Page 117 of The Moon & His Tides

“I should go say––” I started to excuse myself to my sister.

But then I noticed the man striding through the tables to meet her.

He was tall and thickly built like a retired linebacker but elegant in his three-piece suit with a head of thick silver hair.

Tate Richardson.

The man Savannah had lunch with and kissed too intimately on the cheek.

A kiss like a love note.

And here he was, stalking across the restaurant to claim her, which he did with a proprietary hand on her chin to tip her face for his kiss.

Savannah reached a hand up to hold her to him.

And a massive fucking diamond ring winked at me under the thousand lights of the chandeliers in the restaurant.

A ring that I knew wasnother old engagement ring from Adam.

That ring had been understated and refined, not too big but absolutely beautiful.

This had to be five carats, an enormous rock that called attention to it like a beacon.

And it had mine completely.

I might have made a sound or maybe the reverberation of my shock could be felt across the entire restaurant because when Savannah pulled away from the kiss, her gaze snagged on mine.

I watched as expressions flipped like a stop-motion film across her features: shock, joy, hesitancy, fear, and obstinacy.

We stared at each other across a space cluttered with fashionable diners and clanking ceramics for much too long for propriety, but neither of us moved.

I didn’t breathe and I wasn’t sure I blinked.

Because there she was like an apparition from my dreams, but she wasn’t there for me.

She wasn’t even there for Adam.

She was with a new man.

Engagedto a new man.

Without a word, without an explanation, she had moved on from us both.

What was left of the hope I’d harboured those long months expelled from my body in a gusty sigh as she wrenched her gaze away from me and sat down in the chair her fiancé held out for her.

He sat down across from her, reached for her hand, and she gave it to him with a smile.

She didn’t look at me again.

“Sebastian,” Cosima called, reaching for my own numb hand. “What’s happened?”

How was I supposed to share the dismantling of my entire universe with her?

How was I supposed to explain that I’d lost my dream and, in doing so, had lost the ability to be a dreamer myself?

I stared down at the watch I wore every single day that she and Adam had given me and woodenly took it off my wrist.

“Excuse me,” I said to a passing server. “Could you please give this to the woman sitting at the table near the back with her fiancé? She’ll know what it means.”

He looked unsurprised by my request, but I didn’t watch him deliver it. Instead, I left a handful of bills on the table and left mid-meal to take my sister to a different restaurant for dessert.

She didn’t complain.

But then, she had her own heartbreak in her eyes, so I thought she understood.

The End For Now.