August & Colin | WRU series | book 1
We take risks. We make mistakes. We lie. We love. We hurt. We lose total control.
I took a risk. I paid the price.
I made a mistake. I felt the guilt.
I lied. I lie.
I loved. I try not to.
I hurt. I still do.
...
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From the moment I open the door, I know there's something wrong.
It's that look on her face that brings me back to three years ago, to the night she heard her parents fight and discovered they were going to split up.
It's the wary eyes, the troubled look, the broken lips from biting on them too hard. It's a vision I wished to never see again because whatever breaks her heart, shatters mine.
"What happened?" Her eyes flicker over mine.
Unsure. Broken. Defeated.
Thousands of words are trapped in them, locked away behind the wall she's drawing up with every split second passing.
When she doesn't answer or move, I step outside on my bare feet, not giving a damn in the world my toes might freeze off. All I want is to hold her close to lighten the weight baring her down.
"Talk to me," I whisper as I cup her cheeks, dragging her out of her headspace with my touch.
"You're leaving." Her muttered words absentmindedly fall from her lips as if she's still trying to grasp the meaning of them herself and confusion ripples through me.
"What?" My eyebrows draw together as I try to figure out a match between her words and their possible meaning.
"Phill is moving to LA in a couple of weeks." The clarification she gives me does nothing to resolve any of the confusion clouding my mind but I push it away for a few moments to lead her out of the cold, into the house, and up to my room. Only when my bedroom door falls shut, do I continue our conversation.
"Are you talking about the job Phill offered me?" Her gaze drops down to the floor and I close the distance between us, grabbing her chin to force her to meet my eyes. "Ari, that's in 7 months if I'm still interested. And that's a big if."
The offer Phill made me was nothing official but he told me he wanted to put it out on the table for me to consider since he liked working with me and had a sense the feeling was mutual. His people reading skills are spot on because I do enjoy working with him, however, I'm not lying to August when I tell her it's all a big if. Nothing has been decided yet, but it doesn't hurt to have options. Neither does it hurt to know someone sees potential in you.
I wanted to call her to share my excitement the moment I walked out of his office, but decided to text her instead because I knew she was studying in the library and didn't want to distract her.
Right this second, I regret choosing to send her a half-ass explanation because her mind started building stories with the minimal information she got her hands on, and the longer I'm standing here, the more I sense I won't like a single one of them.
"You love working for him." It sounds like a question, but the second I answer, I realize it was a statement because I only get a few words out before she cuts me off to rattle off the rest of her thought process.
