Chapter 11 The Biggest Lie
The Biggest Lie
JAMIE
Sarah’s voice. My name. It wasn’t like I hadn’t heard it a hundred times.
But this time was different.
Every brain cell told me to keep walking. Every strong and beating cell in my body guided me into the room.
I stood for a moment in the doorway, looking solely at Sarah for the first time that night. There was no hiding my gaze now, no forcing each glance to be brief.
It fucking hurt. Both to look at her full-on, and to see her like this.
Sarah’s hair hung in a curtain, hiding her profile as she looked down at a bottle of wine, her fingers pressed to the glass. I took a step toward her, painfully aware we had an audience, even if no one was currently looking through the glass on the other side of the bottles.
When Sarah tilted her face in my direction, her eyes were so full of sorrow I had to mentally hammer nails into my shoes to keep me from going over there and pulling her into my arms, swearing to her I could fix this.
She offered a wobbly smile. She was so fucking vulnerable right now. So fully on the surface I felt like I was looking directly into her heart.
And what I saw destroyed me.
How had I lied to myself so thoroughly over the past year? How had I failed so fucking completely? In a matter of minutes, the truth came into my brain like a broken bone through flesh—just as painful and visceral. I was gone for this woman.
As I looked at Sarah, her eyes red, her cheeks flushed, the faintest tinge of red wine on her lips, I knew, beyond any question, that I’d never gotten over her.
That chance meeting so long ago now wasn’t something I’d buried in the past as I forged a new relationship with her.
It was the seed that had grown like a tenacious wildflower, from the darkest, coldest place in my chest, its sprouts curling up and around the prison I thought I’d locked it in.
I thought Sarah and I were creating a new path forward as we became friends this year, something plain and simple and unburdened by our initial meeting.
But what a thorny lie that was.
The seed had grown, without me realizing it, into a thousand blooms coming into flower all at once as I stared at her, blooming even now at the smile she was trying to make appear on her lips.
But as I took a step toward her, that flower transformed into heavy fruit. Ripe and wet and unyielding, falling with a thud in the center of my chest.
No, I hadn’t gotten over the angel I met that night. Instead, I’d fallen for her so completely I hadn’t even seen it until it was far, far too late.
“Hey Jamie,” Sarah said.
On the other side of the glass the party continued. If anyone cared to look, they’d see.
I took another step, but was careful not to come too close. Then I thought better of where we were standing. At least I could school my expression. Pretend I wasn’t coming apart in realtime. Sarah was an open book.
I strode toward the center of the room, standing directly before her so she had to turn to face me. This put her back to our colleagues on the other side of the glass, her face safely out of view.
“Sarah?” I asked, my voice low. Just for us. “Can you look at me, angel?”
I needed her to know I was there. No matter what, I’d look out for her. Protect her from pain. Even if it was me who caused it.
She tilted her chin up to meet my eyes.
“Sarah,” I said, my voice hoarse. I was trying to find the right words.
But she spoke first. She lifted a hand, her fingers grazing across her neck. “You heard me out there, didn’t you?”
I didn’t bother denying it. “Yes.”
She fumbled with something in her other hand. Then she made a fist around it. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t professional.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine.”
“But it wasn’t professional.”
Fuck professional.
She swallowed as I didn’t say anything. But my mouth was dry; unable to come up with the words I should say. Words like It’ll be okay. I’ll call you a cab and you can go home. You can sleep it off. You’ll be fine. That would have been good.
Instead, I said, “It’s not true.”
“What’s not true?”
“That you wasted your best years.”
She looked as surprised as I felt that I’d said that. But I kept going, unable to stop now that I’d started.
“Your best years are now, Sarah. I’ve only known the person you are now. You’ve got so many good years ahead of you. All your years will be good because…” I hesitated. “You’re a good person, Sarah. The best of us.”
Her lips tilted, just a little. Then her eyes grew wet again. I had to shove my hands in my pockets to keep from closing the few feet between us and brushing them away.
“You know,” she said, “You were the first man I met who made me feel like I wasn’t forgettable.”
My stomach loosened. “You’re not. You’re a valuable part of the team here, I—”
“Not here,” she said.
My jaw pulsed. I had very little hold on what was the right thing to do right now. My body was volatile. It might do things that would destroy everything.
“We can’t talk about that, Sarah.”
“But I want to.”
I felt like my chest was being crushed in a vise. We couldn’t. I couldn’t. Not talking about that night—not even thinking about it—was the only flimsy scaffolding that kept me functioning in her presence.
“Jamie, I feel—”
“No,” I said, my tone tight.
“Yes,” she said, taking a step toward me.
Fuck me. Fuck me.
“Jamie, I need to tell you…” her throat bobbed as she swallowed. She was a little loose on her feet. A little tipsy. “That I never forgot that night,” she whispered. “I sometimes play it in my head like a movie. Like it happened to someone else.”
“Sarah.” The word was a warning. A choked word in my throat. I could smell cherries and sunscreen from that night. Her shampoo and just… her tonight.
“Please, Jamie,” she whispered. “Tell me it’s not just me who thinks about us that way.”
My heart beat so hard it bruised my ribs.
She’d said the words I’d dreamed about as I lay in bed at night, holding her image in my mind.
Holding myself in my fist, hating myself for thinking about her the way I did.
Over her shoulder, through the glass, the party continued. Still no one was looking.
Except… Cora was. Her gaze drifted up as she laughed at something someone was saying to her.
But even with a smile on her face for the person she was talking to, I felt her look at me, her gaze different than it had been in the hallway.
Her eyes were wide, like she didn’t want to see what she was seeing. Her expression maybe a little sick.
Cora wasn’t warning me against whatever she thought was happening in here.
She was waiting for her hero to crush her.
I wasn’t actually Cora’s hero. It was entirely the wrong word, even though Seamus told me she called me that after I’d fired Gary.
Gary, the man who’d been the catalyst for me writing the manager-subordinate interpersonal relationship policy.
The scum I used to call my trusted colleague, until I learned he’d been quietly sliming on young female employees.
In the fucking house I built. We changed everything because of Cora, and I was grateful to her for exposing the wound I didn’t know had been festering.
If Cora saw me talking to Sarah at her most vulnerable the way I wanted to, she’d die a little or a lot. And maybe so would I.
But the shame that ratcheted through me right now wasn’t because of Cora. I was depraved to even think it, but if the only thing standing between me and Sarah was Cora, and the company’s reputation, and my company itself?
I might have said fuck it anyway.
But what I saw in Cora’s tense gaze was what could happen to Sarah.
How I couldn’t hand her the fallout that would happen if I crossed a line.
I would not have Sarah’s professional reputation stained because of some misplaced feelings of mine and confused feelings of hers.
I could not and would not have people speak about her as if she got this job through some means other than her exceptional talent and my son’s ability to see through my bullshit.
I couldn’t have her associate herself with a man whose word—if he broke this rule he so emphatically enforced with everyone else—would be as thin as the paper he’d written it on.
Tell me it’s not just me…
“Jamie?” Sarah whispered, worried now.
I wanted desperately to reassure her that she wasn’t alone. That I wanted her a thousand times more than she wanted me. Instead I opened my mouth, knowing this was the only way.
“It’s just you,” I said.
The words were cold and distant. They came from somewhere that wasn’t me. That couldn’t be me.
Sarah faltered, her brows knitting together like she hadn’t heard right. “What?”
“I don’t think about you, Sarah. Not like that.”
Something broke inside of me then, as I told the biggest lie I’d ever known. It sliced through the air between us like a sword.
Sarah looked winded. Like she’d been struck or fallen.
I wanted to pick her up. To hold her up and say I didn’t mean it. To soothe away the hurt. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do that to her.
This is the way it had to be. This is the way it should have been all along. She was too good to be ruined. And there was no other way to stop this than for her to hate me.
“I’m sorry, Sarah. I wish I hadn’t overheard what was clearly personal business. I shouldn’t have come in here. Perhaps…” I glanced over her shoulder at Cora again, now staring openly. “Perhaps you should review the policy one more time.”
“The—” Sarah laughed. But there was no joy in it. Her voice was quiet when she said, “Are you serious, Jamie?”
I didn’t hesitate. If I did, I’d back down. “Yes.”
Lies. Utter, abject lies.
Sarah went very, very still. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth and ran past me, the last shred of anything between us dead and gone.
Good. This was the only way.