A Secret Ambition

XXII

"I felt her absence. It was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. You wouldn't need to run to the mirror to know they were gone." James Dashner, The Scorch Trials

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XXII.

Callan did not look back. He dared not for fear of seeing an expression of rejection upon Lily's face. He could not bear to see that. When he was back inside the office, he slammed the door behind him, the noise of which made Fionn jump.

Fionn, who was midway through his morning pastry, looked up from the newspaper and asked, "What's up your backside?" with his mouth full. But upon closer inspection of Callan's demeanour, Fionn's posture straightened and he abandoned the paper and his breakfast. "Callan?" he prompted.

"I've done something very foolish," Callan muttered, leaning back against the slammed door. The window was to his left. One look and he would know if Lily was still there, how she felt, and how she had reacted. It was utterly foolish and callous to be so clumsy with a young woman when he would suffer nothing for such an interaction and a young woman could suffer everything from a tarnished reputation.

But logic did not let out Callan's mind for long.

He could not think of his poor behaviour when his own feelings were raging. Lily had quit on him. She had left him, and for what? Why?

Callan was sick of standing on unsteady ground. The minute something good happened, the balance scales of life would tip and indelibly humble him. His business was saved, and yet Lily was taken from him.

Callan was not thinking clearly enough in that moment to reason with himself for the fact that she was never his to begin with.

But the very fact that she had refused his offer, his plea really, to write to her told Callan everything that he needed to know.

Callan had been kidding himself if he had thought he was controlling his feelings or being careful with his heart and Lily's. Despite everything, despite his belief that his feelings were merely protectiveness over her, the moment she had revealed that he was leaving him, Callan felt something break inside of himself.

It was like a fire had been extinguished, the very air in his lungs had been sucked out, and he faced the very fact that as he lost her, he was hopelessly in love with her.

That realisation, that hurt, and brought on, perhaps, a fit of madness, and Callan had no choice but to kiss her. And the moment it was over, Callan knew that the brief feeling of holding Lily in his arms would haunt him forever.

And it was not because he had kissed her, it was because he had felt her feelings for him in the way she had responded. Callan had not imagined it, and that was enough for him to form a conclusion before another word was spoken.

As Callan faced the fact that sometime in between Lily setting his office on fire, and her deciding to leave him, he had fallen in love with her, he wondered if she returned his feelings.

The flutter he felt in his stomach at the thought was pathetic, and it disgusted him.

Because he she did return his feelings, then why would she leave him? Except for the fact that her possessing any such affection for a man like Callan would be wrong for a girl such as Lily.

As Callan's mind raced, he heard her excuses, he heard her say that her family prevented her from staying. Was it her family, or was it an obligation? He could remember exactly, but whatever it was, Callan knew that no English family would approve of their daughter possessing feelings for an Irishman.