38. Sebastian
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SEBASTIAN
T he lads led me into Cabaret Voltaire on Blair Street, only a two-minute walk from our flat.
Upstairs was the café with live music and down in the Vaults was the club.
I felt like I’d been in some weird sluggish daze for the past month.
While I’d attended a few classes, being around this many people after isolating myself was a bit disconcerting.
Between my nerves at seeing Lily again and this, I was nauseated. I didn’t feel like myself at all.
“It’s a drinks’ deal night!” Zac shouted over his shoulder. “That’s why it’s packed!”
Down in the Vaults, I swept the subterranean club as light strobes glanced from dancer to dancer. The techno music was already giving me a headache.
“By the bar!” Harry tapped my shoulder and pointed.
My eyes landed on the crowd around the bar and zeroed in on Lily. Sierra had her head bent toward Lily’s ear and whatever she said made her laugh. A viselike sensation around my chest made it difficult to breathe.
She didn’t look very miserable without me.
What if she wasn’t?
What if she had realized she really was better off without me in her life?
Harry patted me a little hard on the back and urged me through the crowds toward Lily.
I couldn’t drag my eyes off her and as I neared, even in the frantic lighting of the club, I could see her earlier amusement was replaced by a dull weariness.
It was the same dull weariness I’d heard in her voice on the podcast episode.
Harry pulled Sierra into a hug while Zac nodded hello to Jan and Maddie.
Lily’s eyes locked with mine, her nostrils flaring with surprise.
It took everything in me not to haul her into my arms.
“Hullo, Sawyer,” I greeted loudly enough to be heard.
LILY
Several realizations hit me at once.
One, either my friends didn’t know Sebastian was going to be here and they’d been lied to, or they did know, and I’d been lied to.
Two, Sebastian did not look like himself. He had a short scruffy beard, and his clothes hung a wee bit loose on him, like he’d lost weight. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he appeared exhausted.
Three, his appearance suggested distress.
Four, his distress might be related to me.
I didn’t know what to do with any of that. The part of me that loved him wanted to fix everything for him. However, he didn’t want to be fixed. He wanted to wallow in his masochistic need to punish himself in penance for something he wasn’t to blame for in the first place.
My knees trembled as I shifted on my feet and I found I couldn’t quite speak. So, I settled on a nod of hello before turning to accept Harry’s and Zac’s affectionate hugs. Thankfully, the bartender finally got around to serving our drinks. I could feel Sebastian’s attention as I threw mine back.
“You two are talking again, then?” Harry asked loudly, gesturing between me and Jan. At my frown, he grinned cheekily. “Oh, we all heard the episode today.”
Even Sebastian?
Damn it.
Hyperaware of him towering by my side, I desperately tried to ignore the flood of images from our night together suddenly filling my head. I grabbed my sister’s wrist, in need of an escape. “I want to dance!”
Jan nodded enthusiastically and together we pushed through the throng to find ourselves in the middle of the dance floor.
I didn’t really want to dance, but I let the techno music that usually made my head thump take hold of my body and I started bouncing around like everyone else, attempting not to spill my drink. Finally, I settled on throwing the alcohol down my throat in one big gulp.
January cheered, did the same, then took my plastic cup from me to throw it in the air with hers.
People around us yelled, their arms reaching above their heads.
Suddenly, the music changed from techno to a Calvin Harris tune I liked.
I grinned at my sister as the crowd whooped at the song change.
The beat thrummed through us all in time as we jumped up and down in rhythm with one another.
The weight that had been crushing down on my shoulders lifted for those few minutes and I found myself laughing in relief.
Suddenly, Maddie and Sierra were with us.
Sierra took my hand, finding her way into the rhythm easily.
My friends danced and sang along, Maddie shouting the lyrics, “I feel so close to you!” in my face, wearing a cheesy grin, and I took a mental snapshot, storing the memory away.
A beautiful reminder that I didn’t need a bloke to make me feel loved or connected to people.
It was a perfect moment.
Until it wasn’t.
He appeared out of nowhere.
The sight of his familiar face inspired a jolt of dread.
Chris. My ex.
Years I hadn’t seen the arsehole and now twice in as many weeks.
Edinburgh was a small city, and it had never felt more so than now.
He bounced right up to us, pushing between me and Sierra so she had no choice but to let go of my hand.
Chris’s head bowed to mine, and I jerked back as he yelled, “We keep bumpin’ into each other! Must be fate!”
I sneered in disgust, bolstered by the fact that he couldn’t hurt me anymore and I had my friends and sister with me. “Or not! Piss off, Chris!”
He grinned lazily and I realized by the glaze in his eyes, he was drunk. “Not very friendly!”
“Chris, you’re drunk! Go sober up somewhere else!”
“I forgot how gorgeous you are, Lily Pad!”
Nausea rolled through me at his ridiculous pet name. When I was seventeen, I’d thought it was cute. Now it sickened me. Everything about him sickened me.
“Piss. Off.” I pushed him away.
He bounced back and snaked his arm around my waist, yanking me against him. I struggled, but he was too strong. A flashback hit. A memory of him holding me hostage in his flat, his grip on my wrists bruising as he threatened to kill himself if I left him.
All the old feelings of terror and entrapment flooded me. Panicked, I struggled like a wild thing.
“Calm the fuck doon!” he yelled in my ear. “I just wanna dance!”
“Get off my sister!” I heard January.
And then I was free, stumbling back into a hard body. Gentle hands gripped me, and I looked up, dazed, to find Zac. “You okay, Lil?”
I nodded, confused, then glanced back at my ex.
My breath whooshed right out of my body.
The crowd of dancers had all stumbled away from the skirmish that had broken out between Sebastian and Chris. Considering my ex was drunk and Bastian wasn’t, it wasn’t a fight as much as it was an annihilation.
Sebastian was pummeling Chris, his expression tight and wild all at the same time.
“Stop him!” I lunged toward the fighting men, but Zac held me back.
“No, you’ll get hurt.”
However, Harry seemed to sense what I could.
Sebastian wasn’t going to stop.
He braved the fighting men and grabbed Sebastian under his arms, gripping him by the chest for leverage.
Sebastian tried to resist, but Harry was as determined to get him away as Sebastian was to stay and kill my ex.
Finally, Harry yelled something that made Sebastian give in a little.
He hauled him off and shoved Sebastian through the crowd toward the exit.
Chris lay groaning in the middle of the dance floor, blood spilling from his nose, one eye already swelling shut.
“We need to get out of here now!” Zac started guiding me after Harry and Sebastian, the girls hurrying along with us. I barely remembered getting out of the club I was in such a shaken daze. My stomach roiled as we hurried up through the building and out onto Blair Street.
“Keep moving.” Zac’s grip was hard around my biceps. “We need to get away from here.”
Harry and Sebastian stormed ahead, eating up the ground with their long legs.
“What just happened?” Jan was at my side as Sierra and Maddie huddled along with us.
“That was Chris.” My voice shook. “My ex.”
Jan halted. “The son of a bitch who stalked you?”
“What?” Zac snapped, horrified. “And keep moving.”
Jan started running after us. “Well?”
“Aye, the same,” I bit out. It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to be public knowledge.
“Does Bastian know who Chris is?” my sister asked.
My heart turned over in my chest as indignation began to douse my shock. “Aye.”
Harry and Sebastian finally stopped outside their apartment building, and I yanked my arm free of Zac’s grip. Marching toward Sebastian, I took in his defiant, hard expression and felt an uncharacteristic wildness rise. I wanted to tear at something. Shake him! Scratch and claw at him.
I didn’t.
But the words seethed from me as I hissed, “What the hell was that?”
He glowered right back. “I recognized him. I know who he is.”
“And you thought pummeling him to death in a club was an appropriate response?”
Sebastian took a step toward me, baring his teeth like an animal. I sensed that same wildness in him, but I wasn’t afraid. I was too enraged and disappointed and mad at the world—specifically at Sebastian—to fear anything right now.
“He grabbed you! The arsehole who messed with your fucking head was touching you against your will, and I lost my mind for a second. I’m only human!”
I shook my head, letting my disappointment drip from my words.
“You’re not angry at him. You’re angry at yourself.
Because you know that you’re messing with my head too, just in a different way than he did.
” A crushing finality settled over me and I felt it in the slump of my shoulders.
“The thing is, Sebastian, you can only have your head messed with for so long before you realize that you’re allowing your head to be messed with.
And I’m done. I’m done with you. I need you to stay out of my life, and I need everyone here to respect the fact that I don’t want to see you anymore. ”
I turned on my heels, wrapping my arms tightly around my waist as I strode away from him.
The crushing expression on his face tugged at me.
However, for once, I didn’t want to put someone else’s feelings before mine.
I kept walking and heard my sister’s and friends’ footsteps follow.
As much as it hurt, I recognized in the long run I’d done the right thing. It wasn’t up to me to protect Sebastian from himself. If he loved me like I loved him, I’d be more important than some subconscious vow of penance he’d made when he was sixteen years old.
But I wasn’t.
I had to let him go.