Chapter 115: Hundred and Fifteen

The next morning began with team assignments.

I had been dreading it. But one of our coworkers had fallen sick, so some reassignments were supposed to happen. I had been hoping I would be getting reassigned.

But, just my luck.

Ms. Bergess stood at the front of the conference room, clipboard in hand, pairing names with the kind of cheerful obliviousness that made me want to disappear into the carpet.

“Declan and Willow,” she announced, smiling warmly, as if this was good news.

My stomach dropped. Ashley shot me a grin, mouthing, Lucky! I forced a smile back, but my palms had already gone clammy.

Declan, across the room, didn’t move at first. He kept his gaze steady on the floor, jaw tight, before finally standing. For a second, our eyes caught, brief, electric, before I looked away.

We were tasked with designing a mock proposal for a community outreach program, to be presented at the end of the retreat. Others groaned about the workload, but I barely heard them. My focus was narrowed to the impossible fact that I’d be working alongside him, hours on end, with nowhere to hide.

We set up at a table by the window, sunlight catching on the wood. Declan pulled out his laptop, posture composed, but I caught the slight tension in his shoulders. I busied myself with my notebook, scribbling down points to avoid looking directly at him.

“Do you want to start with the framework?” His voice was low, careful.

“Sure,” I said, barely above a whisper.

The first hour was bearable. We spoke in clipped sentences, sticking to the work. His handwriting appeared in quick, neat lines across the page; mine followed in messy scrawl beside it. Occasionally, our hands brushed when we both reached for the same document, and each time, my chest tightened as if the contact had been deliberate.

By the second hour, the silence between words grew heavy. It wasn’t the silence of strangers, but of something that had once been familiar, now unspoken. Every time I leaned forward, I felt his gaze flicker toward me. Every time he shifted, my body reacted as though it remembered the shape of him too well.

It did.

At one point, I dropped my pen. It rolled under the table. Instinctively, we both bent to retrieve it, and collided.

His hand brushed mine. His face, suddenly close enough that I could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the deep blue of his eyes. My breath caught.

For a moment, neither of us moved. My pulse thundered in my ears, the space between us charged, fragile.

Declan was the first to pull back, clearing his throat as he set the pen on the table. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“It’s fine,” I whispered, though my voice trembled.

But it wasn’t fine. Nothing about this was fine.

By afternoon, the others filtered out to a team-building exercise on the lawn, laughter echoing through the open windows. Declan and I stayed behind, still piecing our proposal together. The room grew quieter, the kind of quiet where even the scratch of a pen felt amplified.

At one point, I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my temples. The sun had shifted, casting the room in a warm glow. Declan looked up from his laptop, studying me for a beat too long.

“You’re tired,” he said softly.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to pretend.” His tone was gentle, almost familiar. God, he always knew. He would look at me and tell me something about myself even I didn’t know. I was tired. I hadn’t realised until he said it.

I looked at him, my sweet man. I had hurt him so much. His eyes held that same magnetic pull they always had, steady and searching. My chest ached with the weight of all the words we hadn’t said. Of all the things we had left behind.

What would my life be like right now, if I had not run away?

“Declan…” I started, but my voice caught.

He leaned forward, just slightly. Not enough to close the space, but enough that I felt it. The invisible tether.

“We shouldn’t,” I whispered, though the words sounded weak, unconvincing even to me.

His jaw tightened. “I know.”

But neither of us moved away.

The air between us thickened, heavy with the memory of what once was. My heart pounded so loud I swore he could hear it.

Then the sound of footsteps in the hallway shattered it. Someone laughing, calling out about lunch. Declan pulled back sharply, his chair scraping against the floor. I exhaled shakily, not realizing I’d been holding my breath.

We didn’t speak for the rest of the session. Not about us, at least. Just work; clean, clinical, safe. But every glance, every brush of fingers across the same page, told a different story.

A story that no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t stay away.

That evening, the group started a bonfire. The group gathered under the open sky, flames crackling, voices rising in song and laughter. I sat close to Maya, pretending to listen as she whispered gossip in my ear.

But across the circle, Declan sat too. The light from the fire flickered against his face, shadows dancing across his features. It caught the edge of his jaw, making him look like some kind of model. His eyes found mine once, twice, thrice, and I looked away each time, afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.

I didn’t have it in me to look in his eyes.

The night carried on with stories, games, and music. Yet all I could feel was that pull. Stronger now. Dangerous.

When it was finally over, I slipped away before anyone noticed, heart racing as I hurried back to my room. I shut the door, leaning against it, breathing hard.

But even in the silence, I could still feel him.

Like gravity.

Like fate.

Like something I could never escape, no matter how hard I tried.

Jacob had been right.

I shouldn’t have come.