Chapter 314: Just Jealous

"You poured coffee on him?"

Odelia had stopped halfway through serving, the spoon suspended over the dish, staring across the table with her mouth open.

"Not on purpose." Jessica reached for the water. "Obviously not on purpose. Who wakes up in the morning and thinks, right, today I’m going to redecorate the Chairman?"

Odelia’s eyes went wide. "Wait, wait, wait. How are you saying this without tears? Do you still have your job?"

"Of course," Jessica said with a snort.

Over by the sink, Sebastian was crouched down with his head half under the cupboard, wrestling with a pipe that had been dripping since the day they moved in. He had turned up with a toolbox, refused all offers of help, and was now making a series of small noises at the plumbing.

"That’s not even the mad part," Jessica said.

Odelia sat down. "There’s a mad part?"

"There’s a very mad part."

"Go on."

"He hugged me."

The spoon came down on the table with a clatter. "He what?"

"Hugged me." Jessica was already laughing at her own story. "He was holding on like I was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship and announced that he would never let me go."

Odelia was making a noise somewhere between horror and glee. "What did you do?"

"I pushed him off, obviously." Jessica shook her head, grinning. "And he called me Jessica."

Neither of them noticed that Sebastian had stopped moving entirely. His hand was still on the pipe, and it had stopped turning.

Odelia’s brows pulled together.

"Hang on." She sat forward. "Jessica? That’s the same name. That’s the name that man was shouting at the shopping centre. The one you ran from."

Jessica pointed her fork at her. "Yes. Same man. Turns out I was indeed the person he was after."

"But why on earth would he think you’re his fiancée?"

The cupboard door shut, harder than it needed to. Sebastian came into the living area wiping his hands on a tea towel, and there was nothing funny in his face at all.

"That isn’t funny at all."

Both women looked at him.

"It’s not right, and it’s not funny," he repeated, walking toward the table. "That’s a stalker, a deranged one. He runs a company, so everyone pretends his behaviour is acceptable. Rich people always get away with things." He tossed the cloth aside. "But the next time he touches you inappropriately, I want you to quit that job immediately."

Jessica blinked. "He didn’t touch me inappropriately, Seb. He hugged me. It was weird, but it wasn’t—"

"He put his hands on you in front of all those people," Sebastian cut in. "You don’t know him. You didn’t ask to be touched. He made a spectacle of you in your workplace, and you’re defending him?"

"I’m not defending him. I’m saying he’s clearly not well." Jessica set down her fork, feeling the familiar frustration rising in her chest. "The man lost someone he loved, and apparently he hasn’t recovered. I’m not going to quit my job because he made a mistake."

Sebastian’s jaw tightened. "A mistake? He didn’t trip and accidentally fall into your arms. He deliberately grabbed you."

"I know." Jessica’s voice had gone quiet. "But here’s the thing, Seb. I don’t have the luxury of quitting jobs whenever things get uncomfortable. Some of us need to work for a living."

The words hung in the air, and Jessica regretted them immediately, but she didn’t take them back.

"Besides," she added, trying to soften the blow, "I actually feel a bit sorry for him. Losing someone like that, not being able to move on. The rumours say his fiancée had ginger hair. Maybe that’s why he saw me and just ... lost himself for a moment. Grief does strange things to people."

Odelia nodded slowly, her expression thoughtful. "That’s true. If the woman he loved had hair like yours, and then he saw you... maybe in his mind, it was like seeing a ghost."

"Exactly." Jessica picked her fork back up. "So I’m not going to treat him like some kind of monster."

Sebastian, who had not moved from his spot near the table, let out a sharp breath.

"That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter why he did it. The point is that he believes you are someone you’re not, and that makes him dangerous. A man who sees his dead lover in a stranger is not a man you want to be alone in a room with."

"Aren’t you being a little dramatic?" Odelia asked lightly.

Sebastian ignored her. "You’ve only been at this job for a few days, Sid, and you’ve already had more problems than you had in three years at The Copper Lantern. Security breaches, bizarre encounters with the chairman, women threatening you in corridors." He ticked them off on his fingers. "This is not normal. This is not what a job should be. I think it’s a sign that you should leave."

Jessica and Odelia exchanged subtle glances, but neither of them said anything.

"I know you’re worried about me," Jessica said carefully, "and I appreciate that. But I need the money. I like having my own job, my own income, my own life. I only just moved to Aethelwulf, and I’m not going to give up everything just like that."

Sebastian’s expression darkened. "I’m only looking out for you," he said. "Why do you always have to be so fucking stubborn?"

"Because I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions." Jessica met his eyes squarely. "I’m not quitting my job because some rich man thinks I’m his missing girlfriend."

The silence that followed was awful.

Sebastian simply stared at her, his eyes unreadable. Jessica could not hold his gaze, so she looked down at the food on her plate, pushing her fork through the rice without interest. She could feel the anger coming off him in waves, and it made something twist in her stomach.

Odelia, sensing the temperature in the room, cleared her throat. "Alright, can we all just—"

Sebastian sighed heavily.

"What if he’s right?" Odelia blurted.

Jessica’s head snapped up. "Who?"

"Your boss. Mr Mondragon. What if he’s right?" Odelia repeated, more slowly this time. "You don’t remember anything from before three years ago, Sid. Nothing at all. What if you are her? What if you’re this Jessica woman?"

Sebastian’s voice came out hard and tight. "She is not her."

"I’m not saying she is," Odelia said quickly, holding up her hands. "I’m just saying we don’t know. That’s all. We don’t know, and it’s worth asking the question."

Sebastian’s face had gone very pale, but there was something else there, too. Something hot and wild that neither woman could name.

"People look alike all the time. Especially from a distance. Sid has a life. You have a life," he said, turning to Jessica with sudden intensity. "You are Sidonie Hart. You have records. Documents. A history. A birth certificate. Some man’s grief doesn’t erase any of that."

"Okay," Jessica said, taken aback. "I wasn’t arguing with you. I’m just saying—"

"No, you’re listening to her." Sebastian jerked his head toward Odelia. "You’re letting her put ridiculous ideas in your head. You were in an accident. You came here from Orange Grove. I’ve told you this a hundred times."

"Actually," Odelia interjected quietly, "you brought her to Orange Grove. Three years ago. And nobody in Orange Grove had ever seen her before that."

Sebastian’s nostrils flared. "Nobody knew her in Orange Grove because she was born and raised in Creek Town," Sebastian said.

"She was my childhood friend," he continued, his voice low and shaking. "When her parents died, there was no one else to look after her. I brought her to Orange Grove because she needed somewhere safe to heal. Should I have left her?"

"That’s not what I—" Odelia started.

"You know what?" He picked up the tea towel, then dropped it on the table. "I can’t stand here and have this conversation. I can’t."

His eyes went to Jessica, and there was something wounded in them, something that made her chest ache.

"You don’t believe me? Fine." He was already reaching for his jacket. "Go on, then. Go and play the Chairman’s girlfriend. And when he finally comes back to his senses and works out you’re not the one he’s been going mad over, he’ll spit you straight out, and you can come and tell me all about it."

Jessica’s mouth fell open. "Seb, that’s not—I didn’t mean—I never said I didn’t believe you. That’s not—"

"Make sure you take the medicine for your anxiety," he grunted.

Then, the door slammed hard enough to rattle the window. Jessica and Odelia sat very still, staring at the space where he had been.

Jessica blinked twice. "What just happened?"

Odelia let out a long, slow breath. "I think," she said carefully, "that Sebastian just got jealous."

***

Sebastian did not go towards the station.

His feet carried him through the streets of Aethelwulf with no particular destination, his jaw set, his hands buried deep in his pockets. The city around him blurred into noise and fading light, but he saw none of it.

The anger was a living thing inside him, pushing against his ribs, demanding release. He walked faster. Then faster still. His breath came in short, sharp bursts, and the heat in his chest had nothing to do with the evening air.

By the time he reached the outskirts of the city, he was running. Trees rose around him, tall and silent.

He stopped at the edge of the woods, pulled his shirt over his head, dropped his clothes at the base of a tree, and let it come.

The change tore through him hard and fast and ugly, bones shifting beneath his skin, fur sprouted through the enormous black shape rising out of the dark where the man had been.

He hit the woods at a full run and did not stop.