A Twist Of Fate [3]

Chapter 1

Why was this happening? How could this possibly be happening to me right now? How could he be here? This was the worst possible thing that could happen. Cal and I had only just gotten back to a good place and now it was destined to be destroyed; there was no way that having Felix in our lives would do anything other than ruin us.

As the words left his mouth, they seemed to echo around the room. There was nothing I could say or do; I simply stood there frozen. I could see everybody else walking around and continuing with their conversation but the sounds had seemed to fade out as all of my attention was focused on one person. It couldn't possibly be real. How could things go back to perfect after the hard time I'd had lately and suddenly be snatched away again. Why would the universe bring this guy right into my personal life? Bad karma, that's all it could be. How I was going to resolve this; I had no fucking idea.

'You okay?' The sound of Cal's voice made me blink out of my stunned daze and I quickly shook it off, forcing on a smile and nodding to him.

'Yeah,' I replied, turning back to Felix, who still adorned a hint of an amused smirk on his face. 'Hi, Felix.'

With those two words spoken, that was it; I had made a choice. I knew Felix already. Felix was the guy I had kissed at the club whilst Cal and I were going through a hard time. Of course, Cal knew about the kiss, he just didn't know who the guy was and why would he? Felix was a random guy and I had no need to go into detail about that. Cal had seen us together in Club Luna one night but he had not seen Felix's face, yet now I wished that he had. Maybe if he'd seen him, he would have recognised Felix the second he came looking for a job at the shop and he would have told him to go fuck himself and I wouldn't be stuck in this situation.

Now that Felix was working here at Lakey Ink, the choice had been there; tell Cal immediately who Felix was or go along with it and pretend I didn't know him. Clearly, I had jumped right into making the decision to go along with just meeting him for the first time and landed myself in another lie.

'You should see some of Felix's work, Bethan,' Cal said, ushering me over to the work station. 'He's one of the best artists I've seen.'

A loud cough came from behind us where we turned to see Tori raising her brow at Cal.

'I said one of the best artists,' Cal chuckled.

Tori smirked and let out a loud laugh. 'I'm kidding; you're right though, Felix is awesome.'

'That's nice,' I murmured, nodding slowly.

'You sure you're okay?' Cal asked. 'You've gone quiet.'

'Honestly, I'm fine,' I said, smiling at him calmly.

'Okay, time for a smoke,' Charlie said, jumping to his feet.

'I'll join you,' Tori said, getting up. 'Cal?'

'Sure,' Cal said, before glancing at me. 'Oh well, I did just have one actually.'

'No, go, it's okay,' I said, laughing softly. 'I don't mind.'

'Thanks,' Cal said, squeezing my arm before following them out.

As Cal left the room, Felix moved from the sofa to his work station, sitting down casually and picking up his pencil, resuming his work.

'You don't smoke?' I asked him, feeling the need for us to talk now and figure out what we were going to do before the rest got back.

'Yeah but I'm good,' he mumbled, not looking at me.

'Felix,' I said, as he lifted his head to look at me. 'You can't be here.'

'Excuse me?' he asked.

'You can't work here, Felix,' I told him.