50. Sebastian
CHAPTER FIFTY
SEBASTIAN
T he traitorous bastard was nowhere to be found, though his things were still in the guest room he was using. Striding to Harry’s room, I knocked loudly but barged in before he answered, only to halt abruptly at the sight of Sierra sprawled half naked across my friend.
“Bugger, sorry.” I whirled around, giving them privacy. Apparently, Brendon had been cast over. But I couldn’t think about my friends’ drama right now. “Have you seen Zac?”
“No, I haven’t left the room,” Harry answered groggily. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to kill him, that’s what.” I marched out.
“Is this about that call I got from Lily?” Sierra called after me.
I was too busy throwing open the other guest room door to answer.
The bed was rumpled and the room was littered with plastic beer cups and food wrappers, but there was no Zac.
I rapped my knuckle on Maddie’s door, just in case.
Lily’s friend opened the door as Harry and Sierra caught up with me, dressed in the wrinkled clothing they’d worn the night before.
Maddie frowned. “Everything okay?”
“Is Zac in there?”
She shook her head, wide-eyed at my sharp tone. “No. Is everything all right?”
“Apparently, he’s going to kill him,” Sierra answered as I moved through the house, cursing the wreckage left by the party.
“Look at this mess!” I threw my arms up as I stood in the kitchen diner.
“We’ll help you clean up,” Sierra offered calmly. “Do you want to tell us what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that arsehole invited all these people here and now has buggered off before I can kill him!”
“You want to kill him for throwing the party?” Maddie asked, confused.
“No!” For … for trying to break me and Lily up.
For trying to take away the one person who meant everything to me.
Why?
Why would Zac do that?
He was … he was supposed to be my friend.
I let my rage overtake my hurt because it was easier to deal with the anger.
At least it hadn’t worked. At least Lily trusted me. Believed in me.
“Did Zac tell Lily about Gisele?” Sierra guessed.
“Worse. I think he sent Gisele into my room last night while I was sleeping because he sent a photo of the incident to Lily.” I tugged out my phone to show the photo to Harry because Zac was his friend too.
Harry’s expression slackened as Maddie and Sierra gasped at the photograph of a half-naked Gisele accosting me. I explained to them what had happened.
“And Zac sent this to Lily?” Harry asked in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“ That’s why Lily called me.” Sierra’s pretty expression tightened with rage. “She asked me if something happened last night.”
Unease moved through me at the thought of Lily calling Sierra first.
“I told her about Gisele harassing you all night. Then she said she needed to speak to you.”
Had Lily decided I could be trusted because of Sierra’s account of the evening?
No . I shook that out of my head. She told me she knew when January asked her if she trusted me. There was no way I was letting that little shit mess with us like this.
The sound of the front door opening and slamming shut had me whirling.
Zac sauntered into the kitchen with a paper bag of groceries in his arms. “Great, you’re all awake. We ran out of milk, so I thought I’d—” He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence because my fist connected with his face.
Between the surprise of my action and the force of it, Zac stumbled and fell on his arse, the groceries spilling everywhere. My knuckles throbbed as I flexed my hand, preparing to hit him again.
Zac got over the shock quickly, glaring up at me as he wiped at the blood seeping from his now split lower lip. “I take it Lily called.”
“Please tell me this isn’t true.” Harry was suddenly at my side. “What are you playing at?”
Zac got to his feet, kicking the groceries away. He shrugged insouciantly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I flew at him again, but Harry bound his arms around me, yanking me back.
“He’s not worth it, Bas. Not worth it. And Lily didn’t believe him. Remember that. He didn’t win.”
Harry’s calming tone worked, and I shrugged off his hold, letting him know silently I wasn’t going to hit Zac again.
Zac, however, glowered. “Don’t tell me she’s so pathetic as to believe you?”
“Don’t be a prat, Zac. If he flies at you again, I won’t hold him back and he will kill you,” Harry warned.
Sensing my now ex-friend enjoyed watching me out of control, I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Why would Lily believe a lie? One that you apparently orchestrated.”
He shrugged, an irritating smirk curling his mouth. “What if I did?”
“So, you did?” Harry stared at him as if he’d never seen him before. “You sent Gisele into his room while he was sleeping and then took that photo?”
“Maybe.”
My fists clenched so tightly, one of my knuckles cracked. “Why? What the hell did I do to you?”
He leaned back against the kitchen peninsula, crossing his legs at the ankles in a relaxed pose that made me want to swipe his legs out from under him.
“I thought Colette might do the trick, but apparently she fancied me this time around.” His eyes were hard with a fury I didn’t understand.
“Then I saw Gisele following you around like a drunken moron. The girl has never heard no in her life. You pricked her pride, Bas. It was easy enough to convince her to slip into your room. It was nothing personal. Well, maybe a tad personal. My instructions came from a higher order than you. I struck a deal, and I was upholding my end of it.”
“Struck a deal?”
Zac grinned, as though he was delighting in what he was about to tell me.
“With your grandmother. Princess Mary. She reached out to me. Requested I interfere in your relationship with Lily. Apparently, while she’s not as hung up as your mother on the idea of you marrying someone of noble blood, she does take offense to the idea of you being in a relationship with a girl who speaks publicly about her sex life on a dating podcast.”
His words had me stumbling back in shock and confusion.
My grandmother had put him up to this?
My grandmother?!
He chuckled. “How can you be so surprised? You’re a member of the royal family. Do you really think they’d welcome Lily Sawyer, sex advice podcaster, into their fold?”
Even as my mind whirred with the added betrayal, I focused on my ex-friend. “Why did you agree to do that to me? You know how I feel about Lily.”
“Because your grandmother made certain promises about inviting my mother into their circle. It would be quite the coup for her …” A vulnerable light entered his eyes. “I thought it would … well, never mind.”
He thought it would make his mother give a shit about him?
He’d tried to wreck my relationship because he didn’t get enough attention from Mother Dearest?
I was going to kill him!
“That’s not just it.” Maddie suddenly spoke up, stepping beside me. Her eyes were narrowed with distaste. “He’s in love with Lily. I’ve suspected it for ages.”
My head whipped back to Zac. “Are you?”
He glowered at Maddie.
I flew at him, yanking him to me by the shirt as I snarled in his face, “Are you in love with my girlfriend?”
Zac shoved at me, pulling at his shirt to no avail. “Let go of me!”
“Tell me!”
“Yes!”
I released him in abject surprise, not expecting him to admit the real reason for what he’d done.
His eyes were filled with such malice and resentment, I was momentarily stunned.
“The golden child,” he spat. “Everything comes easily to you. You get everything you want. Even her. Did you know I saw her first? Had been working up the courage to talk to her for ages. Then you swooped in. And the fuck of it all is that you might not have cheated with Gisele last night, but you will one day. You’ll hurt her. And I would … I would never hurt Lily.”
“You hurt her this morning,” Sierra hissed.
“For her own good!”
“For fuck’s sake.” Harry turned away, running a shaky hand through his hair. “Who the hell are you?” He whirled back around, staring at Zac in pained confusion. “How could you do this? We’ve all been friends since first year.”
Something flickered across Zac’s face, but I didn’t give him a chance to respond to Harry because something had occurred to me.
“You didn’t merely set me up. You went so far as to knock on my door after taking that photo and accuse me of cheating with Gisele when you knew I hadn’t.
You tried to screw with my head. Do you even realize how messed up that is?
There’s something seriously wrong with you. ” I retreated from him in disgust.
“Why not send the photo anonymously?” Maddie asked. “You must have known Lily would tell Sebastian who sent it.”
Zac shrugged wearily. “Uni is almost over. We’re graduating. What did it matter if Thorne finally found out what I really think of him?”
I stared at him in quiet fury. This bloke loathed me, and I’d thought he was my friend.
It was difficult to wrap my head around.
How quickly he’d made me despise him in return, though.
“We’re done. If that isn’t clear. We are done.
You can leave now. And you can kiss any connections to my family for your mother goodbye.
My grandmother played you too because she’d never let a snake like you near the family.
Even if the two of you apparently have snakelike qualities in common. ”
His face screwed up in rage until Harry addressed him. “Just to be clear, we’re done too. I want you out of my flat by the time we get home.”
“It’s my flat too,” Zac said stupidly.
“Oh, is it? I thought my father paid for it. You were my friend, so I let you live there. You are no longer my friend. Therefore, you no longer live there.”
Something like regret tightened Zac’s expression, but he pushed past us and gritted out. “I’ll get my stuff.”
“Oh, and, Zac,” Harry called after him.
Our ex-friend reluctantly stopped and turned around.
Harry’s face was harder than I’d ever seen it. “Your phone. Now.”
“Why would I give you my phone?”
“So I can delete that photograph and make sure you don’t have it saved anywhere else. You see, if that photograph ever sees the light of day, I’ll not only make sure you’re blacklisted, I’ll make it my mission to haunt your life, ruining every good opportunity that comes your way. Are we clear?”
Zac swallowed nervously. “ We were friends.”
“You don’t do what you did to a friend.”
“I didn’t do it to you.”
“You did it to Bas, so you did it to me too.”
Gratitude cut through the chaos of emotion flying around inside me as Zac, face red with indignation, pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped on the screen.
Harry took it from him and spent a few minutes checking it, while we all stood in tense silence.
“Photo is deleted. He had it saved to the cloud, but I’ve deleted that too.” He handed it back to Zac with a look of disgust. “Remember my warning.”
Zac snatched it back and stormed off toward the guest rooms without looking any of us in the eyes.
I clamped a hand on Harry’s shoulder as Zac disappeared out of sight. “Thanks, mate.”
“Always.”
“I’m sorry.”
Harry cut me a look. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. I feel like I need a long hot shower. How did we not know what a creep he was? He really hates you. How did he hide that? And why? I mean, other than Lily, why? You’ve never done anything but be his friend.”
“We missed it.” I shrugged unhappily. “It happens. Let’s not drive ourselves crazy trying to untangle the inner workings of his twisted mind.”
“Lily’s really okay?” Maddie asked, expression troubled.
Remembering her soft crying on the phone, I had the sudden urge to pull a plane out of the sky so I could get on it and fly back to her. “She is. Once I explained everything. I’m not looking forward to explaining the rest of it to her. Zac’s … crush or my bloody grandmother’s behavior.”
Maddie winced. “Aye, sorry about that.”
I’d deal with my grandmother later.
Sierra gestured to the house. “We should clean up and go back to Edinburgh.”
“I’m sorry for all the drama and for messing up your holiday.”
Her eyes cut flirtatiously to Harry. “Hey, I still had a good time. I’m going to shower first and then I’ll help out.”
“Just a good time?” Harry asked, trailing after her.
“Did they sleep together again?” Maddie asked quietly.
“Again?”
She chuckled. “They’ve been shagging on and off for the last few months. I think they like each other but are in denial.”
“Harry never told me.”
“She’s Lily’s friend. He probably didn’t want you getting overprotective.”
“I wouldn’t. Sierra’s a big girl. So, they like like each other?”
“You really want to talk about Sierra and Harry’s friends-with-benefits situation?”
Dismay and indignation churned in my gut. “If it distracts me from the fact that my friend and grandmother tried to manipulate Lily out of my life, then yes.”
Maddie squeezed my arm in sympathy. “You got it. It started the night of our Thanksgiving dinner …”