05

I glanced at Dean who was watching us discreetly from behind his monitor.

“Time will tell, Mr. Vice,” I answered breezily, flashing him my sunniest smile, secretly relishing the flicker of hunger in his gaze before he cleared his throat and pulled himself straight. “Good day.”

I walked away and down the hall, heading for the elevator.

The moment I stepped into its protective space, I released a deep, shaky breath, willing my heart to slow down.

I was still reeling from the revelations of the last four years but it wasn’t the shock or fury that had me trembling.

It was the realization that despite the rules I set, I was desperate for Sebastian to win.

“You don’t seem as angry as you say you are.”

I looked away from the dark blue dress I pulled out of the rack and glanced at Emma.

She was sipping her coffee and trying on a red beret and she eyed me meaningfully. “The man manipulated your life in the last four years in some misguided notion of protecting you and providing for you and you say you’re really upset about it but you sound like you’re talking about some boy who got into a fistfight for you.”

I smirked. “I’ve never had a boy who got into a fistfight for me. I wouldn’t know how I would sound like talking about it.”

Emma grinned. “You’d sound a bit annoyed that he roughed up someone and caused an embarrassing scene but you’re secretly thrilling in the fact that he went a little crazy because of you—that you have that much power over him.”

“Oh, please,” I scoffed, turning away and intentionally ignoring the truth of Emma’s statement. “No one has any kind of power over Sebastian Vice.”

Emma put the beret back on the rack and sifted through a row of scarves. “You know, you’ve got to stop this habit of thinking of Sebastian like he was a god descended from the heavens. Like you can’t believe he’s so besotted with a mere mortal like you. You often forget he’s just a guy who’s crazy about you.”

I sighed and went through a few more dresses.

I sometimes regret sharing my feelings with Emma because she has this annoying tendency to be perfectly blunt about things I do wrong. I called her up for a quick meet-up-slash-shopping-trip after work to pick out a dress for my date with Marcus. I had debated with myself whether to tell her about my epic day of revelations, knowing she wasn’t always a big fan of Sebastian but in the end, I decided I needed to tell someone or I would go mental.

And as much as I’d like to be indignant and insist that I was furious, I really wasn’t.

Oh, I was stewing for most of the day as the ramifications of Sebastian’s confession hit me but in the end, I took some comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one living in torment in the last four years.

“That’s what worries me, Em,” I admitted, plucking out a wine-colored shift dress and holding it up before me in front of a mirror. “I’m worried that that’s all this is—an obsession to have me because he lost me four years ago.”

“That looks pretty,” Emma commented as she stood behind me, considering my reflection. “Sebastian is a shrewd businessman and I’m sure he knows when to cut his losses. It makes you wonder, if he’s so obsessed to have you, why did he wait four years ? Sounds more like delayed gratification to me. What the reward is for such sacrifice, I think you know.”

I scowled. “Whose side are you on ?”

She shrugged. “Yours, of course. I’m just asking questions. Without an argument, Sebastian definitely has control issues. He’s not exactly conventional in his idea of courtship, for a lack of a better term. He’s also contrary—telling you he cheated on you when he didn’t and then going off to sub-fuck another woman. He needs finesse lessons in sweeping a girl off his feet but I can’t fault him for feeling the way he does about you.”

Emma smiled at me on the mirror. “Love isn’t always the slow-sweet-falling-romantic-comedy kind or the love-at-first-sight-let’s-get-married-in-Vegas kind. Sometimes it can be the crazy-world-shifting-we’re-in-love-but-doomed-anyway-beautiful-disaster kind. The important thing is, whichever kind it may be, it’s worth it for the both of you.”

I remained standing there looking at the mirror while Emma drifted off to another aisle.

Of course, she had a point. She often did.

This love affair with Sebastian had been wrought with complications since the day we met.

It began on a dreamlike summer, spanned four years of heartache and was now culminating in what could be the miserable end or the start of the rest of our lives.

If I didn’t have some grain of faith that we could find our way back together again, if I didn’t have some love left for the man who was both the bane and bliss of my life, I wouldn’t have bothered with six months, considering the lies, new and old, that were always lying in wait to tear us apart once again.

There were some things about Sebastian that I hated, as much as I understood them, while there were many things about him that I loved, no matter how unwise.

The time I’d asked for was as much for me as it was for him.

While he has to learn to let go of his unhealthy need for control and start having faith in me, I have to learn to be less afraid if I wanted to be able to take risks again.

The last four years was a time in my life that I wouldn’t regret, for all that things that I did for myself, but it was my own form of distraction—to keep from remembering what it was that I truly wanted and could no longer have. I didn’t need a reminder to know that, in all that time, I took all sorts of risks except those for my heart, and that it was time I faced the past that wouldn’t stay behind and discover if I would find my future in it.

It sounded easy in theory but reality was a ruthless and unforgiving test you couldn’t always afford to fail.

Not at the price it would cost us both.

An hour and a half later, Emma and I arrived at Pietro’s, an upscale Italian restaurant downtown where Ty was meeting us after his business meeting. It was only Thursday so we didn’t need reservations.

We followed the waitress towards a cluster of the cozy, wood-paneled booths in the back but Emma and I skidded to a halt when the waitress bumped into a woman who suddenly slinked out from behind the tall and curved wall of one of the booths.

“This is a Dolce and Gabbana dress, you idiot !” the woman shrieked, glancing down at her short, velvety brown dress that hugged a well-toned physique. “Your entire year’s salary won’t pay for this.”

And before neither I nor Emma could react to the woman’s outburst, she threw the rest of her red wine across the stunned waitress’s face.

I snapped. “Hey, there—”

“Krista, control yourself !”

I froze, Emma tensed in front of me as she glanced back into the booth, and the waitress sputtered from the wine while the hysterical woman pulled herself up haughtily, glaring at us.

“It’s you.”

Sebastian’s voice was unmistakable. The harshness from when he chided the woman was gone, and its husky timbre was warm and familiar.

Emma yanked the waitress aside and asked if she was alright, accepting the neatly folded handkerchief Sebastian handed to her as he rose from the booth.

“You seem to be a generous sponsor of handkerchiefs lately,” I grumbled irritably, meeting his eyes.