Don't Fall in Love in Witness Protection

Chapter 21: I'll keep you my dirty little secret

C H A P T E R  ( 2 1 )

How on earth could he have put this together? Trust Eli to be in Ranger Downs for two bloody days and come back knowing her secret. She knew it was way too risky for them to go there, and now look what's happened! Charlotte was pacing her room, her thoughts going a mile a minute as she waited for Eli to follow her into her bedroom and shut the door. She rolled her eyes, he was taking his sweet ass time as usual.

She watched as he strode into the room, slamming the door shut and taking a seat on her bed. Charlotte winced at the slam.

'So are you going to start from the beginning?' He cocked his head to the side. 'Because to be honest if you don't start telling me the truth I'm coming up with some far fetched ideas on my own here.'

'Ok, ok,' Charlotte interrupted him, she could feel beads of sweat start to form on her forehead. She was wracking her brains trying to figure out what to tell him. She could feed him another lie, that her and Grace decided they needed a fresh start and took on new names. Maybe Grace's business had gone badly and they changed their identities to just start fresh. The only problem with that lie was he wouldn't see the need to keep it a secret. He wouldn't see the urgency in it at all.

'How did you find out about Ellie?' She asked him carefully. Finding out what Eli knew would probably be the best way to decide what to tell him.

He frowned, 'Why can't you just tell me what the hell is going on?'

'Because if you can't already tell Eli, this is pretty damn serious.' She stood up pacing the room stopping herself from yelling at him. 'So tell me what happened!'

He sighed looking beyond frustrated, 'Ok but then I want the truth from you.' Charlotte felt herself nodding along with him.

'The first day we arrived at Ranger Downs, the kids from there were the only friendly ones. Their school is new to the competition so I guess they didn't know all the schools usually hated each other. When we camped out on the grounds they even partied with us and I got chatting to some girls who were in the music program at the school...'

Charlotte looked over at him sharply trying to ignore the jealously she felt when he mentioned chatting up girls. Not the time Charlotte, she told herself.

'They even offered to take me inside and show me all the facilities,' he continued only pausing when Charlotte made some sort of grunting sound in her throat. Of course they did, she thought rolling her eyes.

He ignored her and continued on, 'Anyway I took a tour of the auditorium and music rooms and then they showed me the trophy rooms...'

Charlotte closed her eyes in frustration, of course! How could she be so stupid? She was plastered all over that trophy room. Their school band and orchestra were award winning. Music was a huge part of her old school and they had multiple newspaper stories about their wins and many photos lining the walls. They couldn't take down every photo that she was in when she left, there were always twenty other kids in it with her and would look too unusual. So they'd left them up.

Eli was watching her carefully, 'I spotted you immediately.'

She opened her eyes and looked back at him.

'You were in so many photos it was hard to miss, and at first I thought I was seeing things. Seeing you because I missed you or something...?'

Charlotte felt her face soften.

But he shook his head, 'But that was ridiculous, it was totally you. I mean you had different coloured hair but it was you. So I checked the names at the bottom of the photo and saw Ellie Spencer.'