Chapter 150

The door to the elevator slit open, and to my shock, Charles stepped out. All of a sudden, I was so flustered I couldn’t speak. My tongue was tied in knots.

The same feeling of strangeness that clung to everything in the apartment also clung to Charles. I loved him, but it was also like he was a bit of a stranger.

He froze just outside the doors to the elevator. It wasn’t until David pushed him toward me that he finally woke up, as if in a trance.

“Elena,” he said.

“Ch-Charles,” I stammered.

It wasn’t until he took another nudge from David that he stiffly asked, “Would you like to come in?”

That was so weird, hearing an invitation into what had been my own home. And judging by the expression on his face, it was just as awkward for him to say.

“I think that would probably be okay,” I said, looking around the hallway nervously. Though, I don’t know what I had to be nervous about.

“Right? Yes, come on in.”

He opened the door and stepped aside so that I could come in. As soon as I was through the door, a feeling of being home washed over me, followed by a pang of loneliness that was so strong it actually caught my breath and threw it away.

I hadn’t realized how much exactly I’d missed Charles. Being his friend instead of his lover was going to be very difficult. But this place, this smell, it didn’t belong to me anymore. The scent of Charles’ vetiver weakened my knees, and it permeated every surface in the room.

David and Theo hurried through the apartment into the adjoining one, shutting the door and giving Charles and me privacy. But rather than speak, the two of us stood just inside the doorway, staring at one another.

An awkward silence mounted between us. I just couldn’t think of a good way to open the conversation and say what I needed to say. Finally, I blurted out the question, “How’s your girlfriend doing?”

Charles startled back, his face scrunched in confusion, and he stared at me. “My girlfriend?”

“Yeah. It’s all right,” I reassured him. “You don’t have to pretend to spare my feelings. I know that you’re saying someone else.”

“Elena, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

This time, it was my turn to scratch my head in confusion. “But I stopped by your work a couple of weeks ago, and I saw you. You were hugging her in the office. You guys look thrilled to be together.”

Charles pressed his lips together so tightly they formed a line, and his brows came together so that they were almost touching. He put a hand to his chin, thinking.

All of a sudden, all of the tension in his face released. “Oh! You must mean Vivian,” he said. “I think I know the day that you were talking about. I swear I smelled you in the office, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“So, tell me about this girl, Vivian,” I said, trying to hold myself together at the same time I kept communication open between us. “She must be very special to you.”

Several emotions crossed his face. I counted anger, astonishment, and finally, amusement and resignation mixed into one. “What exactly did you come to the office for that day?” he asked.

“I don’t remember precisely. I just wanted to see you.”

He nodded. “I’ve wanted to see you, too. Vivian is from the IT department.”

He pointed me toward the sofa. “I think you and I should sit down and have a chat. And if you’ve been thinking I’ve been dating somebody else, it sounds like I’m the one who’s going to have to break the ice here. So, I’ll go first. Can you be sure to listen and not to read into the things like you did with Vivian?”

“I’ll try my best,” I agreed.

Charles took a seat at one end of the couch, and I made sure to sit at the far end. He let out a sigh but didn’t say anything about the distance.

“The day you left the restaurant,” Charles started slowly, “I was so mad that I let you go. But by that evening, I completely regretted not coming after you. I tried to call you, but my phone was acting up. I thought maybe if I recharged it and restarted it that, it would be fine. But even after I did all of that stuff, I just couldn’t get it working again.”

“So, I took it over to the IT department. Vivian took the phone and gave it back to me several times over the weeks that followed between when you left and when I smelled you that day, the day that I think you’re talking about.”

“Unfortunately, every time she gave me the phone back, it would start to act up again. Sometimes, it wouldn’t connect to the internet. Sometimes, I would call or send text messages, only to find out later that the person I was trying to get hold of never received the message.”

“I used the opportunity to give you the space you needed to cool off while I struggled with my phone. I figured it was for the best. I planned to call so we could talk about things like adults once I had a way to reliably communicate. I really didn’t want it to fail and give you the wrong idea while we were trying to patch things up.”

“But when I couldn’t find you after I swore I smelled you, and you never called, I figured that you were the one who had moved on. I assumed that maybe I’d been wrong about smelling you, and it was just the desire that I had to see you again.”

“I convinced myself that you were really gone for good. Were you?” He looked at me with a pitiful expression on his face.

“I… I…” I couldn’t get any words out.

He scooted a little closer to me. “Elena. I need you to explain something to me.”

“What?” Little butterflies had erupted in my stomach, and I couldn’t tell if they represented a good or a bad thing.

“I need you to tell me what went wrong between us. I got a little bit of an idea in the restaurant. But what you were asking me to do was so harsh. Then I got mad, and then you walked out, and you never came back. I still don’t fully understand.”

I crossed my arms and then thought about what Theo had told me when he explained why he figured we had broken up. If I had really sounded like I was giving Charles no option, I didn’t want to start that way again.

I slumped back into the sofa. “I don’t know how else to explain it,” I said. “I don’t want kids now. It’s that simple. I have all of these other things that I want to do first, and when you didn’t come after me, I figured it was because you realized that I’m not the kind of woman who would make a good wife for an alpha.”

He let out a growl. “This is why you needed to talk to me. I wasn’t going to step in and tell my family to back down or give up their agenda. But those are bridges that can be crossed when we get there.”

“But your mother will expect—”

Charles let out a snarl and crossed his arms, his expression fierce. “Elena, stop thinking about this like a stubborn child.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head. It was an order from an alpha, and his anger made me back down and bite my tongue, at least for the moment. Though inside, my emotions and thoughts seethed and boiled. We were right back where we started. So much for making peace between us.