Chapter 4
SEBASTIAN
Taylor stood quietly beside me as we waited for the elevator. I refused to look at him, but I could hear him breathing, the sound steady and controlled.
I envied that calm, especially now when I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I couldn’t help it, though. Not with our last time together at the forefront of my mind.
That night, I’d traced every line of his face with my fingertips. Pressed my palm flat against his chest to memorize his heartbeat. Held on too long when he tried to pull away to get water, like letting go meant saying goodbye.
Which, ultimately, it had.
I hoped he wasn’t looking for that sort of tenderness from me tonight. I didn’t have it in me.
“What are your expectations here?” I kept my face forward.
“W-what are y-yours?” he stammered, catching me off guard.
I turned. Taylor was pale, his teeth digging into his bottom lip. He looked on the verge of a panic attack.
I lifted my hands from my pockets, palms facing outward, and stepped back. “Okay. Nope. We’re not doing this.”
His head snapped back, and color flooded his face, climbing from his collar to his cheekbones. His eyes narrowed. “But you want me. I know you do.” His eyes dipped to my groin, to the proof I couldn’t hide.
There was no point in denying it.
Not that he even gave me a chance to.
“And I want you. So fucking much. I’ve always wanted you, Seb.”
“Taylor,” I sighed, my shoulders sagging and my throat catching. “We both know that’s not true.”
Ten years ago, I’d been young and naive. Foolish enough to hope there was more between us than friendship and fucking. But all I’d been was a fun experiment. A bro to get off with. Taylor had cared for me, I was certain. Just not enough.
He’d never loved me the way that I loved him.
He glared at me. “What the fuck does that mean?”
My lip curled. “I don’t know, bro. What do you think it means?”
He tipped his head back, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Bro?”
“That’s what you called me,” I said, my voice shaking. “We’d just spent all day together in your bed. I’d said your name so many times it stopped sounding like a word and was just the way I breathed. It was just … just … fuck, it was everything.”
My throat tightened, and I held up my fingers, an inch of space between them.
“I was this close to telling you I was in love with you. And then you called me ‘bro,’ the same thing you called Mitchie when you were drunk, the same thing you yelled across the cafeteria to your teammates.” I dropped my hand.
“It made everything we’d done feel cheap. Like I meant nothing to you.”
The tears I’d been holding at bay burned my eyes.
“I loved you, Taylor. But you made me feel like I was nothing more than a convenient fuck for you.”
He planted his hands on my chest, fingers twisting in my shirt, and his eyes blazing. For a heartbeat, I thought he might pull me in. Instead, he shoved me hard enough that I stumbled. “How can you even say that to me?”
“Because it’s true.”
“You’re the one who disappeared—not me,” he bit out, his voice cracking. “If anything, I meant nothing to you.”
The anguish in his expression stopped me cold.
This wasn’t the reaction I expected.
What was going on?
Had I gotten this wrong?
My eyes settled on his mouth, tracing the shape of his lips and remembering how they used to taste. A scar on his upper lip caught my eye. It was new. I wondered how he’d gotten it, wondered what else had changed about him in the decade I hadn’t known him.
“What are we doing, Sebastian?” he breathed out, his voice uncertain.
My eyes found his, and I forced myself to say, “Something we should have done a long time ago.”
Taylor nodded, his expression steely. “Yeah,” he rasped, meeting my gaze unflinchingly. “Probably.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. The opportunity to walk away loomed between us, unspoken.
I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head toward the opening. “You coming?”
He blew out a breath and rolled his shoulders back.
I recognized the shift immediately—this was hockey player Taylor Morrison taking over. A man who bruised his body for fun. A guy who smiled in the face of expected pain.
“Lead the way.”
My heart thundered in my ears. From down the hall, loud, drunken laughter spilled from one of the rooms.
Taylor stood behind me at my hotel room door, his body heat warming my back, even through my shirt.
I closed my eyes and inhaled—cedar and amber maybe.
I recognized it as the same cologne he’d worn in college.
I’d avoided that scent for years, crossing to the other side of department stores and changing my gym schedule when someone in the locker room wore it.
His breath floated across the back of my neck, and my stomach lurched—with anticipation or dread, I couldn’t say.
Maybe both.
Once we crossed this threshold, there was no going back. No more pretending that I was over him. No more telling myself that what he and I once had didn’t matter.
My skin prickled, every nerve ending in my body wide awake. I could still walk away—call this a mistake, blame the whiskey, force him to leave.
But I wouldn’t.
I set my forehead against the door, feeling the cool wood against my heated skin.
“Are we going in?” Taylor asked, his voice expectant. Hopeful.
“Yeah,” I managed thickly, pressing the key card against the reader with shaking hands.
The lock clicked, and I twisted the handle. I stepped inside and flipped the switch. The lamps came on, lighting up the room. I was acutely aware of Taylor behind me.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Without waiting for an answer, I opened the armoire, revealing the overpriced minibar. I grabbed a tiny bottle of vodka, my hands still trembling as I unscrewed the cap. The quiet glug of liquid emptying into the glass sounded overly loud.
“I used to worry about that,” Taylor said, his voice heavy with concern as he moved further into the room, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he moved to stand next to me.
I didn’t follow his meaning. “What?”
“The drinking,” he answered matter-of-factly.
I lowered my glass, holding it loosely between my fingers. “I don’t understand.”
He pulled his hands from his pockets and reached out, gently easing the glass from my grip. His fingers brushing mine caused my breath to catch before he turned and set it aside.
“You drank a lot that last month.”
That was rich, coming from him. I’d lost count of the times his teammates had texted me to come haul him home, his arm slung over my shoulder, his weight heavy against my side as I half-carried him across campus.
“It was our senior year. Everyone was partying, including you.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Taylor nodded, his forehead creased. “Maybe, but you weren’t only drinking at parties. I saw the empty bottles you tried to hide … and the baggies.” He paused meaningfully, his accusation clear.
My cheeks flushed hot, and I rubbed the back of my neck, a nervous habit I’d never been able to shake.
“You remember how hard my classes were,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Everyone else was coasting through our senior year, taking whatever bullshit electives they needed to graduate. I had Comparative Politics, Advanced Game Theory, and that national security seminar with a reading list longer than my arm. I was drowning, Taylor.”
He moved to the edge of the bed and sat down, his elbows on his knees, waiting.
“I wasn’t partying. I just …” I trailed off, running a hand over my face. “I needed help staying awake. I found something that worked.”
“Adderall?” he asked quietly.
I shrugged. “I was desperate. It helped.”
“How’d you get it?”
I blew out a long breath and let my memory pull me back to that spring semester.
“During a late-night cram session, the words on the page started swimming after I’d read the same paragraph four times.
My classmate asked me if I was okay. I remember shaking my head and telling him I was screwed.
He pushed an orange pill toward me, saying, ‘I got you.’”
I rubbed sweaty palms against my thighs, my fingers splayed.
“I took it—stupid, I know—but thirty minutes later, the fog lifted, and the words made sense. I wrote twelve pages that night and still managed to make it to morning swim. My hands shook through warm-ups, but I’d done it. So I found Caleb again the next week. And the week after that.”
I forced myself to hold his gaze. I wasn’t ashamed necessarily, but I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t known I was playing a risky game.
“That’s all it was?” Taylor's voice was soft, his eyes never leaving mine. Searching for the lie, maybe.
I closed the armoire door, shutting away the rows of tiny bottles, and straightened my shoulders. “Yeah. That’s all. Why, what did you think?”
His jaw worked for a moment. “Honestly?”
I braced myself, knowing from his expression that I wasn’t going to like his answer. And yet …
“Yes, honestly.”
“Coke,” he said flatly.
“Fuck no. Definitely not. I tried it once during our sophomore year. Hated the way it made me feel.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly. “That’s good, I suppose.”
After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, I asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you found all that stuff?”
The hurt in his expression was unmistakable.
“Probably for the same reason you never told me you needed it. I kept waiting for you to confide in me. Thought we were close enough that you would. But you never did, so I figured …” He lifted one shoulder, then let it drop.
“Maybe I didn’t know you as well as I thought. ”
I tipped my head back, pinching the bridge of my nose. I blew out a long breath before looking at him again. “There were a lot of things we should have talked about back then. We can’t go back and do things over, but we can talk now.”
The corner of his mouth pulled up into a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Okay. Let’s start with your job.”
My stomach dropped.
I’d known this conversation was coming. I had been dreading it since the moment Taylor sat down beside me in the bar downstairs.
I just hadn’t expected to feel this raw and exposed when it finally arrived.