Did he just get dumped?
Chapter 7
“MR. HAVINGTON, GOODmor—”
“Can you get me a cup of coffee, Lara?”
Kyara’s smile froze on her face.
“Oh, but I alrea—”
“Now, Lara.”
Lara took the cup of coffee from Kyara’s hand and placed it on the desk in front of Lyrius. The handle was angled exactly the way he liked it, which was the part of the morning Kyara had always done herself, because she had memorized the angle in her first month working for him and she was good at it, and she hadjustdone it, and now Lara was the one doing it because Lyrius had asked Lara to, even though the coffee on his desk was the coffee Kyara had brought him.
“Thank you,” he said to Lara while still not looking at her.
The girl he used to want as a girlfriend, but now—
Don’t.
Don’t, don’t, don’t.
Kyara let her hand drop and made herself turn around and walk out of his office, and she only realized she had been holding her breath when she was already halfway to her desk and her chest started hurting from the lack of air.
She breathed in, and she sat down, and she opened her laptop, and she got to work, because that was the only thing she knew how to do right now.
But that was just the beginning.
By eleven, she had a stack of folders that needed his signature, and any other morning she would have walked into his office without thinking about it, but this morning she stood at her desk with the folders pressed against her chest and herfeet refusing to move, and it took her three tries before she finally got herself to the doorway.
“Mr. Havington—”
“Lara.”
Oh wow, it was as if she didn’t even exist for him anymore, with how her boss didn’t even glance up from his screen.
“Whatever Ms. Dunn has there, can you take it from her, please?”
And now he didn’t even want to call her by her name?
The folders shook in her arms a little, but only a little, because she was determined not to let them shake more than that, and Lara was already coming around her own desk to take them with the small apologetic squeeze on Kyara’s elbow that hurt almost more than anything else, because Lara wasn’t supposed to feel sorry for her, Lara was supposed to be the one she helped, not the other way around.
Kyara nodded and went back to her desk.
I’m not going to cry. I’m not!
By four, she had stopped looking up every time his office door opened, because every time his office door opened he was either walking out without looking at her or walking back in without looking at her, and her neck was getting sore from snapping toward the door and then snapping away again like she hadn’t been looking in the first place.
So she stopped looking.
And of course, that was when he passed her desk on his way to the elevators and she felt him pass her, shefelthim, the air shifted the way it always did when he walked by, and she made the mistake of glancing up at the very last second.
He was already past her.
She caught the back of his shoulder, the line of his jacket, the small movement of his hand reaching to press the elevator button—and then the doors slid open, and he stepped in, and...
In the past, he would’ve met her gaze.
