Lockout (The Alpha Group 2)

Nothing came of the situation with Jennifer, so I figured she'd just been messing with me for her own enjoyment. I felt a little stupid for overreacting. It wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

I should have been happy that I was finally working on my dream project, but I couldn't really enjoy it. Something had changed with Sebastian. There was no doubt in my mind anymore that my feelings for him had grown, but ever since our morning together, his seemed to have moved in the opposite direction.

It wasn't that he was ignoring me. He still messaged every day or two, but they were short and monosyllabic and lacked any of the warmth I'd come to expect. In person he was no better. Aloof, almost to the point of being cold, we rarely had a discussion that lasted more than a few minutes. That amazing man from just a few nights ago was nowhere in sight.

I clung on, hoping it was just stress. Over the next two weeks, our encounters took on a fairly predictable rhythm. A spontaneous text message, a frenetic sexual rendezvous, and then a hasty departure. On the surface, it was great. I was working overtime, even by my standards, and it was the sort of comfortable arrangement that fit perfectly around that. The problem was that wasn't the kind of comfort I was looking for anymore. I often found my mind wandering back to that morning chatting over coffee, and to the night before, to the overpowering rightness I'd felt as I drifted off to sleep cocooned in his arms. And the more I thought, the more I longed for that closeness again.

"You could stay, you know," I said to him one night, as he stood up and began to gather his things.

"I really should get home." He even looked different now. There was a permanently harried cast to his eyes that I'd never seen before.

"Is everything okay?" I'd tried several times to pry something out of him, even the tiniest hint of what had gone wrong, but it was useless.

He nodded. "Yeah. I just have a lot to do, that's all." He tried shooting me a reassuring smile, but it didn't quite cut through the hardness on his face.

I didn't understand. Our connection had felt so real and so powerful to me, and I'd been so sure he felt it too. But now I was starting to doubt myself.

Maybe I really had just imagined everything. Maybe I had no idea how to read men at all. My past relationships certainly said as much. But if that was the case, could I keep going the way things were, knowing there was nothing more to it? It felt wrong to throw away something that was so theoretically perfect, but every night that we said goodbye, I felt my heart break just a little more.

Still, I wasn't quite ready to give up just yet. People always said the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, and that was one approach I had yet to try. So when the weekend rolled around, I sent him a text.

Sophia: Hey. Hope they're not working you to the bone over there. I thought maybe you could come around for dinner tonight night if you're free. I'm not much of a chef, but I do make a mean carbonara. Thought I could pay you back for breakfast the other week. Let me know.

He replied a few minutes later.

Sebastian: Not sure I should. But maybe I can swing by later on?

I'd expected it, but I still felt a pang of disappointment.

Sophia: Okay, sure.

But as the day progressed, my frustration grew. I kept turning his message over in my mind. It was the phrasing that bothered me. There was that word "should" again. "Not sure I should." That wasn't the same as "Not sure I can." It could mean that he was too busy or had something else on, but it could also mean that he simply didn't want to. If that was the case, then I was wasting my time. I tried to convince myself to stop overthinking it, but by the time the evening rolled around, I still felt uneasy.

Mostly out of stubbornness, I made a pot of carbonara anyway, and ate a bowl of it while reading on the couch. There wasn't much to do but wait. He hadn't given an exact time.

At about eleven o'clock, there was a knock at the door.

"Sophia," he said by way of greeting.

"Hey." Even with the turmoil I felt, I found myself smiling. It was good to see him. There was something addictive about the way I felt when we were together, some beautiful nexus of hormones and emotions that made everything seem a little brighter, a little more real. I desperately wanted to keep feeling that as often as possible.

Not even waiting until we'd made it inside, he moved in to kiss me, and for a few seconds, my body began to yield to his. But as he pressed me up against the hallway wall, his hand already teasing the curve of my ass, I felt something crack inside me.

"Sebastian... wait..." I said, forcing myself to pull back.

"What? Is something wrong?"

I closed my eyes for a second and cupped my face in my hands. "Just once in a while could we maybe wait more than a few minutes before you start feeling me up?"

His smile slipped. "I'm sorry. I just missed you, that's all. You know what your body does to me."

"It sounds like you missed my body a lot more than the rest of me," I replied, a little more harshly than intended.

He didn't seem to know how to reply to that.

Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in such an intimate position, I ducked under his arm and moved into the lounge room. He followed me in silence.

"I'm not sure I understand," he said, after about twenty seconds.

"Well that makes two of us." I hadn't planned to go on the offensive tonight, but the churning feeling in my stomach couldn't be ignored any longer.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asked.

I laughed bitterly and shook my head. "Nope. You've done basically everything just the way you promised."

"So what's the problem?" I didn't respond. "Is it about dinner?"

I threw up my hands. "Yes... no... I don't know. I thought it would be nice, that's all. Spend a little time together. You've been distant, lately."

"We've seen each other three times this week."

I shot him a pointed look. "Distant and physically present aren't mutually exclusive."

He ran a hand through his hair and began pacing. He always seemed to do that when things didn't go to plan, as though enough steps would simply carry him away from the problem all together. "I don't understand what you want from me, Sophia."

"I want some bloody consistency. Why is it okay for you to cook me breakfast, but I can't make you dinner? Why is it okay for me to stay over at your place, but you won't ever stay here?"

There was a pause. "I don't know. I didn't plan any of that, it just sort of happened."

"So? That's how these things are supposed to go. They progress gradually. What I want to know is, why are you trying so hard to make sure it doesn't 'just happen' again?"