Page 9 of Second Chance with the Half-Elf

EVIE

I slip out of the blanket like it might burn me.

The air is still. The kind of quiet that wraps around you too tightly, squeezing into your ribs until even breathing feels like a betrayal.

Aeron lies asleep on the sagging couch, one arm thrown over where I’d been curled. Hair a mess of silver across his forehead, brow soft and unguarded in a way I’ve never seen.

He doesn’t look like someone capable of breaking me.

Instead, he looks like someone who might’ve been broken once, and stitched himself back together with salt and silence.

And I know I can’t stay to watch him wake.

I grab my bag, boots, and camera.

The door creaks on the way out, and he doesn’t stir.

Just breathes slow. Steady. Trusting.

Like he knew I’d run, and didn’t want to stop me.

Liara’s studio smells like a thunderstorm wearing lipstick.

Turpentine and wax and something floral underneath—maybe the dried jasmine she always tucks in the windowsills like protection spells.

The place is chaos in color. Paint in every crevice, brushes like broken spears stabbed into coffee mugs. Murals crawl up the brick walls, breathing with too many eyes, limbs curling around forgotten gods.

She doesn’t look up when I crash through the door.

“Didn’t expect you this early,” she mutters. “Or at all.”

“I left him on my couch.”

She pauses mid-stroke, glances up, smirks. “You say that like you kicked him there.”

“No. We talked. Slept. Just slept.” I slam down my bag. “Clothed. Adjacent. Emotionally exposed, which is frankly worse.”

Liara wipes her brush on her overalls and walks over, arms folded.

“Start at the beginning, Hot Mess Express.”

I sigh. Hard. “We didn’t mean for it to happen. It just... did. After the storm. He stayed.”

She raises a brow. “And?”

“And we didn’t even do anything. Just—talked. Fell asleep. Woke up.”

“Except you didn’t stick around for the waking up part.”

I glare. “Wasn’t ready for whatever came after.”

She lifts her chin. “You sure you’re not just afraid of being seen and stayed with ?”

I groan. “God, don’t do the therapy voice.”

“Evie.”

“I found a letter,” I snap, pacing. “From my mother. To his uncle.”

Her brows go up. “Well, damn.”

“Yeah. She said she loved him. And she ran. She ran, and it gutted him, and I?—”

“—ran,” Liara finishes softly.

“I’m a rerun. I’m a glitch in the bloodline.”

Liara hops up onto the counter and kicks her paint-covered feet against the cabinet. “Or maybe you're scared because you saw what love did to your mother. Maybe this isn’t history repeating. Maybe it’s you looking it dead in the eye and deciding something different.”

“I didn’t decide anything,” I mutter. “I bolted. Again.”

She points a paintbrush at me. “Evie, queen of flight. All hail.”

I throw a rag at her. She dodges like a practiced sibling.

Silence blooms.

And then she asks, quieter, “What do you want , really?”

“I don’t want to ruin him.”

Liara’s voice sharpens. “You won’t . Unless you make that your excuse to do nothing.”

“Maybe I’m not built for this,” I whisper. “For staying. For... roots.”

She hops off the counter, wipes her hands. “You stayed last night.”

I laugh. It comes out broken. “Only to leave again.”

The bell over the door jingles.

Jamie Moore stands there, dressed in a yellow raincoat four sizes too big and dragging a backpack shaped like a jellyfish.

Their eyes light up when they see me. “Hi, Miss Evie!”

Liara grins. “Hey, Squidlet.”

Jamie stomps puddle-wet boots across the studio floor and plops onto the rug beside my bag like they own the place.

“You look tired,” they say.

“Yeah, well,” I murmur. “Long night.”

Jamie hugs their jellyfish backpack like it knows things.

“Do you want a secret?”

Liara pauses mid-cleanup. I brace myself.

Jamie leans forward. “Monsters get lonely, too.”

My breath stutters.

“They always say monsters are scary,” Jamie continues, “but I think they’re just... waiting. For someone to see them and not scream.”

Liara glances at me.

Jamie keeps going, soft and certain. “Why do grownups run from nice monsters?”

The question hits me like a slap in the chest.

I open my mouth.

But there’s no answer.

Only a thousand unfinished ones crowding my throat.

Because maybe monsters aren’t the ones we need to fear.

Maybe it’s the part of us that bolts when something good knocks at the door.

By the time I make it back to the beach house, the sun’s lowering into the water, bleeding gold into the horizon.

The wind has calmed. The air smells clean—like salt and sage and new promises. I step onto the porch and still.

He’s gone.

Of course he is.

The couch inside’s been smoothed out, the blanket folded. The fire’s out. But something’s different.

Something waits by the door: a worn canvas satchel.

I kneel, heart thudding. My hands shake as I pull it open.

Inside: a camera.

My camera.

The old 35mm Nikon I thought I’d lost in a storm fifteen years ago. The one Aeron used to grab out of my hands and point back at me with that crooked smirk.

The lens is cracked, but it’s been cleaned. Cared for.

Inside the side pouch is a note.

We were always a story worth finishing. —A

My vision blurs.

I lower myself to the step, camera in my lap, note trembling in my fingers.

He didn’t chase me.

Didn’t push.

Just left behind a piece of our beginning.

A reminder.

That not every story has to end just because it got interrupted.

That some monsters wait, patiently, for us to realize they were never monsters at all.