The Publicist's Plight (Book I in The Harrison Inc. Series) | ✓

Chapter Forty Five: Denial

SEBASTIAN

"I told Remy Callaghan that you would love to go out for lunch on Monday. That's a good sign! Getting Remy Callaghan to ask you out for lunch? What you said to that reporter about capitalists must have definitely did it."

Sarah's voice is going in one ear and going out the other. Usually I'm open to hear about whatever the hell she has to say; she is my manager after all, and whatever she says must be important. But I can't help but keep my mind on the same fucking thing—the same fucking person. All morning, all my mind has been chanting:

Leslie, Leslie, Leslie, Leslie!

Can my brain just shut the fuck up for once!?

"Hello, hello? Earth to Sebastian?"

When I snap out of my trance, I look over the breakfast table and see Sarah glaring at me, pen now out of her hand and on the planner in front of her. Our waiter refills Sarah's orange juice and my coffee, but she still looks angrily ahead at me.

I give her an apologetic smile. "Sorry. I'm just tired."

"No you're not." She pushes her planner to the side. "You've been staring at my glass of orange juice with this dumb look on your face for the past three minutes."

I stay silent.

"Is this about Leslie? How she left this morning?"

"No, it's not," I respond a little too defensively. I realize how sharp my response was when a smile stretches on Sarah's face.

Fuck.

"Ah, I know what's wrong. You guys had your little moment last night, and suddenly she's gone, and it's killing you that you don't know why."

"You're reading into it too much," I say, even though Sarah's spot on. Last night at the charity ball, I asked Leslie to dance with me; she had never danced with anyone before. I know—I couldn't believe it either. So I practically dragged her onto the floor and shared a waltz with her. Innocent enough, right?

Well that's not what's killing me.

What's killing me is what the dance became. I looked down into her eyes and saw a part of her that was so...different. It was fragile, and vulnerable and it made me feel the exact same way. I hate being so soft and open around people. All it does is invite chaos and betrayal. But not with Leslie. I just feel acceptance when I'm with her.

I remember her saying that she used to be in a relationship that ended horribly when she found out her assistant and her ex-boyfriend had been screwing each other behind her back. She said that she supposes she deserved something like that happening to her. She says a lot of things about herself that she doesn't catch. But I catch them, and I hold onto them in my mind, piecing them together like a puzzle. So hopefully one day I can look down into her big, brown eyes and see the person she's hiding from me; it makes me angry hearing how lowly she thinks of herself with such nonchalance in her character.

How ironic, though, that I preach about her revealing her true self to me when there's so much that I haven't revealed to her about myself?

Anyway, after Sarah walked in on us and scared Leslie off (thanks, Sarah), I hadn't seen her for the rest of the night. Then come to find out, she checked out of her hotel room this morning. She isn't answering any of our calls, and I have no idea where she went.

So that's everything that's killing me—something happened between us, but she ran away before there was a consensus about it.

"Sebastian, Leslie is a grown woman who can handle herself," Sarah tells me. "You and I both know that. Maybe something is wrong with her phone and she can't get back to us. Regardless, try her cell in a few more hours."