007~Mate (1)~

She found him in the east corridor,or he was already there. She couldn't exactly say which came first— whether she'd walked that direction with a reason, or whether something older than reason had simply moved her feet and let the rest of her catch up later, making excuses.

Either way, there he was.

He was standing at the window at the corridor's end, still in his dark shirt... His sleeve now rolled up. She couldn't help but notice the gel in his hair, how mature he looked from behind, how she found herself walking towards him, like there was this invisible magnetic force between them. "Fuck! What am I doing?" She made a fist, stoping seven feet away from him.

He heard her coming, he'd always heard her coming, some old animal part of him had never stopped listening for her.

Her heart was doing something violent and unglamorous behind her ribs, yet he remained calm while she fell apart from the inside out? This isn't fair, none of it is.

"Everyone's in the reception room," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt, which she was proud of. She expected mumble a bunch of nonsense and make a fool out of herself, "Moon goddess, this has to be you at work here," a tiny voice whispered in her head. "Victor will notice you're missing."

"Victor will survive the inconvenience."

After five years, his slow and gentle voice hadn't changed. She felt heat creep up her face and once again hated her body for being so selfish.

"I need you to know something." She heard herself say it and only understood the shape of it as it left her.

"Selene—"

"I need you to know it clearly before this summit starts and we have to smile at each other across a dinner table like nothing happened." The space between them was about seven feet, just enough distance to not launch herself at him, which felt like a real and present risk. "I don't know why you're here. I don't know what you and my husband arranged. I don't know what you want from this house. But whatever it is, I am not a part of it"

This time he turned from the window and she wished, immediately and completely, that he hadn't. His back had been so much easier to talk to.

"I'm not here because of you," he whispered, staring into her soul.

"Then we understand each other," the words barely made it out of her mouth.

"I didn't say that."

The air between them felt cold against her skin as she struggled to keep eye contact. "Look away and you're the fool who was stupidly in love and was rejected, or stand your ground and he'll have sleepless nights till this summit is over," that tiny voice urged.

"Stay away from me, don't speak to me unless the room makes you. You don't seek me out. You don't—"

"I don't what?"

"You don't look at me the way you looked at me on those steps this morning."

Silence filled the space between them, and neither one reached to break it. That quietness wasn't empty. It was full of everything neither of them was saying.

"The way you looked at me," her lips trembled under the weight of her own words, "as if I owed you something. Like five years happened to you. Like you're the one who should be—"

"I don't think I'm owed anything."

"Then what do you think?"

"I think this isn't a conversation for a corridor."

"I think you don't get to decide that." Anger, red hot rose in her throat. "I think you lost the right to decide anything about how we do this the day you stood in front of everyone who ever mattered to me—" Her voice cracked on one syllable and she felt the crack in her own chest, "—and said the words. You walked away and never looked back Kieran, not once."

Guilt crossed his face but it was gone before she could name it,

"I know," he said.

That was all? I know?

It was the worst possible thing he could have said. She'd spent two days building a case against denials he hadn't made, sharpening arguments for a fight.

And 'I know,' swept the whole thing under the carpet.

"That's it?" Her voice cracked. "Five years, and that's everything you have?"

"What would you like me to say?"

"I'd like—" She stopped. Realized she'd taken three steps without meaning to, and the seven feet had become four. She made herself stop moving, even though every part of her wanted to close the rest of the distance. However, she didn't fully trust what she'd do once she got there. "I'd like one honest sentence, Kieran. One!"

He looked at her with those grey eyes that never gave anything away, except for the single tick in his jaw — the one that meant a sentence was fighting to get out and was losing.

"I can't," he said.

"You won't."

"Not yet," he whispered. "At least not here."

"You don't get a yet." Her laugh came out sharp and ugly, nothing like a laugh at all. "You don't get to walk back into my life and collect a yet like it's owed to you—"

"I know what I did to you."

"You know nothing about what you did to me."

"I know it broke you." His voice stayed level, but his hands had gone still at his sides, like he was holding something down by force. "I know you rebuilt yourself out of the wreckage of it. I know you're standing here right now, furious and magnificent. And I am the last man alive with any right to call you that, and still—"

"Then don't."

"—I need you to know that nothing that happened that night was what it—"

"Don't!" The word came out of her sharper than razor. "Don't you dare walk in here with a 'nothing was as it seemed' speech and expect me to stand here and—"

"I'm not asking you to believe me."

"Then what are you asking?"