He’s smart.I almost blurted those words out.Thank goodness I didn’t.“You should ask Cecil.He’s the one who has control over what gets shown and what doesn’t.I’m just the junior who puts it all together.”
“You’re not just a junior.I saw how you held that event together, and to learn that you put the presentation deck together as well—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve already heaped tonnes of praise on me for that.Please stop.”
He shifts in his seat.“I don’t understand why you’re so hostile towards me.It feels like too strong a word to use, and yet it feels exactly like that.”
“I’m not hostile towards you.”
“No?”His brows squish together as if he doesn’t believe me.My behavior doesn’t support that claim, so he has every reason to doubt me.
But I have every reason to be wary.
Zach probably knows everything about his father.And his father is a deplorable man; a cheater whose actions drove Zach’s mother to suicide.He was clearly shaken up by the trauma of her death, but he never hated his father, even though his brothers did.I was never around them much because Zach and I found ways to avoid them, but I remember them being rude and rebellious, whereas Zach was the softer, gentler one.
He didn’t hate his father.Instead, he explained his father’s sins away.He told me he was very young when it happened, but that was then.He’s an adult now, and I can’t understand why he still wants any part of his father’s life.In my eyes, he seems like a lackey chasing wealth rather than a person with his own moral compass.
“Every time I see you, you remind me of the good in my past,” he says.
I swallow, hating that he’s bringing the conversation back to personal matters.Maybe he’s not flirting.He’d be silly to.He’s just remembering the past and feeling nostalgic about it.It’s getting harder to keep the barrier in place, especially since he came to my rescue when I dropped and damaged Cecil’s laptop.
That wasn’t orchestrated.
That was Zach being Zach.
I’m trying not to be drawn to him physically and emotionally, but the past leaks into my present, and being around this man after all these years, remembering the boy he used to be, and seeing the man he’s become, I’m struggling to fight my feelings.
He’s undeniably handsome, in a cool understated way, but with him it’s more than just subtle good looks.Zach has a heart of gold.He means well.He loves the best in everyone.He idolized his father.
I thought about him for years, even after Mom told me what happened.After a while, I convinced myself that I was yearning after an illusion.That he probably hadn’t given me much thought after I left.I can never forget that he looked so smug and confident as he waved at me.He didn’t look like he was shaken up.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he asks.
How can I explain the push-pull reaction my body experiences whenever he’s close?I’m fighting nostalgia tangled with attraction and distrust, and seeing him again just now, in this claustrophobic glass-walled room, my body reacts before my mind can stop it.
I feel sorry for him, for the trauma he’s suffered, but my mom and I also suffered.Maybe he doesn’t know what happened, but our lives changed for the worse and I’ve been carrying around hate for so long.Now I find myself trying to resist the undeniable pull towards someone who was once my first crush.My first kiss.My first something.It’s half-formed, half-finished.Our time together, interrupted abruptly.Now that he’s appeared, just as abruptly, just as unexpectedly, I’m fighting to deal with it.
With him.
He would have caught my eye regardless, even if I’d never met him before.Even if he hadn’t introduced himself at the VIP event.Zach being the one I shared my first tender kisses with just complicates all the boundaries and blurs all the edges.
“How have you been?”His voice turns low.He doesn’t care for the slides anymore.
“Good, thanks.Is that all—about the presentation deck?You had questions, I take it you don’t anymore?”
His face hardens, and he seems displeased with my response.I thought he might.It confirms what I suspected.This is just a pretence to get me here, to talk to me.The presentation deck and arranging a frivolous meeting with Cecil?Purely theatrical.
Zach is a just another Knight up to the old tricks of manipulation and control.
“I do have questions, but so far you haven’t answered them,” he says, tightly.
“Like I said, it’s better if you ask Katherine or Cecil.I have work to do here, so I need to get back.”
“I won’t take up too much of your time, but … can’t you even tell me how your mom is?”
I shift in my seat, feeling uncomfortable now.Feeling trapped and uneasy with his persistence.“She’s good.”
He nods.“Is she still working?”
