Chapter 23 #2
Charlie’s heart squeezed. After they were murdered. She wanted answers, but if she was being entirely truthful with herself, she didn’t want to make him talk about this. The worst thing that ever happened to him. She didn’t enjoy making people relive painful memories. Not even Elias.
“So, what happened?” she asked softly.
He looked out over the treetops. “I had to clean out the house. After everything. Aunt Sheila came over to help because I was supposed to move in with her, but she spent the whole day bawling on the phone to her friends. So I had to pack up the boxes by myself.”
Charlie’s heart gave a painful twist. She could imagine it: little Elias, who had just lost his whole family at once, standing inside a home that once felt so full of love but now held only ghosts.
She knew the feeling too well; it was how she’d felt living in their shared bedroom after Sophie had “died.”
What she couldn’t imagine was how painful it must have been to empty out his childhood home all by himself. To pick up those ghosts and seal them away in cardboard boxes, one by one by one.
“It was then that I first noticed something was off,” he went on. “I packed up every room in the house: the living room, the kitchen, the basement, the bedrooms … and nowhere—not in any drawer or closet or storage box—was there any doctor’s equipment. Nothing. Not even a stethoscope.”
A chill swept down Charlie’s spine. “That’s…”
“Creepy?” Elias finished. “Yeah. I know. I mean, what kind of doctor keeps no medical gear at home? Not even an AED or an EpiPen, the stuff you have around for emergencies. All we had was a standard first aid kit sitting under the kitchen sink. It didn’t add up. And it got me to thinking.”
“If they lied about their real jobs to protect you and Olive?”
“Exactly. And if they did, it wasn’t too much of a leap to connect that to their untimely end.”
“Were they somehow connected to Asgard?” Charlie asked. “Is that how you found out it existed?”
“They were,” said Elias, crumpling his sandwich wrapper up and stuffing it into the empty paper bag. “But that’s a story for another time. We need to get back to work.”
Her heart sank. She had come so close. So, so close to getting the information she needed. Of course he decided to end lunch there.
But, she realized, he hadn’t shut her down entirely. He’d called it “a story for another time,” so he would tell her eventually. Her fingertips tingled with excitement at the possibility.
“Just a few more bites,” she said, chomping off a big hunk of her remaining sandwich.
Elias laughed. “You’re the slowest eater I’ve ever seen.”
“Iss nah my faul,” Charlie said through a full mouth. She swallowed thickly, then went on. “I was too captivated by your story to think about eating.”
“Is that…” He laid a hand on his chest, opening his mouth in mock shock. “Is that … a compliment, Charlotte?”
“Yes,” she said, shoving her trash into the paper bag. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll hire Abigail to strangle you in your sleep.”
He snorted, pushing himself up and jogging down to stand at the foot of the steps. “She would be good at that, wouldn’t she? All that suppressed rage. She’d thrive as an assassin.”
“No kidding.”
As she took a drink from her water bottle, Elias lingered at the base of the stairs. His head was tilted back, as if he were merely enjoying the afternoon sun, but Charlie had a feeling that he was really waiting for her.
She stood and walked slowly down the stairs. When she reached the grass, Elias lowered his head, then nodded toward her rock from earlier.
“Back to work,” he said, turning to walk away. Charlie reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“Wait,” she said.
Elias froze in place, staring with wide eyes down at her hand. For several seconds, Charlie could only do the same. Could only look blankly at what she had just done. At her fingers wrapped around his warm skin.
She hadn’t known she was going to do it.
Hadn’t thought, This will play nicely into my plan, and she wished desperately that she could say she had.
Wished that she could blame any voluntary contact between them on her plot for revenge.
But she had acted without thinking. Had grabbed his wrist simply because it felt like the thing to do.
Just like when she’d shoved him out of harm’s way from Mason’s fist.
With a steadying breath, she lifted her eyes to look him in the face. He did the same, their gazes locking over their outstretched arms. For one long, breathless moment, they only stared at each other.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last.
His brow knit in confusion. “What?”
“I’m sorry, Elias. For what happened to your family.
That you grew up not knowing whether your sister was alive or dead.
” Her brain was screaming at her to drop her gaze, to pull away before she let herself get any more emotionally invested in the situation.
But another, even louder part of her couldn’t help but feel for him.
Couldn’t help but say something to show that she recognized his pain.
“No one should have to go through something like that. It isn’t fair, and I’m sorry it happened to you. ”
For the first time since she’d met him, Elias had nothing to say.
He could only stare at her with what appeared to be a mixture of confusion and trepidation, as if he didn’t know whether to believe what she’d said.
And she didn’t blame him; since the moment he returned to Silver Shores, she’d made her loathing of him perfectly clear.
He had no reason to think that she’d changed her mind.
But the truth was, Charlie—the master of lies and deception, of tricking audiences into thinking they were seeing one thing when they were really seeing another—couldn’t pull that kind of trick off.
She meant it. She meant every word.
It wasn’t trust. It wasn’t forgiveness. But it was the truth.
After several seconds of searching her face, Elias must have come to the same conclusion, because his expression suddenly changed. Opened up. Confusion fell away, leaving a sort of bewilderment in its place.
Before Charlie could linger too long on the implications of that look, she cleared her throat and dropped her grip on his wrist, turning to head for the rock.
“Anyway,” she said over her shoulder. “What should we practice next?”