ii. Sight
When he woke up, he wondered how he could have simply fallen asleep. It wasn't a deep sleep at all, more of a slumber accompanied by a thousand fragments of shattering thoughts—the argument, the soft touch of her skin, their first meeting in the darkness of the hallway, her bitter laughter over and over again—but somehow his sleep was deep enough to not notice right away that she had broken away from him and was already on her way out now. Fully dressed, not looking back at him.
He got hold of her arm before she could slip away entirely, anxious to not grip her with too much force. She paused and turned to him.
"You're leaving?" he asked and it was actually more of a plea to stay or to at least leave together with him. He felt unbelievably vulnerable and in the scarce light he could read quite similar emotions on her face.
"Yes," she only said quietly and was apparently looking for her shoes.
"Give me two minutes and I'll come with you," he offered and started locating his own clothes in the darkness of the night. At least his underwear was quickly found.
But she countered his request. "No, I wanna go alone."
He stopped rummaging around in his clothes and everything became even more odd. Maybe it was the air that was so cold that he shivered slightly now that the heat of the moment had receded. But maybe it was the atmosphere between the two of them that made him feel so cold all of a sudden.
"It's the middle of the night," he noted and it was only another attempt to keep her with him somehow, because he couldn't get rid of the alarming feeling that he might have lost her forever, if she went through the door of his office now.
"It's quite often the middle of the night when I leave the office," she replied almost unemotionally and finally found her shoes.
He didn't need a translation in order to know what she was really saying. That he wasn't there, that he didn't give a damn, that he left her on her own with the day-to-day burdens of this business.
"I don't ask you to do that," was all that blatantly left his mouth, even though his thoughts were entirely different ones. Maybe because he was hurt as well now that she had planned to sneak away from him like that. Or maybe because he already missed her warmth, as awfully inept as the circumstances might have been.
"No you don't," she confirmed, "but I'm also the first person you accuse when something here doesn't go the way you want it to. If I don't take care of it nobody will and this company will go down the drain sooner or later."
He sighed, defeated and unable to still develop any clear thoughts. "Message received."
"I doubt it."
He looked up, but all that he saw was a pair of sad, disappointed eyes that she averted shyly as soon as he had fixed her with his gaze. "Then tell me what I should do."
There wasn't any moment of hesitation and it only became more obvious that the words had already been laid out on her tongue for a long time. "Acknowledge and appreciate people's efforts here. Not only mine. Everybody who works here is helping to keep your dream alive."
To some extent his dream was her and this dream was just shattering into all its ugly components right in front of his feet.
"Okay," was all that he could get out.
"Okay," she repeated sneeringly and somehow he was sure that she would leave for good now, but far from it. She had only just started her attack and took a deep breath.
"I gave up just as many things for this company as you did," she began and every word was a cutting sword—on the surface calm and controlled, but underneath a volcano was simmering. "A safe job without worries about the future, the ability to simply see people without detecting all the lies behind the tiniest of blinks and twitches. Time, so much time."
He was reduced to sitting there in front of her like a naughty schoolboy who had only just started to comprehend the consequences of his wrongdoings. It was cold, unbelievably cold. He tried to picture her laughter again, but it was light years away, even though there were only a few hours between now and then.
"Maybe some of my friendships would still exist today, if I had had the time to maintain and take care of them. Maybe I would have realized earlier that something's not right with Alec, had I not taken my work home with me and listened instead. Maybe I could have helped him before it was too late. Maybe I could have grieved for Sophie, had I not spent my nights at the office after she was gone. Maybe it would hurt less today."
He was speechless, felt completely lost and as if hit by a train of which he only saw the tail lights now. And yet somehow his stupid mouth opened, clutching to the last straws that were left.
"I offered you to take some time off when that happened." He couldn't even say what exactly had happened, because he had never found the right words when it came to Sophie. Neither when she was still part of Gillian's life, nor when she became part of another life, away from her.
Loss. Maybe he could understand this devastating feeling a bit better now that he was so immensely frightened of losing her.
But she didn't give him that one. "Yes you did. And at the very same time you carelessly got into massive trouble with the mayor's office. And it was me who picked up the pieces again and made sure that we could continue working. You didn't give a damn."
He had always been afraid of those words. Afraid that she would one day openly admit that he was the reason her life was falling apart. It confirmed all his deepest fears about himself. That he was the origin of all evil, that he poisoned everything around him that had been pure and innocent before.
Now he really was at a loss for words. No single syllable he could utter would make it any better.
"I don't care if my name is written on some door here or not, but if you're telling me once more that the Lightman Group was not built on my sweat and tears as well, then I will try to forget that you ever were a part of my life."
It was the end of her speech, that much was clear.
"I don't know what to say," he admitted honestly and tried to at least hold on to her eyes in the darkness, because she couldn't just slip out of his life. Couldn't, shouldn't, mustn't.
"Best if you say nothing at all," she added quietly.
She went back to the door and he got up to stop her from leaving. He felt as naked as he really was, deprived of the last protective mechanisms and without the curtain that she could see behind most of the time anyway. Even when he adamantly tried to hide his feelings from the world.
"Gill, please," were the words he managed to get out, but they didn't mean anything anymore. His hand touched hers, but she shook him off.
"This here was a mistake, Cal," she clarified and for a moment he wondered whether she meant them sleeping together or whether she was even referring to the company and everything they had built together. He decided to go with the first thought, because the latter would have broken his heart even more.
"I had the feeling you wanted this too. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted that," he said and searched for her hand once again, but no chance.
When she turned around, he could see tears on her face for the first time. Tears that were hidden by the darkness until now. It broke his heart again and again, because there was no doubt that he was responsible for every single one of them.
"I only wanted it to be nice if it happened one day," she confessed, her voice thick with choked-back tears. "Not like this."
Everything here had shattered to pieces—her heart, his heart, this company, their friendship and whatever could have been.
"Me too," he agreed and didn't know whether he had ever spoken truer words. "Me too."
When she finally left for good, he had no doubt that it wouldn't be her this time picking up the pieces from this godforsaken battle ground.
