Chapter 6 #3
Sebastian glanced around the cabin, and I wondered if he was comparing it to his.
My band and I kept things pretty spartan in any sort of green room/backstage space we happened to find ourselves in.
We didn’t like to leave a mess behind for the venue staff, and the less stuff we carted in, the less we had to tidy up later.
I was fairly certain that Sebastian’s current green room probably looked like a glittery, glamorous tornado had hit it. Multiple times.
“So did you just get here, or?” He asked, a cheeky grin growing on his glossed lips. I held back the urge to smack him.
“Nope, I’ve been here a while,” I replied. “Long enough for Myah to find me and grill me on our prior indiscretions.”
Sebastian blanched instantly, despite the perfectly applied make up on his face. I felt kind of bad for being so flippant – his relationship with Myah wasn’t insignificant, even if part of me wished it was. He wanted to marry her, after all.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, that was pretty much my side of the conversation as well,” I sighed as I opened a bottle of water. I nodded in the direction of the water bottles and Sebastian took the cue, snagging one before joining me on the creaking sofa.
“I’m sorry,” he said, eyes fixed firmly on his designer boots. “She shouldn’t have done that…shouldn’t have roped you in to this.”
“Roped me in to what? Sebastian, did you tell her about us? ”
Part of me didn’t want to know the answer.
He’d promised me – multiple times – that he’d never tell anyone.
I understood why he told his mom, even though my first reaction to finding that out had been rooted in anger.
I only told my band mates because they needed to know why I was so against going on tour with Burning Bright, and after years of spending nearly every single day together, they knew me well enough to know there’d been a pretty good reason, beyond a petty squabble, that was holding me back from accepting the tour.
“No!” He shook his head, sending his dark curls flying.
“I wouldn’t. I mean, I thought about it, when we first got engaged.
We had the talk, you know, about our past…
entanglements. But I couldn’t do it, Max.
I promised you I wouldn’t. I only told my mom because I felt like I had no one else to talk to. ”
I met his gaze, taking in the way his irises glittered even in the not-great lighting of the room. I believed him. Against all of my instincts, I believed him.
“Well, she knows. I didn’t tell her, but she just knew.
She said…she said you don’t talk about me, when you’re telling stories about that tour, so she figured out that there was something between us that was more than platonic,” I explained, tearing my eyes away from his so I co uld keep my breathing even.
“Oh.”
“I couldn’t lie to her, Sebastian, not when she was sitting right there,” I gestured towards the sofa, where Myah had sat and carefully unravelled a half decade of secrets with no regard for why they’d been kept secret in the first place.
“No, I wouldn’t expect you to,” was the murmured reply. “I suppose I should’ve told her, when you agreed to come on the tour.”
I nodded vaguely. He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t ever gotten close to getting married myself, but I was pretty sure that telling your fiancée that you were traveling all round the world with the man you had a fairly intense affair with was the right thing to do. Honesty is the best policy and all that.
“She asked me if I trust you.”
I wasn’t sure why I told him that. In some ways, it felt like rubbing salt in what was a brand-new wound of his.
But it felt like an important insight into how my conversation with Myah had gone, a clue as to what she’d been thinking when she came to my door demanding answers it wasn’t really my place to give her.
It was like all the air had gone out of the room – the silence that fell over us both was heavy, almost oppressively still.
Sebastian started tapping his elegant fingers against his exposed knees (his skinny jeans were artfully torn) and I watched him for a little while.
He was clearly distracted so it gave me a minute to just look at him.
The tattoos on his arms swirled all the way down to his hands, bleeding onto the delicate skin.
“Do you?”
It was clearly a day for the big old questions that I had no clue how to answer. I opened my mouth to say no pretty much instantly, but I closed it so quick that my teeth clacked together. My first instinct had been to say no, but that wasn’t exactly true.
I let Sebastian spend time with Sara, without me there. Hell, I had even spent some time alone with him. I agreed to go on tour with him, in spite of (I refused to say because of) everything that had happened last time.
I trusted him.
I just didn’t know what that meant. For him or for me.
“Yeah, I do,” I whispered, hoping that maybe if I kept it quiet, he wouldn’t read too much into it.
“That wasn’t your first answer,” he pointed out with a small, knowing smile. “You were going to say no.”
“What if I was?” I asked, rolling my eyes. He’d always known when I wasn’t being entirely truthful. It wasn’t the blessing he seemed to think it was.
“Well, thank you for reconsidering,” he shrugged, the tension across his shoulders melting away. He leaned back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. “Why were you going to say no?”
“You broke my heart, Sebastian. You promised me that you wouldn’t, and you did it anyway.”
A shadow passed across his eyes, a breath freezing in his chest. I could see the hurt flashing across his carefully composed expression and I regretted it straight away. I only had fleeting thoughts of hurting him, really. I never wanted to actually hurt him.
“Yeah, well, I was young and impulsive back then, Max. I know we spent a lot of time drinking those days but surely you remember.”
The moment passed; his cheeky grin was back. I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. I should’ve known that it would take more than a carelessly thrown out confession to shake Sebastian Jacobs .
“You’re not old now, idiot,” I snapped, rolling my eyes again as I leaned back against the couch, my shoulder brushing his. I absolutely did not blush at the unexpected contact.
“You’re just saying that because we’re the same age.”
“I am not.”
“Max, my back hurts when I get up in the morning.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“And my knees!”
I laughed in spite of myself, in spite of him and in spite of the spectacularly shitty afternoon I’d been having until Sebastian had turned up at the trailer.
He started laughing, his undignified, honking laugh that I hadn’t heard in way too long.
If our laughter jostled us just a bit closer together on that shitty little couch, well that was just a coincidence.