Chapter 6: The Shattered Glass

Sebastian

Her hand was around my forearm and pulling me into the dimly lit alcove and the lie was gone.

Seven years of careful restraint, seven years of constriction behind an armored identity – vanished in one ragged exhale. Her brown eyes no longer blazed with the fury that had been there, but were wide and shiny and wet, with unbroken tears piercing through the roughest of my soul.

My mouth dropped, "Clara..." was a confession.

My hand lifted on its own and my fingers quaked, tracing the soft curve of her cheek. She stayed by the horse. She was about to go for it, and for the briefest moment there was a faint, broken gasp on her lips, but she pulled back before it could be heard.

She whispered, "Answer Me," her voice cracking under the weight of the revelation. That dude, I think that dude had a target on his back, you're gone because of them.

If I remained, they would have slain you, Clara," I choked out, and suddenly after 10 years of silence, the truth began to choke me. They sent me pictures of you in your dorm room, pictures of your classes, pictures of the bakery where you went every morning for coffee. They told me that if I didn't do your father's job and play their game, they would ensure that you were never able to walk across that graduation stage.

She was like that, and a single tear fell down her lashes, making a wet line down her skin. It wasn't long before my thumb instinctively wiped it away.

I felt my hands gripping her lapels, but I should have told you," she said in a breathless tone. You left me in darkness, made me feel like you didn't value me. You made my ghost's grieving stand for seven years, Julian!"

You would have fought for me if you knew" I whispered desperately, my voice becoming a ragged breath. Too brave, too fierce Clara, you would have faced the bullet with me, I'd not let you die for my sins, I'd make you hate me so you'd run as far from my world as possible.

She looked up at me, her chest heaving, the terrible reality of each sleepless night and each tear she cried over a memory.

“And now?” she asked, her knuckles white on my suit. "Why bring me here? Why hire me?"

I said, "Three weeks ago I found your name again, and because of that, I leaned down to touch your forehead with mine, and our breathes mixed in the dark corridor," There was only one place where I could ensure your safety, and it was inside my fortress, with my eye, next to me.

She said, "You idiot, half laughing, half crying. “You proud, high horse, noble idiot.”

"I know," I murmured, my hand sliding around the back of her neck, my fingers tangling in the soft hair at the base of her head.

The air in between us cracked. The distance collapsed.

I gave up my identity as Sebastian Thorne. I didn't think of the board, the syndicate or the cameras down the hall. I grabbed her and our lips met in an intense and desperate desperate collision that we had been longing for.

Clara gasped, her arms came straight to my neck, and she pulled me down into her. The kiss was not a sweet kiss, but a storm of seven years of longing, heartbreak, and unyielding passion bursting through a dam. I sampled the salt in her tears and the sweet and alluring heat that had haunted my dreams each night since I was twenty-two.

Grasping my hair and pressing her full body into mine, she moved the kiss deeper, in the darkness of the alcove. I raised her slightly off her feet, arms locked around her waist, pressed her against the wood panel wall and clenched my face in the crook of her neck as I groaned against her lips.

I never stopped loving you, I breathed in her skin, my pulse pounding in my ears. "Never once for one second.