Chapter 12: Meet Me In The Middle

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Think, Paige! Think.

She knew what she needed to do next. She knew how to do it. The only thing she found herself lacking that night after light’s out was courage.

The moment Jared told her that he had designs on getting up close and personal with Sebastian’s gray matter, she knew that whatever timetable she cobbled together, it needed to be moved up.

Which meant speaking to Sebastian.

Privately.

And that wasn’t something Paige was sure she was ready to do just yet.

It wasn’t fear holding her back, she knew that much. It was the deeper, more nebulous feelings swirling around in the pit of her stomach that she would have liked another night or two to sort through. But, she didn’t have that long, and, what’s more, neither did Sebastian.

The program was progressing more quickly than she’d anticipated, and Paige had a sinking surety in her gut telling her that they were running out of time.

Project Far side was contracted to work throughout the winter months, but it was ever evolving behind the scenes, and whatever answers her higher ups were looking for, Paige was terrified they were finding them.

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“You came.”

The sound of his honeyed voice over the security room speaker made Paige hesitate to push the button to respond. It didn’t come as a surprise that he was awake – he never seemed to sleep.

Is that part of lycanthropy? If the moon is up, he’s up?

If so, he was in for a long ass three months.

“Paige?”

“Yes. I’m here.” She found it difficult to focus, her mind splintering off into a million different conversations, each stemming from a different question burning a hole in her tongue.

It was overwhelming just standing in a room adjacent to Sebastian, and she was the one with all of the power here. With the two-way mirror activated, she could see him while the only thing he saw was his own dark reflection.

She was the one who could walk away.

But she wouldn’t. That hadn’t been an option since the moment she first laid eyes on the shackled man. At first, it was because she knew he needed help. Now…

Now, Paige had the inexplicable feeling that what he really needed was her.

“I’m here,” she whispered.

His response came back hesitant, too. Cautious, as if he sensed her inner turmoil. “You’re afraid.”

“I-I’m…,” she trailed off as she found herself at a crossroad.

In her mind, she’d already made the decision to commit to Sebastian’s cause, but the man and myth was an enigma unto himself. Whatever came next wouldn’t be a simple matter for the mind.

She followed her gut and made the leap, leaving the comfortable distance of the security office to unlock and enter his room.

His gaze keyed in on her from the moment the door slid open. His vivid green eyes seemed to glow in the low light of the late-season moon.

“No,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

He remained decisively still as she stepped forward, even though she could see that he wasn’t bound. As she approached, she was intensely aware of his presence, his size. This is how deer must feel. Even as she thought it, it took her off-guard just how true the sentiment rang.

Sebastian was a predator; one she didn’t know.

Paige was prey; she found she didn’t mind.

She stopped just before him, overcome by an intense wave of awe. The plains of his face, the breadth of him, the power in his densely packed muscles, it all took on a new meaning. The human body was designed to accomplish amazing things, but his was built for so much greater.

He was something greater – living proof that there was still mystery in the world.

But what took Paige by storm was the unexpected familiarity.

My drawings. She’d tried and re-tried to accurately capture his likeness to a near-obsessive degree. Each time ended in frustration when the images came out just slightly warped – too sharp, too long, too…feral.

Without realizing it, she’d been capturing Sebastian just on the cusp of his change, in the split second before his features began to shift and his humanity slipped away.

She’d been frustrated with those drawings, blaming her bum hand for the inaccuracies, but now, she loved them; they represented the wildest part of Sebastian, the eldritch part of him that was so inexplicably attractive to her.

She reached up a hand to cup his jaw, her thumb running light strokes across the cut of his cheekbones, the fullness of his lower lip. An impossibly low rumbling vibrated through the point of contact and fanned out from there, flooding her body with awareness.

It was coming from Sebastian.

Paige gasped, horrified when she realized what she’d been doing. She’d left her thinly veiled façade of professionalism back in the security booth, but that didn’t give her leave to be a cad. But when she tensed to snatch her hand away, he captured it with his own and held it in place, pressed against his cheek.

His eyes shuttered shut, and he breathed deeply. Paige could almost see him physically unwind as if some relentless burden within him had finally begun to relax.

There was a pull somewhere in the vicinity of her heart as Paige felt something she could barely perceive click into place. An unspoken question that had finally found its unspoken answer.

They moved as one, their lips finding one another in the darkness. In that solitary room, they explored one another, first with a tentativeness that quickly gave way to the thrill of uncovering the unknown. It was fight and freedom, a delicious give and take that excited and frightened in equal measure.

Paige pulled away on a gasp, and this time he let her retreat. “My God, I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey now, don’t go apologizing for the single decent thing that’s come from this entire ordeal.”

Sebastian stood, prompting her to take a step back at seeing him at his full height for the first time.

“Is that…,” Paige made some vague gestures toward the unveiled window, feeling suddenly awkward. “Uncomfortable for you? I mean, the moon. With your whole…deal.”

He looked over his shoulder at her and chuckled at her floundering. “You can ask your questions, Dr. Paige. It’s been, what, twenty-four hours since you last grilled me. You have to be on the brink.”

Paige cocked her hip and leveled him with a pointed glare. “In fact, I do have a question or two about you being a goddamn werewolf. Like, why didn’t you tell me? And I don’t mean during our sessions. We’ve spoken off the record.”

He turned to face her and leaned back against the plate glass window, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. “You do remember you work for the enemy?”

A sharp pang of hurt made her heart clench. “I thought that we were past that. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not any more of a fan of my employers than you are. And, at this point, I’m pretty sure that I’m only slightly less captive.”

Sebastian had the decency to look contrite at her wounded tone. “I didn’t mean that to offend you, Paige. My scope is limited to these four walls. I don’t have the frame of reference you do. When it comes to the protection of my people, the less I say, the better.”

“I understand,” she nodded. “That’s why we need to go. Now, if you’re up to it. I just got a glimpse of what the end of this looks like for you and it…involves getting closer to a brain than even I’m comfortable with.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Paige blinked. “Excuse me?”

He took a determined step in her direction and pointed out the window. “Your people may have ambushed mine, but they played their hand while doing it. I’m not trapped here, Paige. I never have been. And I’m only leaving once I’ve uncovered exactly what your people have planned for mine.”

“These aren’t my people.” Paige moved forward until they were once again in arm’s reach and peered up at him with naked sincerity. “I want to help you. Tell me what you need from me.”

The heat behind his eyes lit a fire within her. His expression held a mixture of relief and shrewdness that she realized he’d been carefully concealing this entire time. The Director wasn’t the only one with plays on the board.

Sebastian’s eyes flicked to the two-way mirror and back. “Just do what you do best, Dr. Paige. Keep asking your questions.”