Page 14 of Glass Jawed
“Good,” I say. “Just making sure.”
Another pause.
When he finally speaks, it’s clipped. Cold, but clean. Like it costs him.
“I’m... sorry.”
I nod, once. “Okay.”
He watches me for a long beat. “That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
He shakes his head slightly. “Not sure.”
I finally take a sip of my drink. It’s mostly water now. Still bitter.
He sits back in his chair, eyes on me again. Not harsh now. Just... tired.
“Tim’s gone,” he says.
“Gone where?”
“Left Toronto after his Master’s. I don’t know. Montréal, maybe.”
“Right.”
Lucian watches me a second longer. “I didn’t bring you here to rehash that night.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
A flicker of a smile, then gone.
“I wanted to talk,” he says.
“About healthcare?”
His smirk returns, faint. “Among other things.”
I don’t respond. Instead, I reach for my drink again and let the silence do the heavy lifting.
FIVE
Lucian
Her silence grates.
She’s too calm compared to the fury burning inside me. Like what she said a few minutes ago didn’t carry weight. Like she has processed that night and filed it away in a neat little folder labeled ’Unfortunate But Not My Fault.’
A part of me believes that it wasn’t her fault. But a larger part of me is furious at her lack of empathy. She seems to be casually bringing up the past and making it about how I reacted in my heartbreak.
Like she didn’t destroy something that night.
And she gets to sit here, sipping whiskey onmydime like we’re two civil people who didn’t meet in the middle of a fucking breakdown?
I want to shake her out of it. Pull some goddamn reaction from behind those blank eyes. But instead, I sip my second beer of the night and try not to think of Tim’s face—tear-streaked, pathetic. Or howhershad stayed dry the whole time.
She hadn’t even flinched.
