CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Sebastian?”
He glanced up from an anniversary bouquet he’d been working on to see Rosaleen hovering in the doorway of the workroom. “Yes?”
He’d been in a horrible mood all morning, so he wasn’t surprised that she looked a little hesitant to interrupt him.
Last night, as Sebastian had furiously scrubbed Luke Crawford’s cum off his Calhoun jersey, he’d been angry and upset in a way he didn’t fully understand.
He’d spent all night tossing and turning and replaying the way the conversation had gone with Crawford before coming to a terrible conclusion that he was the one primarily at fault here.
Hell, he could have just taken the damn jersey off before they had sex.
His guilt about not being loyal to Nicky had made him lash out at Crawford, so now he also felt guilty about the way he’d acted toward Crawford and regretted some of the things he’d said in the heat of the moment.
In the middle of the night, Sebastian had rolled over to reach for his phone half a dozen times, going so far as to type out a message, only to delete it, more than once. But it had been late and he knew Crawford needed a good night’s sleep for recovery.
Sebastian might not be happy with the way Crawford had acted either, but he wasn’t going to deliberately sabotage his playing. So Sebastian hadn’t messaged him. Had decided to wait until this evening. He planned to apologize via text and ask if they could talk in person.
But waiting left him oddly on edge, and on top of the lack of sleep, he’d been moody all morning. He’d tried not to take it out on his employees, and he’d succeeded in not snapping at anyone, but he hadn’t exactly been his usual self either.
They’d given him a wide berth all day.
“There’s someone here for you,” Rosaleen continued, breaking him from his thoughts. “Uh, Luke Crawford.”
Sebastian blinked, sure he’d misheard her. Wishful thinking, maybe? “I’m sorry. What?”
“Luke Crawford is here for you,” she repeated.
“Seriously?”
She frowned at him like she didn’t understand it either. “Yeah, I dunno what he’s doing here. Just said he wanted to talk to you.”
Sebastian wondered if she was mistaken. Maybe it wasn’t Crawford. Maybe it was just some other guy who had a shitload of tattoos and a menacing expression. Or someone pretending to be him? Though why anyone would do that was beyond him.
Sebastian frowned back at Rosaleen. “Are you sure that’s who it is?”
Her face lit up. “Oh yeah, it’s definitely Luke. I’ve met him a couple of times at Aunt Catherine and Uncle Declan’s house!”
“Jesus.” Sebastian smoothed suddenly sweaty palms across his apron. “Um, yeah, I’ll be right out then. Just let me, uh, get some of these flowers in water.”
“I could finish the bouquet for you,” she offered. “If you wanted.”
Luke glanced at the bouquet he’d been struggling with. Morgan was working the front of the shop right now as well and Rosaleen couldn’t possibly do a worse job than he’d already done so far.
“You know what?” he said gratefully. “That would be helpful. Thank you.”
He took off his apron and smoothed down his shirt, feeling oddly shaky. What the fuck was Luke Crawford doing here in the middle of the day?
When Sebastian made it to the front of the shop, sure enough, Crawford was standing there awkwardly with his hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets, nodding at whatever Morgan was saying about flowers.
He looked massively out of place in his black team sweats, like he’d just come from practice. Since it was mid-afternoon, he probably had.
“Uh, hey,” Sebastian said, clearing his throat when it came out sounding strained.
“Hey.” Crawford glanced up, looking unusually serious.
“Umm,” Sebastian said. “How can I help you?”
Crawford cleared his throat too and stepped a little closer. “So, uh, I know you’re in the middle of work. But I was wondering if we—if we could talk. I’m sorry about last night.” Crawford’s voice was low.
Sebastian’s jaw dropped and it took a moment for him to compose himself. “Uhh, sure. We can talk about Harper’s day with the team, yeah? I almost forgot we were supposed to follow up on that,” he said loudly enough that Morgan would hear.
Sebastian nodded toward the back hall. “Come back here to my office.”
Crawford frowned but gestured for him to lead the way.
“Thanks for the autograph, Mr. Crawford!” Morgan called after them.
“No problem,” Crawford called back.
But when Sebastian reached for the door handle to open his office, Crawford gently grabbed his arm. “Can we take this upstairs?”
“Sure,” Sebastian said quietly, glancing toward the front of the shop. Morgan was in plain sight, even if she wasn’t looking directly at them at the moment. “I just thought … well, it might seem more like business, if we stayed down here.”
“I don’t care about that,” Crawford said with a frown.
“Yeah?” Sebastian said, still very confused. “Okay. Um, let’s go upstairs then.”
When they reached Sebastian’s living room and he’d shut the apartment door behind them, they stared awkwardly at each other for a moment.
Luke glanced over at the Calhoun jersey hanging off a drying rack near the radiator, winced, and blurted out, “Fuck, I’m sorry. Last night was … that didn’t go how I expected it to.”
“I’m sorry too.” Sebastian sighed. “It didn’t go how I expected either. Look, when we first started hooking up, I didn’t like you. I figured it was just … hate sex, you know?”
Luke nodded. It had been the same for him.
“So at first, it was easy to justify the fact that I was screwing the guy who’d hurt Nicky.”
Luke opened his mouth to defend himself, but Sebastian held up a hand. “Can I finish? Please?”
Luke nodded.
“Whatever you think about Nicky, whatever rivalries there are between you two, he is my friend. We grew up together and he was there for me when a lot of other people weren’t.
When I decided to quit hockey, he was the one who held me together when I felt like I was losing a huge fucking part of who I was.
He was the one who stuck around, when the other guys on the team disappeared. ”
“Because they found out you were gay?” Luke asked quietly.
Sebastian nodded, then shrugged. “Some of them, yeah. For others, it was probably just because I wasn’t on the team. Because we had nothing in common anymore. But yeah, some of it was definitely because of homophobia.”
Luke winced, because yeah … he could see that.
“But Nicky was there for me. He never fucking wavered, not even once, not even when I came out before our draft year. He was planning to stay in the closet, but he still stuck up for me, at a huge personal risk to himself and his career.”
Swallowing, Luke nodded. That had been long before Noah Boucher had come out, before anyone in the league had openly said they were anything but straight. And Calhoun had been a top prospect. Lot of teams had been salivating over drafting him.
Most guys in Calhoun’s position would have distanced themselves as much as possible from Sebastian. Luke certainly would have.
“I get why you feel loyal to him,” Luke admitted.
“Our friendship has … has kinda fallen off a little in the past few years.”
“Since his concussion,” Luke guessed.
“Yeah. Since then. He isolated himself a lot. I did my best to stay in contact with him for a while but with my move, with everything with Brie and Harper, I haven’t been there for him as much as I should’ve been.”
Luke nodded.
“So for the most part, I’ve managed to stuff down the fact I’ve been feeling guilty about fucking you and being friends with Nicky. But lately, things between the two of us have been a little different, right?” Sebastian said, gesturing between him and Luke.
“Yeah.” Luke cleared his throat. Because he might not be the smartest man around but even he could tell that things with Sebastian weren’t the same as they had been when they started.
Weren’t the same as they had been with any other hookups he’d had.
He’d let himself get more personal.
He cared about Harper and wanted to help out her and Brie. And he cared about Sebastian in a way he’d never expected to. In a way he hadn’t thought he’d ever want to. In a way he didn’t fully understand.
What that all meant, Luke wasn’t sure, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed it changing.
Sebastian glanced at him. “Well, I ignored that until I couldn’t anymore. Until Brie found out we were hooking up and reminded me that—that what I’ve been doing with you is—is kinda disrespectful to Nicky and how he’s been struggling.”
Luke grimaced, wanting to argue, wanting to tell Sebastian that Calhoun would understand.
Nicholas Calhoun was a pro hockey player. They all knew going into this career that it could end at any point. It could end quickly and violently. One decision, one wrong move on the ice, and a career—hell, even a life—could be over in the blink of an eye.
But he let Sebastian continue.
“And then Nicky texted me the other night. He said he was coming back, finally playing again. He said I’d been a good friend and that he wanted to hang out when he was in town—” Sebastian looked him in the eye.
“And no, we’re not hooking up. We haven’t since we were teenagers.
But we were each other’s firsts and I suppose that comes with a certain amount of nostalgia, even if it wasn’t that good in hindsight.
We fumbled our way through learning how to have sex together and that—that meant something to both of us, okay? ”
Luke nodded.
Sebastian pulled in a deep breath. “And so last night I was feeling guilty. I was feeling guilty for having sex with you and maybe starting to—to like you, you know?”
“Okay.”
“Last night, I shouldn’t have—I should have told you no when we started fooling around. At first, it seemed hot and then I started to feel … guilty and I …” He shook his head and looked away, falling silent.
“Do you regret it?” Luke asked. “Did I do something you didn’t want?”