My syndication deal had gone through last week. Twelve major publications across the country would now carry my investigative pieces. The contract sat in my desk drawer, signed and official, representing everything I’d worked toward since journalism school.
So why did triumph taste so much like ash?
Jenna’s text buzzed through:
You’ve got that look again. The one where you’re winning but still managing to be miserable about it.
I glanced across the room to where she sat at her desk, watching me with raised eyebrows.
I typed back:I don’t have a look.
You absolutely have a look. Coffee break in five?
Before I could respond, the energy in the newsroom shifted. Conversations stuttered. Heads turned toward the entrance with the specific collective movement of a room that had recognized someone who didn’t belong in it.
I didn’t need to look up.
But I looked anyway.
Sebastian stood just inside the doorway, and the sight of him hit me somewhere I hadn’t finished protecting yet. He wore a charcoal suit, no tie, the top button of his white shirt undone. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, and there were shadows under his eyes that three weeks had carved rather than sleep. He looked like a man who had been sitting with something heavy and hadn’t found anywhere to put it down.
He looked like hell.
He looked like Sebastian.
Our eyes met across thirty feet of cubicles and fluorescent lighting, and for one breathless moment, the entire newsroom ceased to exist. My heart slammed against my ribs with the force of something that had been waiting.
Then reality reasserted itself, and I remembered exactly why I’d walked away from him.
I turned back to my desk, forcing my hands to steady as I set down my coffee. His footsteps approached — measured, deliberate, giving me time to tell him to leave if I wanted to.
I didn’t tell him to leave.
That probably said something about my self-preservation instincts that I wasn’t ready to examine.
“Em.” His voice was lower than usual, rougher at the edges. “Can we talk?”
I kept my back to him for another beat, gathering the scattered pieces of my composure into something that could pass for professional. When I finally turned, I made sure my expression revealed nothing.
“This is my workplace, Sebastian. I’m not sure what kind of conversation you think we’re going to have here.”
“A private one. Please.”
The please caught me off guard. Sebastian Laurent didn’t say please — he commanded, persuaded, occasionally demanded. He didn’t ask.
Something in my chest cracked, just slightly.
“Conference room B is empty.” I grabbed my coffee and walked past him without waiting. Of course he followed. I could feel the weight of his attention between my shoulder blades like a physical touch.
The conference room was small and utilitarian — cheap table, plastic chairs, the lingering scent of dry-erase markers. Afar cry from the mahogany and leather of his world. But it was private, and right now that mattered more than aesthetics.
I closed the door behind us and leaned against it, arms crossed over my chest. “You’ve got five minutes.”
Sebastian didn’t sit. He stood across from me, hands in his pockets, and for a long moment he just looked at me. Really looked, like he was cataloging every detail of my face, memorizing changes I couldn’t see in myself.
“I failed you,” he said.
Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. Not so baldly, without preamble or justification or the careful construction of a narrative designed to make himself look better.
