Pawnshops and Carousels

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Sorry that this is late guys and that this is a slightly shorter chapter. things are gonna start get interesting in the next couple chapters, are you guys excited? I am! Don't forget to leave me a review and I'll see you next week!

Chapter 3

Rich: I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't surprised to see Sabrina back in the store. Everyone knows about her, of course, or at least I do. I know all about Seth's obsession about her. Just saying her name in the store used to summon him. Now he's distracted as hell… he'll walk off in the middle of a deal to get eyes on her, he's flying off the handle quicker than before. And he's doing this thing where he just stares at her. All the time. We've all noticed, except for Sabrina of course. It's a complete clusterfuck… so I know Ashley's behind this somehow.

We're all screwed if Seth keeps acting like this. Completely screwed.

It's been a whole week since I started working here and Seth won't even look at me. God knows he hovers, and he asks me questions like I'm an idiot, but he's always been like that. I guess I just thought… by now… he might have made a move on me… you know, if he was still interested. But I guess, he's not interested in me, and really what was I thinking? That after seven years we'd just fall back into place, that he'd see me and realize that he'd do anything to have me back?

Obviously I had dreamed about it, fantasized about it but… you know… my wishes and dreams rarely come true.

Should this be something I'm constantly thinking about? Of course not. Seth has a girlfriend, the girls at the loan counters told me that before I even asked. And I had a boyfriend I was… content with. For the most part. Fantasizing about making out with my new boss, running my hands through his hair, feeling his hands on my body, his arms around me…

"Sabrina, my office, now."

Jolted out of my thoughts I jump and turn my eyes to Seth, who is pointedly not looking at me as he walks past my desk and into his office. Well obviously he's done doing whatever it was he was doing on the floor, but it didn't tell me why I'm in trouble now. He's only be gone for twenty minutes out of the supposed two hours he was supposed to be on the floor for, what could I have done in such a short time to upset him?

I stand up and follow after him, shutting the door behind me because there's a fifty-fifty chance that we're going to end up arguing. We don't yell at each other the way that he and Ashley do but that doesn't mean I want the other employees to hear about us going at it.

"We had a client call, said he talked to you yesterday but I didn't get the message," he says. The question is implied. Which is, why didn't he get the message? Don't know why he just couldn't ask me like a normal person.

"Well… I left it on the notepad…"

"And how was I supposed to know it was there?"

"Well… you told me to write all messages on the notepad… so I figured you'd look at it?"

"Is that what I'm paying you for? Figuring? Come on Sabrina, use your fucking brain, please, it's common sense."

"You're not paying me, your dad is," I snap and fold my arms over my chest. "I believe you were told to not be unreasonable with me."

"I am not being unreasonable, I'm asking you to do your job in a way that doesn't inconvenience me."

Laughable because he was the one who told me to write all his messages on a special note pad in his office… one I had to leave in his office. Which meant taking the message on a different piece of paper and then transferring it to his special note pad.

"Everything inconveniences you, your highness."

It's a low jab, it's something I used to do when he got too demanding with me. He hate, hate, hated it. And by the way his eyes bug out I can see that he still hates it.

"Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to take my coffee break… far, far, away from you," I growl and turning on heel before he could say or do anything else. I want to cry. I wish I could look into his eyes and watch them soften and shine like they used to when they were young. I wish I could look into his eyes and not see the hatred and loathing behind them.

I wish he still loved me.

I had been trying so hard. So hard to stay away from Sabrina. I had tried so hard to remain confidently, desirably aloof. But she hadn't fallen over trying to impress me, hell she'd hardly look at me, and I'd know… cause I had been watching. I can't take my goddamn eyes off of her. But when she did look at me all I saw was sadness in her eyes and I hated it because it made me want to hold her to soothe her, to make everything better again like I used to and I couldn't do that anymore. I wasn't allowed, I had lost the privilege to comfort her.

I hated that she could just sit at that desk in front of my office, looking lovely. It should have been criminal that she could look that good twirling a lock of her hair around her finger, or nibbling on her lip as she thought, or when she'd tap her fingers against her desk as she was on the phone taking messages for me.

I had set up this notepad, for her to write my messages on, which meant that she'd have to stand beside me to write them in if I was on the phone or otherwise engaged. But it also meant for however long it took her to write those messages in I was distracted which lead to me fucking up orders and other such issues. She had changed her signature perfume, the flowery scent replaced with a soft sandal wood note that was setting me on fire every time I got a good whiff of it. And I got one every time she was near me because I always inhaled I couldn't help it.

Right now, however, my problem is that she never came back.

After her break, when I had tried to get her back into my office to have her go through papers to help me find something—an invoice she had handed me this morning—that I had hidden purposely so she would have to hover over me and help me look, she had announced that she was going to go into the warehouse to look at all the items and take an inventory so she could figure out how she was going to organize it.

I told her that she was only allowed to do it for an hour because I had more important things for her to be doing and then spent an hour coming up with an acceptable list of things for her to do that wouldn't get me in trouble. Problem was, we were going onto two hours and she hadn't come back to my office.

I wasn't too mad when she was just a half hour late because I knew what she was like, you know? I know what my girl is like when she got on a roll, and I figured once she ran out of steam she'd come back. A whole two hours late… yeah… I'm not happy anymore… I'm pissed.

Mainly cause I'm certain she's doing it to avoid me.

I go into the back and ask the runners if they've seen her. They have not.

Now I'm worried.

Sabrina is a very attractive blonde beauty, there's no way they wouldn't have noticed her poking around. Did she… did she just leave?

I wander around, looking for any sign of her, pretty sure that something had probably fallen on her or she was under a pile of junk or just quietly poking around the back counting things and lost track of time, when I notice a ladder that has fallen. It's in the back of the warehouse in the junk section, no one ever really goes back there except for me and my dad so I'm confused as to why a ladder is there in the first place.

"Seth?"

Sabrina. I know her voice. I know the way she says my name. Why am I hearing her but not seeing her?

"Seth up here."

I look up and there she is, her head poking out from the third shelf up. I blink my eyes not sure about what I'm seeing.

"What the hell… Sabrina? What are you doing up there?"

"Uh… inventory. I needed to see what was behind everything… there's uh… a lot of stuff I don't think you guys can sell..."

I'm very well aware of that but that's an argument for my dad and I, not between Sabrina and I. Instead I glance down to the ladder at my feet and suddenly understand what happened. "You can't get down can you?"

"Well uh… the ladder fell… so… no."

"And how long have you been stuck up there?" I call out though I have a feeling I know how long. She glances to the watch on her wrist.

"Uh… about an hour or so."

Well that solves that mystery. She wasn't avoiding me she was stuck. I shake my head at her and try not to smile. If we were still dating I'd be negotiating a price for helping her get down, but right now, I just want her back on solid ground cause I'm not sure the shelving unit can hold her weight and the weight of all of Les's garbage.

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I don't have my phone, it's in my desk."

Well at least she didn't say that she didn't want to call me.

I shake my head but pull up the ladder and rest it against the side. I hold it steady for her as she climbs down, and as soon as she's close enough to me, I have a hand to the small of her back to help guide her the rest of the way down. Even though it's the most minute of contacts, it's just a whisper of a touch, I'm suddenly on fire with this desire to scoop her up and kiss her. This madden, crazy, utterly preposterous desire.

"Thank you for rescuing me," she says with a laugh. "For a while there I was sure I was going to have to live up there or something. Like some kind of warehouse gremlin."

I laugh at the thought. That she thought she could just go missing and I wouldn't go looking for her. I'd have found her no matter what.

But then she puts a hand to my chest, just a slight tap, just a small gesture as she continues to talk to me, but I don't hear her words. The second she voluntary touched me, for the first time since we had broke up, I lost my damn mind. My hands dart out and grab her pulling her to my chest before I can register what I'm doing.

And then that's us stuck there in that position.

Sabrina is flat against me, I can feel every inch of her. I can feel her heart in her chest, I can feel each and every breath she took. I was looking into her eyes. I could kiss her. I could just lean down and press a kiss to her lips… all I had to do was…

"What are you doing, Seth?" she cries twisting out of my grip and take a few steps away.

I realize I was angling downward in an attempt to kiss her and I'm more than a little disappointed that I hadn't got a chance to go through with it, at least one last time.

"You have a girlfriend," she hisses and that's true. I do. But I won't after this. Because it's painful clear that I can't just have Sabrina within arm's reach and not react. It's even clearer that I'd rather have Sabrina, and if I'm going to try and work this out the girlfriend will have to go. "And I have a boyfriend."

Fuck. She did? Why? How dare she work here and be with someone else. Didn't she know? Didn't she know how much I want her?

Instead I incline my head in a brief nod. Just to signal that I heard her, and that I understood. She didn't say anything else to me though. She turned. She turned and left me there. Our moment is lost forever like all the other memories I had left behind when I lost her.

As soon as I'm sure she's gone I pull out my phone. I didn't matter if Sabrina was with someone else. My girlfriend needs to go. I could work on getting rid of Sabrina's boyfriend later.