apartment. She'd come prepared for a fight. She'd come ready to demand answers about their relationship. Instead, she was standing in the middle of a story that felt bigger and darker than anything she'd imagined.
And suddenly none of her prepared arguments seemed important anymore.
She looked at Carter and saw something she wasn't sure she'd ever seen before.
Vulnerability. Not the controlled, polished version he showed the world. Not the confident billionaire everyone admired. Just a tired man carrying years of guilt he had never managed to put down.
The sight made her chest ache.
Elena's mind drifted to another night. A night when she'd been the one falling apart.
A night when Kyle had hurt her so badly she hadn't known what to do with herself.
Carter hadn't tried to fix anything then.
He'd sat beside her, listened, and carried part of her pain until she could breathe again.
Looking at him now, she wanted to do the same.
Her anger faded so quickly it almost didn’t feel real.
She didn't care anymore about winning the argument. All she cared about was the fact that he looked heartbreakingly alone standing on the other side of the room.
Slowly, she held out her hand.
"Come here."
The words were barely louder than a whisper.
For a second, Carter looked surprised. But he obeyed without question. He crossed the distance between them until he stood directly in front of her, close enough that she could see every emotion he was trying so hard to hide.
Elena reached for his hands.
The moment their fingers intertwined, something shifted between them. Some invisible wall she'd been guarding for years cracked apart. She could feel the tension in him. The exhaustion. The fear. The hope he was trying not to have.
Carter's fingers tightened around hers.
His eyes searched her face as though he was looking for permission to say something he'd been holding back for years. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough enough to make her heart squeeze.
"I love you."
Elena stopped breathing.
"I never stopped."
The words settled between them.
And for the first time since walking into his apartment, Elena didn't question him.
She just looked at him.
At the man who had broken her heart. The man who had spent years trying to carry the weight of the world by himself. The man who had somehow found his way back to her despite everything.
Then she squeezed his hands.
And after so long, the future finally felt possible again.