Lockout (The Alpha Group 2)

"This isn't fair, Sophia," he replied eventually. "You knew we had secrets. I never hid that."

This time the surge of anger was bigger. "It isn't fair? Are you kidding me? Look, I understand some jobs deal with sensitive information, and I totally respect that. I'm in the same boat myself with case details. But this is something else entirely. Do you understand how this looks to me? You have a bloody tattoo of some secret company logo on your chest! I can't even begin to imagine what that means."

His fingers clenched and unclenched rapidly, his head shaking back and forward in a steady rhythm, as if he could send everything into rewind through sheer force of will. "Please don't make me do this," he pleaded.

"What choice do I have?" I asked. "How am I meant to be with a man who keeps things like this from me? How can I trust anything you say? I thought I was starting to get to know the man behind the mask, but now I feel like I'm looking at a stranger." Saying it out loud just made the pain worse. I felt heat welling behind my eyes, but I blinked it away. I was not going to cry in the middle of his office.

He drew a heavy breath. "Everything you saw was real, Sophia. I'm a lot of things, things that might not be easy to understand, but I'm also the same man I was a few days ago. The man who danced with you and held you and felt so impossibly lucky to wake up next to you. The man who thinks he's falling in love with you."

I recoiled as if struck. Of all the things he could have said to shock me, that was at the top of the list. How could I possibly deal with that?

"Love?" I said, barely able to wrap my mouth around the word. "Seriously? That's how you're going to wriggle out of this one?" I thought I'd been confused before, but that one little word had set off a bomb inside me. My emotions now lay scattered in a thousand tiny pieces.

He looked almost as surprised as me. "I'm not wriggling out of anything. Look, I've kept things from you, that's true, and I'm sorry beyond words for that, but they were only the things I had no choice but to hide. I have never lied to you about the way I feel. Never." There was fire in his voice when he said that, an earnestness that was almost impossible to ignore.

I shook my head. No matter what I said or did, it felt like it would be the wrong decision. I didn't understand this man. This man that could make me feel so treasured one minute, then so alone the next.

"Even if that's true, it's not enough," I replied slowly. Of course it's enough, a tiny part of me was screaming, but it was drowned out by the chorus of other voices, all yelling with equal fervour. "I'm not going to pretend like I have any idea what the hell is going on here, but I can't deal with the constant questions anymore, Sebastian. I can't keep finding new secrets behind the curtains."

"I know," he said wearily.

"So can you promise an end to all that?"

There was a long pause, perhaps the longest of my life. It felt like that moment in my house all over again, that agonising wait, the whole relationship teetering on the next words out of his mouth. Only this time, I didn't get the response I'd hoped for.

Eventually, he closed his eyes. "I don't know."

Every muscle in my body tightened. I let out a long breath. "Then there's nothing more to talk about."

I was surprised by how calmly I got to my feet. I expected him to object. He'd proven his tenacity time and time again. But he didn't. He just stared mournfully at the floor and let me walk away.

I caught sight of Thomas on my way out. He was sitting in an armchair a little way around the corner, sorting through some papers, although he gave me a sympathetic nod as I walked passed. Apparently he hadn't gone far after all. So much for privacy.

I made it into the back of a cab before I began to cry. The driver shot me several uncomfortable glances, but my mind didn't have space to focus on him right now. There was too much pain. Too much confusion. I had no idea how I was meant to have reacted to what just happened. The scope of Sebastian's lies still hadn't sunk in. I didn't know what it could possibly all mean.

And then there was that word.

If he'd meant what he said, how could he just let me leave? Love was supposed to be a connection that triumphed over everything else. I tried to convince myself that it was just a ploy, a desperate, last ditch attempt to save what we had. But the pain in his eyes had been so real, the conviction in his voice so strong. It didn't make any sense.

None of it made any sense.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The next couple of days were rough. I wandered around the office like a zombie. I think that was my body's way of trying to get through work — just shut down completely. It seemed to do the trick. I wouldn't have called myself a model employee, but I made it through most of my tasks with at least some level of competency.

But at night, I couldn't help but turn the situation over and over in my head. The whole thing had left me utterly dumbstruck. Our relationship had gone from perfect to catastrophic in the blink of an eye. What on earth went on behind the doors of Fraiser Capital? I'd run the gamut of possibilities through my head a thousand times. Was Sebastian a secret agent? A gang member? Part of some kind of bizarre corporate fraternity? Each possibility was as ridiculous as the last, but no plausible option seemed to fit.

I wanted to be angry, and a lot of the time I was, but try as I might, I also couldn't push the things he'd said out of my mind. I hated him for making it so difficult. If he'd just kept his mouth shut, I think it would have been easier to let go, to dismiss what we'd had as lust taken too far. But that one word changed everything. It forced me to confront my feelings for him head on.

My history with love was chequered at best. I'd thought I loved Connor, but obviously that hadn't worked out so well. And I'd been going down the same path again with Sebastian — blind adoration for a man who wasn't honest with me. On the other hand, Connor had never made me feel that divine sense of bliss I experienced when Sebastian and I were together. Even now, with everything that had happened, I often found myself longing to just lose myself in his arms. That had to mean something, didn't it?

It made me feel like the biggest fool on the planet, but part of me kept hoping he'd call and explain himself. I didn't know if I could deal with the truth, or if I'd even believe whatever he had to say, but I hated that he didn't try. It was a coward's move to invoke that word and then not fight.

The weekend passed quietly. I was starting to feel a little better. The initial feeling of panic had ebbed away, replace by a kind of grim acceptance. He wasn't going to call, and that was okay. It seemed devastating now, but the world would keep spinning. One day at a time, I told myself. It can only get better from here.