18. 18
After I retrieved the pack of Marlboro’s from one of the pouches on his belt, I started the washing machine.
While making it clear I could use whatever I needed of his, Elias suggested that we empty the car.
He stood in the doorway while I brought him my new belongings, grabbing the bags from me and setting them on the bench in the mudroom like we were an assembly line.
I protested his help, but he couldn’t walk down the three steps into the garage, so this was as much as he could do, and he insisted.
He also insisted on cooking, despite my hesitation about food.
I didn’t want to put anything in my stomach.
Elias grabbed a few frozen burger patties from the freezer, as well as everything else we would need, and hobbled to the patio door.
I emptied his hands, setting everything on the table outside, and went back to help him down the stairs.
After firing up the grill, he sat down across from me at the table, letting it come to temperature.
I grabbed a cigarette before he could do it for me, lighting it, and tossing the lighter and pack on the table.
He eyed me, but took one of his own, kicking his leg into my lap. “Gotta keep it elevated,” he murmured, cigarette in his mouth.
As he held the lighter to it, I lightly touched the bottom of his foot with my finger.
“Cassia,” he scolded, jumping in his seat and nearly losing his cigarette. “Don’t do that, I’m ticklish.”
I smirked, but didn’t apologize. “Oops.” I took a drag and the nicotine made my head spin. I hadn’t been smoking much since I’d been around him. I leaned my head back, and met silence for a moment.
I couldn’t enjoy the silence.
Over and over, Elias granted me a momentary reprieve from the all too familiar panic in my gut, but my mind couldn’t help but race toward the future.
I thought about the future a lot, and I credited my success to that quality of mine, but right then, I didn’t know what the future would bring.
I’d likely be forced into some shitty government job, that was something I could probably come to terms with.
After we were deemed healthy, and the world moved on, I didn’t know if I’d be saying goodbye to him, if we’d only come together out of circumstance.
We’d spent months toeing the line, never acting on it.
None of this was normal, and none of this felt particularly natural.
It was like watching people get together on a reality show.
Sure, it made sense when they were trapped in that house together, but when they left, they’d never speak again.
Elias and I just weren’t the same people on a regular day as we were on the day we saved the world.
He let me know at his cabin that he didn’t allow people to get to know him, right before he let me get too close to him.
Maybe he’d let me go because of that, not being able to live knowing I knew too much personal information.
Only the trauma we experienced was enough to bring us together.
Without the trauma, we were just coworkers who hooked up.
“What is this?” I asked. My feelings were too intense. My leg bounced beneath me, heart racing and breath shallow, and all I had wanted was a smoke break. I needed to know what he was thinking before I threw up.
“My patio furniture? Wrought iron, I guess,” he answered. I grimaced. “Is that what you’re asking? The look on your face makes me think that’s not what you’re asking.”
“This,” I said, gesturing between us. “What is going on here?”
He frowned, mirroring my expression. “I thought I was going to die today. I just gave myself stitches in my bathroom. If my memory serves me correctly, I even begged you to shoot me in the head. Your timing for this conversation is really incredible.”
“Is that your answer?” I asked, taking another drag.
“Cassie, really, what the hell? Are we not old enough to understand what’s going on here? I feel like we’ve already talked about this. Oh!” he exclaimed, mocking. “We have.”
I looked away. “I’m just thinking about what’s going to happen when this is all over, and it feels like it’s coming to an end. I need to know that you’re not going to just disappear when we aren’t trapped in the same room together. I can’t do this by myself.”
“What about this table makes you need to interrogate me?” He asked, his hand going to pinch the bridge of his nose. “We go through something horrible, then you need to drag my feelings out of me. I don’t like it. It’s invasive. To reiterate my earlier point, your timing sucks.”
“I feel wrong. I feel used,” I admitted, looking into his yard for anything to stare at.
He let his breath out in a huff. “In what way would I be using you?” His hands shot up, his frustration coming to a head. “That doesn’t even make sense. I think it’s the cigarettes. They make you all pensive and you attribute all your anxieties to me, rather than the shit situation we are in.”
I threw my cigarette on the ground and laid my head on the table, turning it to the side to avoid his scrutiny. I could feel I was about to cry, and that would only make this situation worse. “I don’t know.”
“Things are really shitty right now. Running for my life is not exactly a new situation for me like it is for you. I told you before that you can have your feelings, but I am really not in the headspace tonight for–”
I stood up, cutting him off. “I don’t know why I said anything, honestly. It was stupid,” I said, stuttering through my feelings. “I am going to go lay down. On the couch.”
He looked angry now. “That’s not what is going to happen. First, I need you to put these on the grill,” he said, pointing at the meat on the table. “I lost a lot of blood today and I’m starving. Then you’re going to sit your ass down right here. I don’t do games, pretty girl.”
I complied. It was hard not to.
He didn’t speak for a minute, and I stared at my discarded cigarette.
“Cassie,” he said, calling to me, forcing me to look into his eyes.
He didn’t speak again until I met his gaze.
“I have no intention of disappearing from your life, but I will have to go back to work. I will be unreachable for days at a time. Sometimes weeks. Honestly, I’m pretty miserable to be around, you just haven’t seen that side of me yet.
If you can deal with that, then yeah, I want you to stick around.
” He paused, his eyes shifting back and forth between mine. “Does that answer your question?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “It does.”
“Good.” He stood now, limping toward the grill. He flipped the burgers and closed the lid, standing there instead of sitting down again. “You’re so confident sometimes. In your work, in your determination these past few days to survive. I don’t understand why you’re insecure when it comes to me.”
“You’re like a super hero, why wouldn’t I be insecure?
” It was a no-brainer, in my opinion. Elias saved the world every time he went to work, and I liked to dance in my underwear with a glass of cheap wine in my hand at the end of the day.
I spent my time with my head shoved in textbooks and enjoyed it.
I was a little lame, truth be told, and he was a God.
“You’re the reason I’m here to grill another day. Give yourself some credit before I’m driven insane.” He plopped the meat on the table before sitting down. “And please eat.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant for it to cover a lot more than just the food.
He knew. “You’re welcome.” He gave me a small smile and kicked his foot back into my lap.
We ate quietly in the fading light. The sun had started to set, but it wasn’t quite dark. Lights on the sidewalks around his neighborhood turned on, allowing us to sit outside just a little longer.
“Cassie,” he said, his mouth full.
“Yeah?”
“I really like you, okay? There wasn’t some government mission to sleep with you for secrets. If there was, I wouldn’t have waited this long. I feel like it’s obvious, but if you need to hear it, I can say it.”
“It’s not you, I don’t think. My body is just teetering on the edge of shock at all times, and my brain is just really confused about everything I’m experiencing right now,” I confessed.
“Maybe I really did give you a concussion when I shoved you,” he said.
“No,” I said, letting out a small laugh. “It’s definitely the other near death experiences.”
He wiped his hands on his pants, finished now. “I want to watch football and I want you to come with me.”
When his hand reached out to touch mine, I realized that it wasn’t a request I could ignore, and I noticed a pattern there.
His presence was heavy, like a suit of armor, and I felt it in every step I took.
Logically, I could understand that we were no longer in danger, at least for the day, but when he touched me, I felt that I was safe.
An arm around me or a foot in my lap, his effect was clear.
It was different, to trust someone so completely, but he’d proven himself in everything he did.
Every decision he’d made thus far had been with my safety in mind, rather than his own.
I’d be an idiot to not trust a man like that.
That first day, at Baker and Pryor, I was his first stop.
When everything turned to shit, he ran to me, protected me, and brought me to his home.
If all of that wasn’t enough, if I could twist his actions to be the result of some mission he refused to tell me about, he again showed me who he was in the lab.
He told me to leave without him, told me to take off out the front door and save the day.
Even knowing he was about to die, he didn’t dare ask for me to save him.
If everything else somehow about him turned out to be a lie, that wasn’t.
Elias might’ve really just had a heart of gold, and I was too wrapped up in myself to notice.