The Publicist's Plight (Book I in The Harrison Inc. Series) | ✓

Chapter Twenty Four: The Ridiculous Odds

I can't bring myself to look at him, even though he actually came back.

From the corner of my eye, I see him wipe the sweat off of his face with the top of his shirt. He looks at me, and I look away; he keeps staring.

His eyes then avert to my feet, "How are your feet?"

"Fine."

"Oh. Alright."

It's quiet again. He looks across the road, like I did, and stares deeply in thought, narrowing his eyes. I notice that that is a habit he has—whenever he's in deep thought or trying to think, he narrows his eyes.  I tend to space off and stare doe eyed at whatever or whomever is unlucky enough to catch my invading gaze.

The silence is almost unbearable, but I refuse to speak first. I play with my fingers nervously and refrain from looking at him, and he does the same with me. Until finally, after five minutes of the silent treatment, Sebastian looks at me and says the words I thought I'd never hear him say:

"I'm sorry."

I immediately stop messing with my hands and move my eyes up to meet his. He's serious, regretful, clouded, the many things I couldn't find in him before while he was yelling at me.

"I'm sorry for what I said in the library. That was...shit, I feel horrible."

I don't say anything, but this time I feel the vulnerability in his voice.

He looks at the meadow again and clenches his fists unknowingly, "Sometimes I just...I don't know. I say things and I don't think about what they mean to other people. I didn't realize how stupid my words were until you told me."

"Sebastian, it's...fine—"

"No it isn't. It isn't fine and it isn't okay and it's definitely not dismissible. I've been wrong this whole time and I keep doing and saying stupid shit and no one can just sit down and tell me what it does to them. They just yell at me and say they hate me and I'm so used to it that it isn't much of a deal to me. But then you come along and you-you explain to me not only what I'm doing, but why I'm doing it. And the way you say things it...I don't know. It makes me intimidated," he laughs to himself. "You're...unfiltered. And I'm unfiltered. And you're sassy and I'm sassy and I think that's why...I think that's why I feel so challenged. I'm used to people leaving me alone because they don't want to deal with my shit and it's an automatic win for me. But now it's different. With you, I can't win. And it makes me feel weak."

He looks at me and chuckles shyly, "And I don't know if any of that made sense to you."

It does. It makes perfect sense; like a discovery I've been searching for. But I'm in so much shock that Sebastian Harrison is actually opening up to me that I can't speak.

"No, no, no I get it. I get it completely," I tell him. "It's just that, I don't think it's fair you pin all the blame on yourself when you know that this is my fault, too."

"This is an accident, though, so don't be too hard on yourself. I yelled at you because I was just mad with everything and decided to take my anger out on you."

"But it is my fault," I play with a dandelion on the ground and avoid his eyes. "I let my pride get in the way of everything and now we're stuck out here, I with a bandage around my foot and you with a messed up shirt. I have a problem with—"

"Letting people take control?"

I nod admittedly.

He sighs, "Well, at least we both know we have issues."

I laugh tiredly, "Yeah, I can't argue with that conclusion."

Then the conversation ends; a conversation of confession ends with us both staring at the sun lowering down closer to the horizon behind the Tennessean hills, with no doubt an abundance of old, forbidden and locked away thoughts now occupy our brains. But before, the silence was painful.