Chapter 13 – Graham #2
The anger came fast—bright, immediate, ugly in its clarity. A faceless he snapped into existence in Graham’s mind and, with it, the sudden, irrational urge to do something he never did: confront. Intervene. Make sure a person understood the consequences of what they’d done.
Who was this? his thoughts demanded. Who looked at her and tried to break that?
Elise’s voice caught for a second, but she steadied it, like she’d learned how to swallow pain in public. “He made me feel like loving that part of myself was selfish. Like I was trying to show him up.”
Graham didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He kept his expression steady and his hands loose, because he could feel the running commentary in his head trying to surge forward—You deserve so much better. Can’t you see how amazing you are?—but none of it was the right thing to say in this moment.
Not when she’d just handed him something this fragile.
Definitely not the right time to tell her how beautiful her eyes were, even though the thought sat there anyway, inconvenient and true.
So he did the only thing he could do that wouldn’t make the moment about him: he stayed quiet, and he let her finish.
“But now,” Elise said, with a shrug that was almost a smile, “I sing when I feel like it. And only for audiences who don’t expect anything of me. Ghosts, mostly. And you, I guess.”
It landed like a soft punch.
Graham drew a slow breath through his nose, buying himself half a second to choose words that wouldn’t sound like pity and wouldn’t sound like an attempt to claim something he hadn’t earned.
“Well…” he said gently, “your secret’s safe with me.” His mouth tightened around the next part, not from hesitation but from how much he wanted her to believe it. “But for the record? I’d buy a ticket.”
He held her gaze, hoping—quietly, fiercely—that it was the right thing. That she could hear what he meant underneath it.
You’re allowed to take up space.
The thought settled in him, and for a second he worried it showed on his face, that he’d given away too much with one look, one breath.
Elise had just trusted him with something heavy. Something that didn’t belong under fluorescent backstage lights or between a wig stand and a workbench like it was casual conversation. And he didn’t want to be the kind of man who took a confession and immediately asked for more.
He needed to steer them back to safer waters.
Graham lifted the book like a white flag. “So,” he said, aiming for light, “is it too late to win you over with undead verse?”
Elise’s eyes sparked, the heaviness easing at the edges. “I’ll have you know I love old zombie movies,” she said. “Like, actually love them. If I ever get the chance to do zombie wigs—rotted scalp, exposed bone, weird blood goo? I will thrive.”
Graham felt himself fall a little further, helplessly delighted. This girl was something else.
“That,” he said, before he could stop himself, “might be the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
A soft chuckle drifted through the room—too close, too clear, and coming from nowhere.
Graham went still. Every muscle tightened on instinct as his eyes swept the corners: the wig stand, the racks, the shadowed doorway. Nothing moved.
Elise, on the other hand, didn’t startle at all. She let out a long-suffering sigh and spoke directly to the air. “Yes, I know you’re invested.”
Graham’s pulse kicked.
Wait—what?
Was this… a ghost thing? He’d known, in the abstract, that Elise could see them. He’d even tried, unsuccessfully, not to think too hard about what that meant. But he had not, at any point, landed on a plan for what to do if a disembodied voice laughed in the room while he was flirting.
Panic pricked at the edges of his composure, and it had nothing to do with the possibility of a ghost in the vicinity.
Elise turned back to him with a mischievous smile, like she’d just remembered she was supposed to include him in the situation. “Graham, meet Kevin,” she said, cheerfully gesturing toward thin air. “My resident ghost, reality TV enthusiast, and romance commentator. He loves a dramatic arc.”
Graham blinked. Once. Then, because his brain refused to supply anything better, he lifted his hand a few inches.
“Do I… wave?”
This was absurd. This was weird. And somehow—because Elise was calm, because Elise was smiling—it still felt… safe.
Elise’s grin widened. “Can’t hurt.”
Elise’s gaze slid slightly to the side, unfocusing in that subtle way—like she was listening to someone just out of frame. Graham stayed very still, watching her face more than the room, trying not to look like a man bracing for a jump scare.
Elise pressed her lips together, clearly fighting a laugh.
“Kevin would like you to know that Mr. Darcy’s waistcoat in Act Two is historically inaccurate,” she said, solemn as a priest delivering bad news.
“In 1813, gentlemen’s vests wouldn’t have featured metal buttons.
He’s been loudly offended about it for months. ”
Graham’s brain, traitorous and immediate, supplied the exact waistcoat. The pale yellow one. The one with the shiny buttons that caught the light in a way he found faintly obscene.
He’d argued with the costume department about it more than once.
Not about the buttons—he hadn’t noticed the buttons—but about the color.
Darcy, in Graham’s mind, would not deign to wear something that looked like it had been pulled from a spring picnic.
Austen hadn’t described the color of his waistcoats, true, but that was beside the point: Darcy should be a dark palette man.
Reserved. Controlled. He would not be dressed like a lemon tart.
This was not the moment to bring any of that up.
He filed the information away anyway—another piece of ammunition for an argument he would absolutely rehash with the head costume mistress later. Graham let a smile pull at his mouth.
“That is,” he said carefully, “an extremely specific opinion.”
Elise gave a helpless shrug. “He was a dramaturg. It’s kind of his thing.”
She finished finger-curling the last handsome wave and placed Nick’s wet Darcy wig into the dryer—a tight fit beside Elizabeth’s.
Then she stepped back like she’d set something delicate in motion, like she was putting a spell to rest. The lid latched with a soft click, and a gentle whir filled the room, steady as white noise.
He’d been waiting for an opening all night—and now, with the dryer humming and her hands finally still, there was a narrow window where he could either take a step forward or retreat back into his usual distance. He cleared his throat.
“Looks like you’re off-duty,” he said, aiming for casual and praying it landed that way.
Elise turned, brows lifting as if she were surprised he’d found the courage to keep going. Or maybe he was projecting.
“I know it’s late, but…” He forced himself not to over-explain, not to apologize for asking, not to make it sound like a joke. “Want to grab a drink? Just one.” His mouth twitched, trying for something lighter. “I promise I won’t keep you out too late.”
There was a beat—so short it was barely there—and then Elise’s smile bloomed, slow and genuine.
Relief hit him like a wave, bright and immediate. He felt almost foolish with how quickly elation rushed in.
Yes. She was going to say yes.
Elise’s smile was still there, just beginning to form into an answer—when something buzzed loudly from across the dressing room. The sound pulsed once, then again.
Elise’s gaze snapped in its direction, toward the costume rack. Whatever warmth had been on her face drained away. Her expression fell into something sharper, more alert, like a stage manager clocking a problem before anyone else realized there was one.
Graham’s stomach tightened. What had just happened? What had she noticed that he hadn’t?
Her hands moved without her seeming to notice. She started wringing them, thumb sweeping over the backs of her hands in a slow, unconscious motion—right over the faint lines of the pentacle tattoos there, as if she were trying to soothe something under her skin.
He wondered, absurdly, if she knew she did that.
Elise glanced back at him—quick, searching—as if she was checking whether he’d heard it too. Whether this was real in the shared world, or only in hers.
“It’s not me,” Graham said immediately. He fished his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen anyway, just to be sure. Blank. Silent.
Elise moved first.
Slowly, deliberately, she started toward the costume rack—past him, close enough that he caught the faint, clean scent of whatever she used to tame flyaways.
Graham fell in behind her without thinking.
Something in the room had shifted, and it wasn’t just the buzzing sound.
Elise’s whole body had gone taut. Fight or flight.
Graham didn’t know what the right move was in this situation. He didn’t even know what the situation was. But he knew, with an odd certainty, that he didn’t want to be far from her when he found out.
Elise crouched at the base of the rack and pushed aside a hanging hem, peering down toward the floorboards. The space behind it was usually hidden in plain sight—shadowed, cluttered, ignored.
Graham would never have noticed anything there. Not in a hundred years.