Page 21 of Release Me

We’ve both given up on the illusion of eating, so I push my plate to the middle of the table. “Can I also be honest?”

He nods. “Please.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“You don’t know me, Nadia. It would be dumb to trust a stranger. You don’t strike me as dumb”

One corner of my mouth tries to lift up into a half smile, but I bite it back. “My life is complicated right now. I don’t know how long I’m going to be in New Haven. Your team needs stability, especially after Vince’s departure, I don’t think I’ll be able to give them that, and I know I won’t be able to sign a contract for an extended amount of time.”

This piques his interest, and I think I see something akin to panic flicker in his eyes. He leans forward, elbows back on the table, fingers steepled and resting under his chin as his gaze turns thoughtful. I don’t know when this became a negotiation, but that’s exactly how he’s treating it.

“So we go with a shorter contract term. It can be month to month if that’s what you want. Just tell me what you need, Nadia, and I’ll make sure you have it.”

“Sebastian, you’re not listening.”

“Yes, I am.” Earnest and triumph are battling it out to be the primary emotion taking over his handsome features. “You’re laying out your terms, and I’m demonstrating my willingness to meet them. Please, continue.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m telling you that I’m not the right person for this job.”

“And I’m telling you that I disagree. Every obstacle you can think of is nothing more than a condition to your employment, a term for us to agree upon. You need flexibility in your contract? You’ve got it. You want more money than Vince was making? Consider it done. I was going to pay you double his salary anyway. So what else is there?”

Everything sounds simple when it comes out of his mouth. So simple I almost forget the point I was trying to make.

“You have a whole team to consider, Sebastian. They don’t need another person coming in and changing everything up just to disappear on them in a few months.”

“They work at a restaurant where everything, from the weather to the menu, changes depending on the day. I’m sure they can adjust to a new manager.”

His brows lift in a silent demand for my rebuttal, but I don’t have anything else to say besides the truth he refuses to hear. “I can’t do it.”

“Nadia,” he breathes my name, a soft utterance filled with desperation. “Can you at least try? It can be a trial run. Sixty days of you giving it your all, and if, for some reason, you still believe you’re not right for the position, I’ll help you get set up doing something else. I know a lot of people in a lot of places, Nadia, I can get your foot in any door you want to walk through.”

Kindness isn’t something I’ve come to expect from this world, and it’s not something I trust coming from men as powerful as Sebastian. I stare at him, trying to see the strings attached to the offer he’s just extended to me because it feels too close to good to actually be true.

“And if I agree to this, that would make me what? Some kind of charity case? Your good deed for the year?” My voice shakes. The steel I’d forced down my throat earlier all but gone. “I don’t need a sponsor, Sebastian.”

Pity.

That’s his answer to my words. Pure, undiluted pity that shows me how bewildered he is by my brokenness. That tells me he’s confused by the layers of it, by the way it goes on and on and on, radiating from the crack in my sternum Beau gave me the first time I tried to run away. He didn’t know before, but now he does, now he sees that it’s endless. That his words and his kindness will never be enough to seal it up, to make me whole.

I expect this to be the moment when he finally gives up. When he pats himself on the back for trying to be kind to the pathetic ex-sex worker with no prospects and goes on about his day, but instead his jaw clenches, setting with an unerring determination that scares me.

“You’re right, Nadia, you don’t need a sponsor, but you do need a job and options and maybe even a friend to show you that everyone in this world isn’t out to get you.”

“And that’s what you want to be? My friend?”

His expression is unreadable. “If you’ll let me.”

Silence descends on our corner of the room, creating a bubble of consideration around Sebastian and me. He’s staring again, almost like he’s willing me to give in, not because he wants to best me, but because he wants what’s best for me. I don’t know how that’s possible when we’re virtually strangers, but there’s a part of me, deep down and tucked away, too afraid to actually be seen, that believes it to be true.

My shoulders slump with resignation at the same time my heart lifts with excitement. “A sixty day trial run.”

Sebastian’s face splits into a wide grin. “With the option to renew.”

Less than twenty four hours after agreeing to be Sebastian’s new restaurant manager, I return to my motel room with a bag of freshly thrifted business casual clothes I hope will make me look the part in my hand and a pep in my step. But when I see the bouquet of white lilies in front of my door, the pep dissolves into paralysis and the bag of clothes falls out of my hand, landing at my unmoving feet.

I’m distantly aware of the fact that I’m standing in the middle of the parking lot and at any given moment one of the many tenants who make a habit of driving under the influence could come flying through here and turn me into roadkill, but it still isn’t enough to make me move. To take a single step closer to the familiar arrangement of fragile petals I’ve only received from one person in my entire life.

Beau.

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