She raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Were you just being rude while Cian and Connor are present?”
Shit. “No. That wasn’t rude.”
“It was a little rude,” Connor mumbled.
He glanced at him, annoyed. “Whose side are you on?”
“On the side of politeness?”
Hazel grinned broadly. “That means a punishment,” she mouthed so Connor and Cian couldn’t hear it.
Fuck. “Hello, Hazel,” he said, catching himself, even though he sounded as wooden as a tree. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve spontaneously rescheduled the contract signing. Penny and Fox are waiting upstairs.”
Gareth blinked. “I don’t reschedule…”
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t reschedule appointments, but Penny had a sudden emergency that she has to take care of in an hour, so she can only do it now, and…I thought it would be wise to have her with me.”
Because then they’d have to behave. Right.
He closed his eyes. “Okay. I’m done eating anyway. Let’s go.”
He said goodbye to Cian and Connor, wishing they'd quit exchanging their meaningful glances, and led Hazel to the elevators for the conference rooms.
Stepping into an empty elevator, Hazel pressed the button for the third floor, and they rode up in silence. Gareth didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t good at small talk and even worse at speaking normally to Hazel. They were better off just not trying.
Hazel seemed to think otherwise. “Did you have a nice day?”
“So-so.”
“Ah.”
He saw in the reflection of the elevator door that she was looking at him, but there was still too much chaos raging in his mind, his body, and his hands to risk another glance in her direction. Did she have any idea how much of his years of practiced control he wasted on her every day?
“I can’t think of anything else to talk about except the weather,” Hazel muttered dejectedly. “But we’re not allowed to. Why not? We should have left the weather alone! Strange cloud formations are a prime topic of conversation.”
He had to fight a smile. He didn’t want to, but she was deliberately talking nonsense to lighten the mood!
The elevator stopped on the third floor, the doors slid open, and without a word, he stepped out. Only a few more yards to the conference room and they would have made it without…
“Oh, shit, Gareth. This is terrible.” Hazel stopped abruptly.
Shit.
“I’m sorry, okay? I know I went too far on Monday, but you asked me and I wanted to be honest and…and we both said things we shouldn’t have. Can we forget the whole thing and carry on like before?”
Gareth took a deep breath, paused, and turned slowly to face her, forcing himself to look into her eyes.
Carry on like before? No. Something had to change. This was too exhausting. He couldn’t go without sleep for a dozen more nights because he was thinking about her. He’d hoped the contract would take care of that — because he didn’t have the energy to make aneffort. But a few paragraphs weren’t magic, and Hazel was right: He needed to start making an effort with people again. Not only at work, although that had always been his biggest problem.
“No, I should apologize,” he said quietly, rubbing his eyebrows with his index finger and thumb. “Hazel, I’m truly sorry you thought I was waging a vendetta against you. Or trying to make you feel like you weren’t good enough for the Hawks. You’ll just have to believe me when I say that’s not even remotely true. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I didn’t mean to lose control. I should have handled it better.”
Perplexed, Hazel opened her mouth, but he wasn’t finished.
“I have to let go. I thought I had, but I guess I haven’t.” He laughed mirthlessly and rubbed his forehead. “In my mind, everything between us is so incredibly complex. So vast and impenetrable. But ultimately, it’s simple: The past is the past. Maybe you’re right, maybe I’m not the man I was and you’re not the woman you were back then. We should stop being angry at our younger selves. I certainly want to. It costs me…too damn much if I don’t.” He held her gaze because he owed it to her to look at her, if only so she’d believe him. “Can we just call a truce and start over? Isn’t that what the treaty is for?”
Hazel blinked and looked at him as if she didn’t recognize him. Maybe that was okay. Maybe it was better if they didn’t recognize each other, but started over.
