Page 18 of Brighter Shades of Light
“Fine,” she softly huffed and lifted her brown eyes to mine. “I overheard some of the women talking about you. About how you were single now. They see you as a challenge and intend to move in on you now that you’reavailable. And…I guess it made me a little jealous.”
My face heated, and I adjusted my glasses.
When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see the handsome man so many people seemed to. My nose was slightly crooked and my hair refused to be tamed most days, no matter how hard I tried to fix it. My bangs swooped, and the sides flipped in all directions, sticking up in some areas and curling near my ears in others.
“There is no reason for you to be jealous, Emily.” I attempted a smile, certain it appeared as awkward as it felt. Her face softened but fell again when I added, “We aren’t together anymore. You’re free to date other men if you want to, and I am provided that same freedom with whomever I wish.”
“Wow.” She laughed without humor. “For a moment, I thought you were going to say I shouldn’t be jealous because you have no intentions of dating those other women. But then you had to get all logical, as always.”
“I didn’t say I was interested in dating them, Emily.” I suppressed a sigh. “I was merely stating a fact. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
One reason I was prone to avoiding conversations: they could be so exhausting.
“Did you ever cheat on me?” Emily briefly closed her eyes before opening them again. “I couldn’t bring myself to ask before, but I need to know. You hadn’t touched me in over two years, and I was sure you’d found someone else.”
I pinned her with a hard stare. “For you to ask such an offensive question shows you don’t know me at all.”
“Finally, some emotion from you.” She stood and smoothed her knee-length skirt. When her gaze settled back on me, she looked as cold as she often told me I was. “How was I supposed to know the real you, Sebastian, when you hide behind your books and research? When you love your equations more than you loved me?”
I said nothing.
“My question wasn’t meant to offend you,” she continued, as tears fell from her eyes. “I suppose it made more sense to think our marriage failed because you found someone else, rather than considering the notion that it failed because you didn’t care enough about me to make it work.”
Seeing her cry was hard. I didn’t know what to do to comfort her. Leaning on other people wasn’t something I was accustomed to, and I dealt with my pain alone.
Wiping her eyes, she then cleared her throat. “Sometimes I lay awake at night, thinking about us. And it occurs to me that maybe I was just another experiment to you. Something you analyzed and prodded. When the experiment started to fail, you lost interest. Scrapped the hypothesis and moved on to something else.”
“You weren’t an experiment,” I whispered. Though…I wasn’t sure that was true.
I looked at everything with a scientific mind. My inability to form close attachments with most people made me look at them with scrutiny, trying to figure them out. Had I inadvertently done the same to Emily?
“Do you want my honest opinion, Sebastian?” Her bottom lip quivered. “If all of your relationships fail, with lovers and with friends, maybe it’s not everyone else who doesn’t fit. The common denominator in all instances…is you. The experiment won’t ever be successful because other people aren’t the problem. You are.”
She stormed out of the office and slammed the door.
I stared at the spot she’d stood moments ago and felt an odd aching in my chest. Her words had pierced through my skin. She was right.
I exited my office at three o’clock, still reeling from the argument with Emily. I had never meant to hurt her or make her feel like an experiment.
I’m the problem. The part of the equation that doesn’t fit.
Vance passed me in the hall. “Hey, Sebby!”
I kept walking, ignoring him.
I was eager to get home where I’d be away from everything. Everyone. I could count on one hand the number of people I’d ever felt close to. My past relationships had started successfully enough, yet somewhere down the line, they’d fallen apart.
They always fell apart.
Chapter 6
Cody
Tristen wanted to go out. To the club, to a bar, he wasn’t picky.
“I just don’t want to stay in on a Friday night,” he said, throwing on a fitted T-shirt that showed off his muscled torso. “We survived the first week of the semester. We should celebrate. Don’t be dull, Cody.”
“You should know by now that peer pressure doesn’t work on me.”
