Chapter Twenty-Three
ETHAN
My heart was lodged somewhere in my throat, pulse roaring in my ears. “What the hell is that?”
Sebastian stayed exactly where he was. “What do you think?”
“It better be a fucking car.” My eyes snapped back to his. “Because the alternative is that you’ve lost your fucking mind.”
The corners of his lips curved, eyes softening just a fraction as he tipped his chin toward it. “Open it.”
My body refused to cooperate. Muscles locked, feet rooted to the floor. Frozen. Possibly forever.
“No.” My voice came out thin. “You open it.”
“It’s not for me.”
I blew out a sharp breath and stepped back, rubbing my knuckles under my nose, eyes glued to the small black box like it might detonate. “When did you get that?”
“Four years ago.”
Something in my stomach dropped hard, violent enough to make me dizzy. He was going to fucking kill me tonight.
My jaw went slack as I looked up at him again, searching his face for any hint that he was messing with me. Nothing. Just that same openness that had been there ever since he got the call about his dad. Hell—since I came to Madrid.
“Oh,” I breathed. “So you did lose your mind.”
Sebastian let out a light chuckle. But there was a slight tremble to it. Because of how fucking huge this was. This admission.
“Didn’t lose it,” he said. “The opposite, if we’re being honest.”
I looked around the room, pulling air into my lungs and trying to understand what any of this meant. “Explain,” was what I landed on, taking a few steps away from him. Away from him and that box.
Sebastian’s eyes went unbearably soft, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to listen to him through the frantic beating of my heart.
“When I left,” he said, “it fucking hurt like hell. Being without you.”
Heat gathered behind my eyes. I blinked hard.
“But we were still talking. Even if we weren’t together, you weren’t completely gone from my life. Until…”
“You stopped,” I finished for him.
He nodded. “Henny told me it was hurting you. That you never left your apartment. That you were glued to your phone, waiting.” He gave a humorless laugh. “He said I looked miserable too. I probably did.”
The space between us went quiet.
“When things were really done,” he went on, “it got worse. And I just… knew.”
“Knew what?”
He gave me a sad smile. “I already knew you meant the world to me, my darling. I loved you back then, even if I was too much of a coward to say it out loud. I felt it.”
Every muscle in my body tightened once more. Bracing.
“But when I felt your loss,” he continued, “I knew there was no one else. It was you, irrevocably, for the rest of my life.” He nodded at the box. “That’s when I got it—made a plan.”
The burn in my eyes intensified. “You were with someone else.” My voice came out small. I couldn’t make it anything else. “You’ve been with other people. You told me that.”
“I was,” he said. “But they knew too. Luca knew.”
“What?”
“I told him we could have exclusivity, but it was never going to be long-term. That I couldn’t give him my heart, because it already belonged to someone else.”
My chest twisted painfully. “Why didn’t you break up with him then?”
“Because I’m an idiot,” he said, shifting his weight on his feet.
“I convinced myself that if we were going to happen, it had to be done properly. Because things with you were… bigger than anything else.” He paused.
“You were never temporary to me. I just kept waiting for the right moment. For my life—for yours—to be arranged in a way that made sense. It took realizing how quickly everything can change to understand that I might lose you. I wasn’t willing to keep waiting. ”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Sebastian stepped closer, closing the distance like he couldn’t help himself. “Darling, our relationship is complicated. It was even more so back then. But the things that kept us apart are still an issue now.”
I frowned, brain scrambling to keep up. “Are you talking about my age?”
“Yes.”
My mouth pulled downward.
“And before you tear me apart for it, remember—you were nineteen, Ethan. You were just starting your life. You still are.”
The realization stung more than I expected, knowing he was still holding back over something that felt so fucking trivial to me. I thought we were past this.
“So what?” I asked. “You figured you’d just… keep me away until I was old enough for this to be real?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes and dragged my hands through my hair. “You and your fucking plans.”
He reached for my wrists, fingertips brushing my skin, but I shook him off, stepping back. He was closer now. Too close and not close enough.
“I don’t believe that anymore,” he said. “I want us now.”
“Because of your dad—”
“Partly. But mostly because of you. Because of what it meant to have you there. Because of how much I needed you. And because of the man you’ve become.”
I stared up at him, every part of me held in place.
“Not that you weren’t always… everything to me. You were—you are,” he went on. “But now you know who you are. You stand in it. And I want to be there for all of it. I don’t want to keep missing you as you grow into yourself.” His throat worked. “But it’s so fucking complicated.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to give up this part of your life,” he said, his voice breaking softly around the edges. “I don’t want to steal it from you. I don’t want you to wake up one day when I’m gone and realize you still have years left—and you spent them on someone who’d already lived his.”
My brows furrowed. “I’m sorry—did you turn thirty-nine last month, or eighty?”
He huffed. “You know what I mean—”
“No. I really fucking don’t.” Heat flared back into my chest. “Why are you making decisions about my life without even talking to me? Why do you get to decide what I want—or what my future should look like?”
His face tightened—not in anger, but in pain.
“I know how old you are, Sebastian. I’ve always known.
And I don’t give a fuck.” My voice softened, but it didn’t lose its edge.
“I want you. I don’t want to lose out on anything either.
Why can’t I grow up and live my life with you?
Why does the only version of my future you’ll accept have to be one without you? With both of us miserable?”
“I don’t,” he said. “Not anymore. I want everything with you, and I don’t want to wait anymore to have it. If you’ll have me again—if you can forgive me for being an absolute ass—then we’ll figure everything else out.”
We stayed there for a beat, just looking at each other, letting it sink in.
Some of my anger started to fade, and as it did, this ache—this fucking Sebastian Langley–shaped ache—came rushing back.
Because even though I hated what he’d done, part of me was swooning at the thought that he’d been waiting this whole time.
That I’d been the only one to ever bring down the fortress he kept around himself.
That he was mine. That he had always been mine.
I swallowed thickly. My hands weren’t steady when I spoke. “Why were you staying away now?”
Sebastian stilled. A hesitation. Small, but unmistakable.
“Don’t,” I said, my voice tightening. “Don’t decide this without me. I know you. I can tell when you’re doing something that involves both of us without actually talking to me about it.”
His gaze dropped, a slow breath leaving him. “I heard you.”
“Heard me…?”
“You and Henry. On the terrace.” He pressed his lips together, offering a small, helpless shrug. “You said you weren’t going to build castles in your head again. That you couldn’t afford to believe too much.”
Heat rushed up my neck. “You were eavesdropping?”
“I wasn’t trying to,” he said. “But once I realized what you were saying… I couldn’t walk away.”
Silence pressed in around us.
“I know how much I hurt you,” he continued.
“When I said we were never going to be love. That what we had was only sex.” His eyes lifted to mine.
“I saw what that did to you. I see what it still does. And I realized that if I touched you again without proving this was more—without showing you that I want all of you, not just your body—you might never believe me.”
Something inside my chest cracked open.
“So I wanted to show you,” he said. “That we could have everything else. That being with you isn’t just hunger.” His voice softened. “It’s home.”
The room blurred. That old wound in my chest throbbed—but it wasn’t pain this time. It was something loosening. Healing. He wasn’t pulling away. He was trying to make us safe.
I drew in a shaky breath, my fingers loosening as the truth of that settled under my ribs. All this time, I’d been bracing for the impact. For the moment he’d disappear again.
But he was right here.
“If you ever want to show me what’s inside that box,” I said, steady despite the way my chest hurt, “you’re never going to do that again.”
His dark eyes stayed locked on mine. Hopeful.
“You don’t get to plan our lives in your head and make choices for both of us. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it together.”
A small smile curved his lips as he nodded.
“I probably lost my mind too, considering…” My lip trembled, the burn behind my eyes flooding back. “But I love you, Ash,” I said, my voice breaking on his name.
His expression shattered.
“And I want everything with you too. I always have. So don’t fucking hurt me again.”
He didn’t waste a second. His arms wrapped around me, holding me so tight it bordered on painful. “Never again, pet,” he whispered into my hair. “Never.”
I clung to him, burying my face in his chest, breathing him in. “If you try to push me away again,” I said, voice muffled but deadly serious, “I’ll tie you down on the bed and never let you out. You don’t get to leave me again.”
Sebastian leaned back just enough to look at me, a slow smile pulling at his lips. “Thought I was the one who was supposed to lock you up in my room.”