11 #3
I nearly groan aloud when she retreats to the back and returns a moment later with two small plastic tumblers filled with something amber.
Handing over a note, he tells her to keep the ten pounds of change. A small bribe with another flash of pearly whites. And just like that, the incident evaporates.
He holds both tumblers out, one in each hand, and turns his gaze on me.
‘Take it,’ he says. The command snaps like a belt even though it comes out on a whisper.
I do as he says. He lifts his own in salute. ‘To something new.’
Our eyes meet over the plastic rim. The air thickens. A beat passes. ‘Drink,’ he growls.
And I tip the contents into my mouth.
It burns all the way down. Like swallowing Ilford fixer. I hope I’ll wake up when it’s done scouring me from the inside out.
Coughing lightly, I blink through the bitterness of the damned brandy before setting the container down with shaky fingers.
‘May I have my phone back?’
‘No.’
‘What happened to you, Elias?’ I ask.
‘Besides being the prime suspect in the murder of my half-brother and his darling wife, you mean?’
I take in a slow breath, hold it, and let it out like it might steady my spine enough to ask the question.
‘Did you do it?’
His jaw realigns. A shadow flits across his expression, but it’s gone too fast to make out. He scrapes a rough palm over his chin, as if trying to rub away the answer that nearly makes it to his mouth.
The silence he gives me is one he’s introduced to me before. Expected and final.
It’s insufferable that I recognise it. That I already know this dance.
I wait anyway, counting the ripples in his jaw, until it becomes obvious he intends to let the question rot between us. And, maybe, I don’t want to hear the answer badly enough to force it out of him.
Not while I’m trapped beside him like this.
There are more immediate things to be afraid of.
‘So what happens when we land?’ I pivot the conversation.
He angles his head slowly. ‘Whatever do you mean, elskling?’
His arm lifts behind me, then falls over my shoulder, masquerading as calm and affection. And he pulls me in like he’s the sole gravitational point in the world.
‘I know your pussy ex didn’t teach you how this works,’ he says with a smooth kind of venom, ‘but when you pick a partner… it’s always for life.’
The words bounce between bone and breath until they echo loudly enough to fracture my skull.
‘You’re kidnapping me.’ I don’t make it a whisper. I make it a fact.
He hums. But it isn’t in denial. Just a short pause. He turns his head slightly to the side, as if rifling through that twisted mental lexicon he’s previously baited me with for the perfect term.
He takes a long breath. ‘I’d call it the well-deserved epilogue… where the maker finally has to live with what she stitched together.’
My teeth grit. ‘Stop referencing the bloody book, Elias,’ I snap, too sharply.
But he only smiles with slow satisfaction.
‘Shh—sh—shh…’ he hushes me with mock tenderness, palm cupping my cheek as his thumb skims over my lips.
His attention shifts to my mouth, watching the way the pad of his thumb grazes the rim as if marking territory.
Micro-strokes.
‘I can make this so much worse, Leah.’ He feeds me the words from far too close; it feels like the breaths we’d shared when I first kissed him. ‘I could touch you without anyone realising. Noticing. Make you hate it – and love it. Until the end of this flight.’
My thoughts scream. My nerves finish what fear never agreed to.
I wrench myself out of his grip and suck in a breath through my teeth.
‘So be a good girl, and everything will be fine.’
‘You’re punishing me,’ I murmur, ‘because I saw a man who deserved more – and I tried to give it to him.’
His eyes flash. ‘You saw what you wanted to see.’
‘Fine,’ I snarl quietly. ‘It’s my fault you’re free. Sorry about that.’
That does it.
He folds into my space again and hisses, ‘I am not free!’ Then, quieter, as he reels himself in – ‘I never was.’
As it drops from his mouth like a secret too painful to keep, I see the Elias I’ve been looking at for the past year.
I nearly choke on my own tongue when the fury drains out of him. His eyes are suddenly the same glacial blue I remember, rimmed in sleepless red. His shoulders draw in. Even sitting beside me, his enormous frame barely contained by the seat, he looks as though he’s bracing for a blow.
The aircraft ambience peels off him, and he is once again the man in the metal chair. Hands in chains, legs shackled to the floor, staring as if seeing something only those damned enough could see. And eyes spilling unshed tears until I want to kneel before him and catch the stream with both hands.
I don’t know which version of him is real. The feral monster stitched together by faulty systems and heartless people? Or the one who quotes philosophers to me and makes the world fade away?
Maybe that’s the lie I’ve been telling myself.
Maybe they’re both him.
‘They will always find a sin to punish me for.’ It’s the last whisper that catches in his throat.
He turns towards the aisle and doesn’t speak again.