Chapter 327: He was our friend
Julian nodded slowly. He understood. Some doors, once closed, stay closed not because of anger, but because opening them again would let in more than just one person.
"You’re right," he said quietly.
Then, almost without meaning to, he smiled. A small, private smile, the kind people wear when they are thinking of something good in the middle of something hard.
"You know why I fell in love with you?" he asked. "This crazy, beautiful woman?"
He lifted her hand from her lap. Slowly. Gently. He kissed the back of it, his lips warm against her skin, his eyes only half on the road now.
"My beautiful face," Amara said, teasing, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth despite everything.
"Well, yeah. That too." Julian laughed softly. "But it’s your heart, Amara. It’s the purest thing I’ve ever known. The kindest. In this whole world full of wicked people, somehow, you stayed soft."
He said it like a prayer. Quiet. Certain. The kind of thing a man says only once, and means every single time after.
Amara smiled. And for a moment, the image of Sebastian on the footpath small, struggling, carrying his folder of papers, faded into the orange light behind them.
Sebastian walked along the footpath with the folder pressed against his chest, the way a man holds something when he is afraid it might fall and break.
The papers inside were his résumé. Copies of it. He had printed them at the small shop near the bus stop, the one that charged extra because the machine was old and slow. He had counted the coins for it twice before paying.
He had promised Seren. That was the only thought keeping his feet moving. I will find work. I will fix this. He had said it to her quietly one night, the kind of promise a father makes when he has nothing else to give his daughter except words.
But the job listings did not care about promises.
Every role he looked at wanted someone with five years of experience in something he had never done. Entry level, they called it. Entry level, but they wanted a person who already knew everything. He was over-qualified for nothing and under-qualified for everything. That was the strange, cruel math of starting over.
He kept walking.
A man passed him on the footpath, going the other direction. The man wore a suit that fit him the way a good suit should close at the shoulders, sharp at the cuff. A watch caught the evening light and threw a small flash of gold across the pavement.
Sebastian’s steps slowed.
He knew that brand of watch. He used to own one. Not just one, three. He used to choose which one to wear the way other men chose which tie matched their mood.
He looked down at himself now. At the shirt with the collar gone soft from too much washing. At the shoes that no longer shone, no matter how long he wiped them with a cloth at night.
Something in his chest folded inward, small and quiet, like paper being creased.
He used to wear the finest of everything. The latest of everything. There was a time his name was not whispered, it was printed. On billboards along the highway.
On the glossy covers of magazines that sat on tables in waiting rooms, the kind people flipped through while pretending not to stare at his face beside the headline.
Now he could not afford to buy that same magazine.
He stood there a moment too long, watching the man in the suit grow smaller down the road, and the shame crept up his neck the way heat does. Not loud. Not sudden. Just steady, the way shame usually arrives, settling in before you even notice it has come to stay.
He thought of the man he used to be before all of it, and the man he had become after, and how strange it was that both of them were wearing his name and yet felt like two different people entirely.
Falling from grace to grass, his father used to call it, back when he still warned him about pride. He had laughed at him then.
He was not laughing now.
"Sebastian Creed."
The voice came from behind him, slow and amused, the kind of voice that already knew the answer before it asked the question.
Sebastian turned.
King stood a few feet away, hands in the pockets of a coat that looked like it had never once touched a clearance rack. Beside him stood Demian, a little quieter, a little more careful in how he held himself the way a man stands when he has learned that not every room needs to be entered loudly.
Sebastian remembered them both. For years, before everything, the three of them had tight buddies late nights, big rooms, bigger talk. He remembered, too, that Demian had walked away from Creed Tech and King eventually, taken a risk on his own, started something with just his name and his nerve.
That risk had clearly paid off. It showed in the quiet confidence on Demian’s face, the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself.
King’s smile came slow, curling up one side of his mouth like smoke finding its way out of a cracked window.
"Well, well," King said, looking Sebastian up and down without hurrying, taking his time over every detail the folder, the shoes, the collar. "See who we have here."
King let the silence stretch.
He was good at that. He had always been good at that at letting a moment sit just long enough to become uncomfortable, just long enough for the other person to feel the weight of it pressing down on their shoulders.
It was a skill he had sharpened over the years, the way some men sharpen knives, slowly and with great care, because they know the day will come when they will need it.
That day, it seemed, had arrived.
"You were so high and mighty back then," King said. His voice was easy, unhurried, the voice of a man who has nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there.
He tilted his head slightly, studying Sebastian the way a person studies something they once thought was valuable and have since decided is not. "So full of yourself. So untouchable."
He paused.
"You felt betrayed when I went after Elara." The name came out slow, wrapped in something close to amusement. "Your precious Elara. The woman you nearly burned your whole life down for." King shook his head, a small motion, almost gentle, as if he felt sorry for how foolish it all was. "She wasn’t even worth it, Seb. She was never worth it. But you, you made her the reason to shut every door. My door included."
Sebastian said nothing.
His jaw was tight. His hand around the folder had tightened too, the cardboard edge pressing into his palm, and he was glad for the small pain of it because it gave him something else to feel other than what King’s words were stirring up in the deep, quiet places inside him.
"And look at you now." King’s eyes moved slowly, taking their time, starting at the soft collar of Sebastian’s shirt, traveling down to the shoes that no longer held their shine, no matter what Sebastian did to them at night with a cloth and whatever hope he had left.
"Standing on a public footpath with a folder of papers. What is that, resumes? In a plastic folder?" He almost laughed, caught himself, then let it out anyway. "Tell me, Sebastian. Who exactly is going to hire you?"
The question hung in the evening air.
It was not really a question. Both of them knew it was not a question. It was a verdict, dressed up in the clothing of curiosity.
King was not finished.
"Sebastian Creed." He said the name the way a man reads an old headline that no longer means anything. Slow, slightly bored, finding private entertainment in the reading of it. "The mighty CEO. The man whose name was on buildings." He clicked his tongue softly. "Looking for a job."
King laughed this time. A full, unhurried laugh.
It was the kind of laugh that had teeth in it.
Demian did not laugh. He stood just half a step behind King, his hands loose at his sides, his face carrying the careful expression of a man who had been in too many rooms with King to be surprised by him anymore but had also learned that surprise and discomfort were two very different things. He was not surprised. He was uncomfortable.
"Stop it, King." His voice came out quiet. Not loud, not sharp, just steady, the way a hand is placed firmly on a table when a conversation has gone far enough. "Stop."
King glanced at him sideways. A lazy glance. The glance of a man who has heard this particular objection before and has already decided what he thinks of it.
"He was our friend," Demian said. He looked at Sebastian when he said it, not at King. "At least he was mine."