Page 20 of As the World Falls

I answered, grimacing when both of our faces came into view on the screen. I wasn’t a fan of video calls. They were weird and unnatural, but they seemed to be Tobias’s preferred calling method when we weren’t working.

“What’s up?”

“Where are you?” he asks. “I went to your apartment, and you didn’t answer.”

I sit down on my weight bench. “I’m in Boston for a couple of nights.”

“Boston? For what?”

Part of me thought his sister might have squealed on my little visit, but his curiosity shows he knows nothing. I’m not sure why that pleases me so much.

“Homesick,” I lie.

“You should have told me. I would have come down with you and made a trip out of it—maybe visited my sister.”

“You have work to do, and I recall you not wanting me in the same vicinity as your sister, so I wasn’t thinking about that.” I only thought about me, myself, and I seeing her, but he also didn’t need to know that.

“Speaking of work, I made a deal with Andrei. He overpaid in desperation, so I thought I'd give it a shot.”

“If you feel it’s right, then I trust you.” He smirked at that, and I noticed he sat at what looked like his apartment complex gym. I’ve worked out there a few times with him before, so I recognized it.

“You about to lift, too?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“You want to spot me?” he jokes, propping his phone up on the machine as he lays down on his back.

I chuckle, shaking my head as I set my phone on the floor beside me and begin my reps. I could have hung the phone up, but when Tobias doesn’t initiate it, especially at a time like both of us working out when one typically would end a phone call, I sense that it’s because he doesn’t want to be alone or inside his head which can get dark for him at times. He’s done this before, so I indulge him without question.

We continued our workouts, discussing work and his personal life things between reps of whatever we worked on. By the time we got off the phone, I felt slightly consumed with guilt for hiding my visit with his sister from him today.

Nights like tonight, when I’m aware of how close he and I have gotten, make me realize that he genuinely might be what one would consider a best friend, and I felt like I was betraying him.

Chapter Eight

Cecilia

I couldn’t look at my desk the same now. Every time I sat down behind it, I could see James’s muscular frame leaning over it, his one brown and one grey eye penetrating me like some twisted superpower that makes you bend to their will.

But I had a superpower of my own, and it concluded with putting up an impenetrable steel wall against tools like James Kingston, even if he was exceptionally gorgeous despite his arrogance.

It’s been a week since his little visit to my library, and I haven’t heard any complaints from Tobias about mine and his boss’s little tifts, so I figured the chaos has died down a little bit, which means I could begin snooping again.

I hoped James would have gotten busy over the past week and wouldn’t suspect my little visit to his shop in the city I was planning for tomorrow. He doesn’t personally work there, so how would he even know? Right?

I know. I know. I’m losing my mind.

A knocking pulls me from my thoughts, and I look up from my desk to see Lance standing on the other side. “You getting sleepy there, Lia?” he jokes.

“Oh…uhm…yeah. Sorry.”

“I just closed the computers, so we’re ready to get going,” he tells me. I glance at the clock, surprised it is already closing time.

“Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize it was that time already.”

“You seem like you’ve been elsewhere lately.”

“A little bit.”

---