she hadn’t expected to see Seb again. At least, not like this. Certainly not dressed like a builder, proudly showing off the elderly, crumbling building next door.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. After shock, her immediate reaction on seeing Seb had been joy—maybe a Pavlovian reaction to seeing her once-so-close childhood friend. But now she wasn’t so sure. She felt confused. And cautious, too. His apology, his earnestness... It was such a contrast to what she’d believed to be her last ever interaction with Seb Fyfe.
Mila surveyed the dilapidated space. It was the exact external dimensions of her own place, and it was interesting to see how her shop would look without necessities like a staircase or—well, the entire first floor. The walls had been stripped of plaster, leaving bare brick, and there was absolutely no lighting. Now, at dusk, little light pushed through the dirty, cracked shop windows and the open doorway behind her.
Basically—it was a big, dark, empty, filthy room.
‘Well,’ she began, ‘I may need to hear a bit more of your plans before I can be appropriately impressed.’
Seb’s lips quirked upwards. God, it was so weird, seeing her old friend dressed like this. He’d always had lovely shoulders, but now they were muscled. And, yes, of course he’d always been unavoidably handsome. But more in a lean, very slightly geeky way—befitting his career in IT consulting and her memories of him tinkering with hard drives and other computer paraphernalia.
Now he looked like a man. A proper, grown-up man—not an oversized version of the teenage Seb she remembered. And not even one per cent geek.
Seb had always been self-assured, always had that innate confidence—probably partly because he had enough family money behind him to know it was nearly impossible for him to fail in anything—but mainly, Mila felt, because that was the kind of guy he was. But now there was something more. Something beyond the confidence she recognised. An...ease.
And it was an ease he had now, in his tradesman’s outfit, that she hadn’t even realised he’d lacked in a five-thousand-dollar suit.
‘Fair enough. There’s not a lot to see just yet.’ He pointed to the far wall, where a large poster-sized plan was taped to the bricks. ‘The details are there, but really it’s nothing too exciting. It’ll be fitted out for a fashion retailer I’ve got lined up—a good fit for the other shops in the terrace.’
‘Fashion? So this isn’t some new obscure location for Fyfe Technology?’
That was about as far as Mila had got in trying to work out what this was all about. A trendy suburban location for a multinational company with offices across Europe, the US and Australia and an office already in the Perth CBD? It didn’t actually make any sense. But then, she was still trying to process Seb’s new shoulders...
Another shake of her head—mentally, this time.
‘I sold Fyfe,’ Seb said simply.
It was so nonchalantly delivered that it took Mila a long moment to comprehend what he’d just told her.
‘Pardon me?’
He watched her steadily. ‘It was a difficult decision. Dad wasn’t happy at first—I mean, in many ways it was still his company, even though he’s been retired for years. But eventually he understood where I was coming from. Why I needed to do this.’
Again his arms spread out to take in the building site.
‘And this is...?’
Seb shrugged. ‘To do what you do. Follow my dreams without just sliding down my family’s mountain of money.’
Mila twisted her fingers together, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think anyone should ever use me as a good example for anything.’
‘Why not?’ Seb said. ‘You’re doing exactly what you want to do—earning your own income and treading your own path. What’s not great about that?’
Mila laughed. ‘You’re skipping the bit where I dropped out of two different universities, at least four different vocational courses, and completely ignored the advice of basically everyone who cares about me.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, with a truly gorgeous smile. ‘And how awesome is that?’
Mila ran her hands through her hair. Yes, she was proud of what she’d achieved, and proud that she lived completely independently of her frankly obscene trust fund, but that was her... Seb was... Seb wasn’t like that. Seb had taken his family’s already successful business and blown it out of the water. He’d expanded Fyfe throughout Europe, stayed one step ahead of new technologies and made a multi-million-dollar empire a multi-billion-dollar one.
‘I’m confused,’ Mila said. ‘Steph always told me how much you loved your work. How excited you were about the company’s expansion, about—’
‘How I loved my work more than my wife?’ he said.
The sudden horrible, harsh words hung in the air between them.
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘She never said that.’
‘Not to you,’ Seb said.
Mila didn’t know what to do with what he’d said. She didn’t know what to do with any of this. It was all so unexpected, and it had been so long.
This Seb before her was such an odd combination of the boy she’d thought she’d known and this man she barely recognised. The Seb she’d known would never have sold his father’s company. But then, the Steph and Seb she’d known had been deliriously happily married. The Steph she’d known would never have taken drugs.
Emotion hung in the air between them.
‘What’s going on here, Seb?’ Mila said, suddenly frustrated. She’d never thought she’d see or hear from Seb again. And now here he was, with unexpected apologies and painful memories. ‘Because I don’t for a minute believe that your new dream just coincidentally started with the shop next door to mine.’
A small but humourless smile. Then Seb rubbed his forehead. ‘Okay—here’s the deal. I sold the company, donated a big chunk of the proceeds to addiction-related charities and then put some aside for the children I have no intention of having—that would require a wife—but my lawyer still insisted I provide for. Then I gave myself a relatively modest loan—’ he named an amount that would buy the row of shops many several times over ‘—which I will pay back once my new venture takes off. And the new venture is a building company. I’ve started with smaller developments, like this one, although already I’m starting on bigger projects: think entire apartment blocks, maybe office towers one day.’
‘So your dream wasn’t to play with computers all day but to build skyscrapers?’
Seb shook his head. ‘No, my dream was to do exactly what my dad did, but better. Which was the problem. I’ve spent my whole life deliberately walking in my father’s footsteps. I’ve finally realised that I’m more than that. That I can build a company from the ground up myself.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘When my acquisitions team recommended I buy this place I didn’t know it was next to your shop,’ he said. ‘But obviously it came up in the research. I should’ve known, really—I remember the photos you sent through to us when you first bought
