"What are you smiling about?"

I looked at Robert unbelievably. Just minutes ago, his frustration matched mine. Now, it was deflated. Gone without a trace.

"Your brother," Robert chuckled and shook his head.

Suddenly, it was as plain as day to me. My smartass brother in another smartass moment had given me and Robert the room to 'work things out'.

Vince and Robert used to share a room in their first year of college. 'A lager', I believed, was their code word for a few hours one could have the room for himself when he brought a girl over. Mostly, it was my brother who had taken advantage of that system. Robert's college life didn't contain a lot of excitement.

It had been such a long time ago that I almost forgot about it.

"Ugh, I swear to God..."

I rolled my eyes before realizing Robert had been staring at me. The non-distance between us became much more noticeable after my brother had left.

"Got to catch up with Vince. I need him to pay for my dinner..." I grumbled an excuse and backed away from Robert, but he grabbed my wrist.

"Don't go."

The quiet, thickened air around us got disrupted as if someone had thrown a rock into a foggy swamp. It reminded me of when Vince interrupted Robert back at Meg's place. I couldn't explain it, but I knew I had to get out of this room.

"I'm starving," I sighed.

My head was as empty as my stomach. I couldn't deal with Robert and the whole storm of emotions that he created right now.

"Stay with me for a moment... Then, I'll buy you dinner."

I could hear his low chuckle without looking at him. Robert pulled me in his arms and rested his head on top of mine, just like in the old days.

The old days were nice, but none of us lived there anymore.

"Why are you doing this, Robert?"

"Doing what?"

"This. The touchy-feely. Affection. We're not together anymore, remember?" I looked up at him. "First, you couldn't wait to get rid of me, then you reappeared, but we barely acknowledged each other, and I'm totally fine with that. Now, this? I don't understand. What do you want from me? What do you really want?"

"Can't you tell?" Robert sighed.

No, I definitely couldn't. Nothing made sense, but his lips crashed down before I could form another word.

He tasted good, like mint and the fizzy lemon water we had in the hotel's lobby earlier. Maybe, just a little better.

"I love you, Lou," he whispered between breaths. "I've never stopped."

My head swayed with his confession as Robert pressed me against the door. I felt the wooden surface behind my back and the firmness of his body in front of me. My hands grabbed onto his shirt. My eyes opened wide.

"Liar," I exhaled shakingly as his lips landed on the side of my neck.

Robert lifted his head. He looked like someone who had just woken up from a dream.

"I'm not lying," he traced his thumb on my lower lip. "The only time I have lied to you was seven years ago when I said you were not what I wanted... As if you aren't the only thing I have ever wanted since I was sixteen."

Our relationship didn't officially start until after I graduated from college, but the mutual attraction had always been there since day one.

I remembered it, the first time that I saw him. A sixteen-year-old boy sat in the shadow of a big tree, staring at the snow-top mountains. Not knowing his circumstance, I had only noticed how sad and unkempt he'd looked. His arms had been covered in bruises and old scars. His clothes had been old, but above all that, his eyes had spoken to me before he'd even opened his mouth.

Those big, beautiful brown eyes.

The very same ones that were in front of me right now.

I wished the room was darker, but it was very bright. The yellow light shone directly above us like a small sun, making every little detail on our faces extremely vivid. Every thought. Every emotion. There was no hiding.

Robert smiled at me. I wanted to cry, but there was no tear coming. A few strands of hair fell down his forehead, calling my hand. His long eyelashes fluttered like butterflies when I touched them before they lowered, hiding those eyes that I loved so much away.

"General Fernando Castillon is my father. He abandoned me and my mom when I was a baby, " Robert spoke out of nowhere.

"Wait, what?" I stopped mid-action. My brain couldn't process what he had just said.

"Yes," Robert opened his eyes but looked down at the space between us. "During my second year at QL, a few months before...our breakup, he came to tell me that. At the time, my team had just discovered a new element called Zedlum, or Element Z as we called it. We believed it could have the potential to replace clocyn someday. It was a huge deal. Castillon had invested majorly in it. He sponsored all the testing and paid all the costs with one condition that he would get sole control of it, but of course, when the news broke, everyone wanted a piece. His competitors included. They would literally kill for it. The accident at the chemical plant was not really an accident."

"What do you mean?"

"My company's CEO wanted to play both sides in the beginning, but as he went against his promises and left one party out in the cold, they tried to sabotage our research. They must have wanted to steal some samples too, but unlucky for the men who broke into the lab, and for me, Element Z is something very new and unpredictable. The men must have not handled it correctly. Some leaked and killed them. By the time I got there, the fume was in the air. It was not contained, but, for some reason, the environmental control screen didn't detect it. It must have been malfunctioned or tampered with... Either way, it could've been worse. Much worse."

I remembered it vividly. Robert had been gone all night, and in the morning, I had received a call from the hospital. There had been a chemical spill. The doctors had been able to save his eyes, but they had been severely damaged.

"I'm so sorry, Robert... I didn't know," I muttered.

"Not your fault," Robert looked at me. "After that incident, my company raised the security measures, but they didn't think of protecting our team. We were harassed. Some people were assaulted or went missing. A lot quit. I heard some of my coworkers even got into mysterious 'accidents' after they left the company. It was such a big issue back then, and all these things happened in such a short period of time. Castillon guaranteed that nothing would happen to me, but I couldn't trust him one hundred percent. I was always out of my mind with fear and stress. The car accident you got into was the last straw."

"It was just an accident. some drunk idiot ran into me..."

"I know now, but it didn't look like that to me back then. I just thought if, God forbid, something happened to you because of me..."

Robert didn't finish the sentence. I felt dizzy with the information he had dumped on me. What it all meant.

"Then why did you continue working for QL? You could've quit! We could've moved away..."

"Castillon convinced me that it was only temporary," Robert shook his head. "I would continue working until they brought in new people. It would be safer if you didn't know the details and I agreed with him. My head was not right, Lou. I believed that with most of my team gone, Element Z was my responsibility. I could find the right formula, make it better, safer to use... I loved my job. At least, the purer side of it. When I walked into the lab, I forgot about everything else. So after our breakup, it was just what I needed."