She didn’t respond to my question. She didn’t even look at me. I doubted she noticed I didn’t have my hair in a bun because she had said she wanted to see what it looked like when I let it loose. That I would really look like Draven Forrest, some guy in a fantasy book she read last summer.
“Are you angry with me, Elizabeth?” I tried again. Then I saw her chest rise in one long deep breath, the type you would take before opening a locked door in a dark hallway.
When she finally decided to speak, her eyes were still fixated on the table.
“Look, I don’t like people who don’t know if they want to stick around or disappear.” She didn’t sound angry, not loud, just…tired? “You’re either here or not,” she whispered. “I don’t like to be invested in someone, miss them, then look up and they are gone, only for them to appear again whenever they feel like.”
I blinked, trying to process everything. Her reaction confused me. We had met on two occasions, and she was never like this in either of them. Not this raw, not this exposed, like all the emotions hiding under her ribs were spilling out.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. My hands felt clammy, my heart racing. What did I do wrong?
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said, calmly, never breaking my gaze from her face.
Finally, she lifted her head. Her mesmerising green eyes were bright but…sad? They were swollen, evidently red-rimmed, like she had cried a lot.
I heard a crack in my chest, felt fingers wrapping around my heart, squeezing it. I didn’t like that she had cried. I didn’t like the person who made her cry. She wasn’t meant to cry. Angels shouldn’t cry.
When she spoke again, her voice trembled. But I wasn’t sure if it was fear or the honesty she couldn’t swallow anymore.
“You like me, Callan.” It was a statement, not a question. The sound of my name on her tongue sent a tremor through my veins, heat rushing to my core. I wanted her to say it again. And again, and again, until I unravelled by the sound of her.
“I mean, I think so,” she added. “And liking me is okay. Cause I really like you too.”
For a second, I forgot how breathing worked. She liked me. The most beautiful girl I have ever set my eyes upon, liked this awkward guy who couldn’t form a full sentence when in her presence, unravelling at the mere sound of her voice.
“But whatever this is.” She gestured between us. “I’m going to have to tell you not to bother if you’re the disappearing type.” Her fingers tightened on her sleeve. “Don’t bother showing up again if you plan to vanish. Don’t talk to me today and disappear without a word for I don’t know, a decade?”
A decade?
I was sure I was only gone for 10 days. 10 days, 56 minutes and 13 seconds.
Was this just about me or about everyone else who had ever left her? If it was the latter, I couldn’t imagine what she must have gone through. How exactly do you wish to imagine what a ten-year-old girl had gone through after she learnt her father was responsible for the unprovoked death of over 100 people?
Yes, I knew her. Well not exactly, but I knew her story now. Sebastian Razzo, my half sister’s son, who’d proclaimed himself as my third-in-command, walked into my office the other day and dropped the file on my table. I never asked him to run a background check on her. In fact, I didn’t even tell anyone about her, not him. But he felt I was being reckless, following a high-school girl around Braemont. What if she was a spy? What if she wasn’t really a high-school girl? What if she was a 30 year old woman posing as a 19 year old girl?
I didn’t wish to see what I saw in the files. But I saw them anyway. And I thought life had been a too harsh to her.
I barely knew her, but now I wanted to take away her pain, the one she tucked so nicely beneath the curve of her lips. I wanted to replace the pain with something that didn’t hurt as much, but I wasn’t sure how.
Would holding her hand be enough? I doubted. If I told her I didn’t plan on leaving, that if anything, I was desperately looking for a way to stick around, follow her like a shadow, be the only man in her corner, would that be enough?
“I’m sorry if I seem demanding, problematic, dramatic,” she chuckled, and it didn’t sound like the type that was a mirror of glee. “I mean, we barely know each other. I didn’t know your name until last week. But that’s just me. I get invested too quickly, too much. I let little kindness affect and consume me.” She raised a hand, tucking her fiery red hair behind her ear. “I guess that’s what starved girls do.”
Another string of silence hung in the air between us. It wasn’t as though I didn’t have anything to say. I just wasn’t sure how to say it.
Her eyes flickered to me, expectant. And I supposed this was the part where I said something.
“I don’t want to leave.” The words left my mouth before I even finished the thought. “I want to stay.” I paused again, searching for the right word that wouldn’t decide to break in my mouth. “I don’t plan on disappearing, Elizabeth.”
Perhaps I should have said a little more. Be persuasive with my words. But I didn’t know how. I was trembling, like I was on the verge of a panic attack. She made me nervous. But I liked it, the feeling of being consumed by the presence of her. The feeling of dying as far as her eyes were the things I saw last.
I had never found myself in this situation before, where I desperately wanted to be by the side of someone. A stranger I barely knew.
But she was the most enigmatic being I had ever met. She was electric. I wanted her fire. I wanted to burn under her gaze.
She stared at me, really stared as if struggling to believe me. I would struggle to believe me too.
“Why did you leave?” she asked. “Why the lack of contact? And why show up now?”
