It was almost three A.M. when I drug my ass out of Donovan’s car. There was nothing more I could do from the club, which was more frustrating than anything else. I was almost tempted to give up on being quiet in my search. My words stopped me and reminded me how important it was to keep this secret. What if by searching him out I caused him to say that? To push me away? If I searched quietly, maybe they wouldn’t be a rejection. Maybe it would be him asking for me on the phone, or answering a question. Maybe I interrupt him before he can say more.
I’d considered pulling in the security and staff - from the man’s uniform he was part of the staff anyway - but I couldn’t do that without them knowing why. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Fuck Lyssa and her stupid story. I would kill her if she cost me my soulmate.
Thankfully the light in father’s study was still on.
“Tyr!” Dad greeted as he saw me. “Unusual for you to stay out this late. Someone catch your eye?”
“You could say that,” I admitted, collapsing into an easy chair that had seen better days. It was my favorite, though, so it would stay where it was. “I think I found my soulmate.”
“She said your words?” Dad asked, standing, his face bright with excitement. “Where is she?”
I felt myself collapse inwards, slumping in the chair like gravity had just doubled. “He didn’t say anything,” I answered in a whisper. “And he is gone.”
Confusion replaced the eager puppy look father had gained. I didn’t know how else to explain the situation. “Okay, maybe we should start with what happened,” Dad tried.
I nodded. “It was probably around 11 or 12 when it happened. I’d only had two drinks, I think, and I was just a little tipsy. I certainly wasn’t drunk. I may have been teasing a few of the other people there, when one of the staff bumped into me. At least, I think it was one of the staff - his clothes looked pretty close to the uniform. And I wasn’t really thinking. I kept him from toppling over and kept up the flirting. The words were, well, pretty unique.”
Dad had gotten closer, drifting to the other chair on this side of his desk so the bulky furniture wasn’t between us. I really wanted a cup of coffee to kick start my brain again, because the weight of the night was starting to make my head hurt and thinking slow. The long hours awake were finally creeping up on me, I guess.
“What happened next?”
I closed my eyes to picture the moment. Startled eyes frantically jumping from me to the room, hair out of place as if he’d been brushing it aside, mouth slightly open and soft. “I don’t know if it was my words or who I was or what. He didn’t say anything, but his hands went flying and I saw - I saw his wrist and caught a glimpse of his words. He wasn’t trying to hide them. I grabbed his hands to look closer and double check, and there they were. Clear as day. The exact words I’d said.”
“He must have said something then, when he knew you knew?”
I shook my head. “I thought when I met him I’d remember everything clearly, picture-perfect. He’s my soulmate, right? I should remember it. But I was so shocked I wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t say anything, not a word. And then he was gone. Like I blinked and he disappeared.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean gone. Just took off. One minute he was there and the next I was trying to chase him through the crowds. And he disappeared in them.” I hiccuped out a small breath as something caught in my chest. “I guess I know now why I don’t have any words. He - whoever he is - just doesn’t want to even see me. Trevor, Donovan, and I all searched. All I’ve got is maybe a name. He must hate me a lot to just leave.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Dad scolded. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation. You’re just too tired to think straight.”
My face felt dull and numb. My match hadn’t even bothered to reject me. What reason could he have? “There really isn’t a good way to interpret what happened. He left.”
“Yes, he did. And you are going to go to bed and get some sleep while I call up the club and ask to review the security footage tomorrow. I’ll check in with the staff and see if anything happened. Don’t worry, I won’t let them know what he is. I’ll just say that he bumped into you last night and he looked like he wasn’t well so we’d just like to follow up and make sure everything is okay. How’s that?”
I focused on breathing for a moment, since I think I forgot how after chasing the silent wonder through the club. If it was possible to sink any further into the chair I would have. “I do want to make sure he’s okay. And that tonight - no, last night - didn’t put any sort of target on him. I know people were watching me, but since most of them work for us that could have been anything. Any news on -?”
Dad shook his head. “It looks like that might be distraction. The Digger’s crew isn’t usually that showy, so I’m wondering if there might be a rat somewhere - maybe even Lyssa again. IT came back and said it will be at least three months to get a project design in place for the PR nightmare. And that’s just the design. They won’t know how long it will take to build until we get past that, but there’s too many departments with impact to even consider launching before the year is up.”
“You know these things move at a snail’s pace for good reason,” I said tiredly. “The last time you tried to rush through a development we spent twice as much cleaning up data errors, and three times as long finding what was causing them.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” was the pout-filled reply.
“No, but it does mean you shouldn’t push.”
Dad reluctantly agreed. “Only when I need to. Like now. You were going to go to bed, weren’t you?”
“Getting up is too much effort,” I yawned.
“If you sleep in the chair you’ll be sore.”
“Fine, fine.” With great effort, I pulled myself out of the chair and stumbled up to bed. My body felt heavy as I changed clothes and brushed my teeth, but when I laid down my mind just wouldn’t stop thinking about that brief encounter and the way my match had just disappeared. I wasn’t horrible, and there were benefits to being my match. I’m rich. I have a small family. I work at a stable company and have a stable job that doesn’t require a ton of business trips or constant on-call hours. I’m not usually a workaholic, and I never yell at employees - or anyone. Was it because I’m male? Same-sex matches aren’t rare, but there were still some backgrounds which weren’t fond of the matches or considered them purely platonic. It would be odd to find someone like that around here, I think, but not impossible. Even Dad assumed my match was female, so could it have been a bad assumption?
I rolled over and tried to shut my brain down long enough to sleep. I couldn’t know until I found my match, and I wouldn’t find my match until I slept, so I needed to stop thinking.
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