I spun to go, but found my progress halted by a firm grip on my arm. A glance down confirmed it — Sebastian’s hand was wrapped around my bicep in a gentle but insistent hold. I lifted confused eyes to meet his, which had softened to show a hint of remorse. There was no time to dwell on the fact that he was less than a foot away, that he wastouchingme, because he opened his mouth and said two little words that short circuited my entire thought process.
“I’m sorry.”
I blinked at him, stunned. “What?”
“For the other night, for the way I’ve treated you all week… I’m sorry.”
I barely kept my jaw from falling open. He released his hold on my arm and sighed deeply, running a hand through his hair and mussing it in an instant.
“I thought — well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought. The bottom line is, I brought you here for the wrong reasons. And I’ve been punishing you for something I should’ve gotten over a long time ago. We were kids, we didn’t know anything back then. It’s not fair to blame you. I mean, after all, what we had?” He laughed lightly, though his eyes were deadly serious. “That wasn’t even real.”
He stared at me, watching as his words hit home. I tried my best to mask my expression, to conceal the pain his statement caused me, but I could only withstand so much before my facade splintered.
Because it had been real. It wasstillreal — the realest thing I’d ever felt.
“Right?” he asked, his voice low and his eyes searching mine.
“Right,” I agreed in a small voice, forcing myself to nod.
Something flickered briefly in the depths of his eyes, but disappeared too quickly for me to identify it.
“I’m tired of tiptoeing around one another at work. I’m sure you are too. And from everything I’ve seen, you’re an asset to this project. So from now on, I’ll play nice. I promise.” He held out a hand for me to shake. “Sound good?”
I subtly pinched the fleshy part of my hand to ensure that I was, in fact, awake and not lost in some strange dream-fugue state. Was he really giving me a clean slate? Letting me off the hook after everything I’d done to him? It seemed too good to be true. But if he had an ulterior motive of some kind, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it might be.
With my eyes fixed on his face, I slipped my hand into his and tried not to show how much the simple act of our palms meeting affected me. Outside, I was professional, shaking his hand with the perfunctory composure of any colleague. But inside, I felt that small touch radiate up my arm and out through every corner of my body. His touch filled me, made me feel truly alive, as though my most vital atoms and particles had lain dormant and were only now rousing after a seven year hibernation, stirred awake by the siren song of Sebastian’s touch.
It took all the strength within me not to let my eyes drift closed at the sensation, not to lean into his touch like it was the only source of oxygen in an airless room. Instead, I forced my fingers to unclasp and my palm to drop, falling like dead weight to my side. His eyes still trapped mine, searing into me with their intensity, but I managed to simply nod. I took a step backward, so there was abit more space between us.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting his apology as though he were any other coworker who’d eaten my yogurt out of the communal fridge in the break room, or “borrowed” my favorite pen from my desk drawer and never returned it. I shifted my weight from one heel to the other, wholly uncertain about what to do next.
“We might never be friends again,” Sebastian acknowledged. “But there’s no reason to be at war. Plus, I can’t imagine Jamie was pleased to hear that we’re acting like enemies.”
I stilled. The air caught in my lungs as Sebastian talked on.
“Actually, knowing him, he’s placed bets on who’ll come out victorious. God, if you’ve told him about any of this, he probably thinks I’m a real asshole now, doesn’t he?” Sebastian shook his head, a small smile on his lips — one of the first I’d seen from him since our unexpected reunion. “Oh, well. Tell him I said hello and if he’s up for it, I’d love to grab a beer sometime.”
Sebastian looked up at me, that little grin still playing out on his lips, and finally seemed to notice my silence. His smile faltered a bit and something changed in his eyes.
“He’s here in the city, right?” he asked. “I can’t imagine you two would ever live very far apart.”
I took a deep breath, my chest aching with the effort, and felt my eyes well up with tears.
“Lux?” Sebastian asked, finally using my name. Hearing it from his lips only pushed me closer to the edge. “How’s he doing?”
A single tear fell down my cheek as I struggled to find the words. My lips parted but, looking at Sebastian as the hope slipped from his expression, I found I couldn’t speak at all. It didn’t matter, though — my strangled silence said everything he needed to hear.
The realization came swiftly for him, an arrow straight to the heart, and with it a total change in his demeanor. His forehead furrowed in shock and his mouth pressed firmly into the frown I’d come to know so well, but it was his eyes that changed the most. The soft look faded away, replaced by two chips of greenish brown ice that glared at me with every ounce of dislike he could muster.
“When?” He bit out the word like a curse. Another tear tracked down my face.
“Three years ago.” My voice cracked.
He stared at me, a dark look clouding his expression. “Three years.” His laugh rang out in the empty office and I flinched at the bitter, mirthless sound. “How could you not tell me? He was my friend, too. I should’ve been there. I had a fuckingrightto be there, Lux.”
He advanced on me and I felt my shoulders hunch involuntarily. Curling in on myself was my only defense — there were no words I could offer him to ease the pain of this loss, of this betrayal. Keeping him from Jamie, though I’d certainly had my reasons, was both the worst and the hardest thing I’d ever done. The regret of it still kept me up at night, an unwanted bedfellow that haunted my thoughts and stalked my memories.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. There was nothing else I could say.