Safe and Sound(7)

“Yeah.” He looked to the side. When he turned back, his gray eyes were intense and fixated on her. “About that.” Sebastian blew out a noisy breath. “What the hell happened?”

Lola flinched at the feeling in his tone, suddenly wary. And confused.

“I mean…I don’t understand.” Even his voice was deeper. She didn’t know this Sebastian.

Lola took another step back. “There’s nothing to understand. You stopped talking to me last year. And now this year, for some reason, your guilty conscience has you sporadically trying to talk to me. And it’s annoying.”

The surprise on his face was palpable. “I stopped?” His voice rose. “You stopped talking to me, not the other way around.” Anger laced his words and Sebastian stepped closer. “You stopped returning my phone calls, you were always busy when I stopped over, you avoided me. You, not me.”

Fear reared up inside Lola, her breath left her in little panicked bursts. He was mad. Sebastian was upset and she didn’t know him, didn’t know this young man who used to be her friend. He could hurt her. He could hit her.

Lola tripped over a limb and stumbled back, bumping into a tree. Sebastian advanced. Lola crouched down and covered her head, a whimper leaving her. She waited for the blow to come. Nothing happened. Lola lowered her arm and looked up.

Sebastian stood there, brows furrowed. “What are you doing?”

Lola put a hand against the rough bark of the tree and got to her feet, feeling dumb. “Nothing. I fell.”

Sebastian looked at the ground and then at her. “On what, a blade of grass?”

With a burning face, Lola said, “Yes. That’s it.”

It was past time for her to go. Lola started to walk away, wanting nothing more than to put large amounts of distance between her and Sebastian before she did something even more humiliating. Like cry. She was more than capable of doing that at that precise moment.



“So that’s it, huh? You’re just going to walk away?” he called after her.

Lola ignored him and picked up her pace.

“I never would have pegged you for a coward, Lola Murphy, but this last year has shown me the error of my ways,” was his parting shot, and it stung.

All the way home his words ran through her head, overlapping, turning into a mantra until just one single word rang out, clear and true: coward.

It wasn’t true. None of it was true. He was a liar.

He’d stopped talking to her. For no reason. And then Sebastian had the nerve to turn it around and act like it had been the other way around. Probably to make himself feel better. What had she possibly missed about him? Sebastian was overbearing, stubborn, and pushy.

And she was not a coward. Why did he even care if she was anyway? He had Roxanne. Lola shouldn’t even enter his thoughts. Ever. She was sure she hardly ever did anyway. So it really shouldn’t matter if she was a coward, not that she was. But if she was, why did he care?

***

Every night for the past two weeks when Lola got home from work, there he stood. This night was no different. He’d either somehow managed to find out her work schedule or he simply liked to stand outside in the cold and dark for whatever reason.

Lola had a sneaky suspicion he had a hero complex and felt it was his duty to make sure she made it home from work okay every night. The irony of that did not escape her.

She wasn’t in the mood for his charity, for his guilty conscience trying to make up for past snubs by looking out for her now.

With the pale glow of streetlamps directing her to him, Lola strode across the street and toward Sebastian. The grass was stiff and crunched under her shoes. Even in the dark she could see his eyebrows lift as she approached him. Sebastian’s hands were shoved in the pockets of his jacket, his breath left him in short spurts of frosty air.

Lola’s nose and hands were cold, but the pull of her warm bed wasn’t enough to keep her from confronting him.

She stopped a few feet from him and looked up at him. His gray eyes met hers as he silently waited for her to speak.

“Stop it.”

Sebastian cocked his head. “Stop what?”

“Stop…this.” Lola waved a hand at him and her.

“Stop standing in my yard?”

“I don’t need you looking out for me. I don’t want you to. I’m fine. Always have been, always will be.” Her throat tightened at the lie.

“I happen to like standing outside and it’s my yard, so I can.”

She remembered that look. He’d worn it when they’d argue, when he wouldn’t admit to being wrong, when he made her do something she didn’t want to do, but knew would be best for her.

“In the dark?”