Chapter 5
TAYLOR
The air conditioner kicked on with a tired rattle, filling the silence. Sebastian moved to the window, putting distance between us, while I claimed the small couch in the corner. Talking—clearing the air after all these years—was the new priority.
“I’m guessing you saw that picture of me at my parents’ house, standing next to that asshole Garrett Lindsey?” He glanced back at me, misery written across his face, and I nodded. “Yeah, well. I threw up in my mom’s hydrangeas an hour later.”
“Why do you put yourself through that?”
“Why else?” Sebastian asked, lifting his shoulder in a weary shrug.
“Your dad?”
The only time Sebastian and I had ever really argued was about his family. He’d once told me I couldn’t possibly understand what it was like growing up in the Carruthers household, and I believed him. His parents were awful, his dad especially so.
Sebastian nodded and blew out a long breath.
“After graduation, he had me on a pretty tight leash, working for one of his friends. I only lasted a year before I told him I was done, and like an arrogant little shit, started my own consulting firm. I know my name opened doors that shouldn’t have been opened to me, but it turned out I’m really good at what I do. He mostly stopped interfering.”
He lifted his chin, and I saw a spark of something that looked like pride flash in his eyes.
“So what’s with the dog and pony show, then?”
“It’s complicated,” he said, running his fingers over the windowsill and frowning when they came away dusty.
“Less interfering and more … coercion, I guess you could call it.” He brushed his fingers off on his pants, his eyes meeting mine.
“We have an understanding of sorts. A few times a year, I show up at one of their parties, smile for the camera, and play the dutiful son. In exchange, he quietly funnels money to causes I care about. Things he’d never support publicly, but wouldn’t oppose either.
I mean, can you imagine actually being anti-literacy? Wanting kids to starve?”
I pictured what that must be like for Sebastian. Being told when and where to show up and what kind of reward he’d earn for smiling his way through it.
I didn’t have to imagine too hard.
“At least I get my name on a marquee for my efforts,” I snarked, trying for a joke and not being sure if it would land.
Sebastian looked confused for about two seconds, and then recognition lit up his face. “Right. Our professors would be so proud. All that studying just to show up and collect a check for getting our picture taken.”
He shook his head and leaned against the sill, his palms flattened on the ledge on either side of his hips.
“So now, my relationship with them is mostly transactional. But the money does an immense amount of good in ways I could never achieve on my own. So I smile next to men I despise, throw up in my mother’s hydrangeas, and tell myself the trade-off is worth it as I cash their checks.”
He paused, his expression darkening.
“There are lines, though. Issues he refuses to touch. Anything LGBTQ-related is off the table. We literally never go there. Thankfully, he seems happy to think I’m just being a bleeding-heart liberal—an ally.
” He used his fingers to make air quotes.
“And I’m happy to let him, because if he ever found out the truth, all his money would dry up in an instant. ”
For the next half an hour, he told me more about his work and the projects he championed, while I was going out of my mind to learn about the one thing he didn’t touch on.
Senator Wyatt Hastings was all over his website.
They traveled together and danced like lovers.
And yet, his name was conspicuously absent from our conversation.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I’d come up here to have sex, but I wasn’t a cheater. I also wasn’t the type of person who knowingly enabled someone else to cheat.
“And the guy downstairs? Is he your boyfriend?”
He crossed his legs at the ankles and huffed out a laugh that held zero humor. “Yes. No.” He shook his head as if he didn’t actually know how to answer. “Not in the way you probably think.”
My eyebrows drew together. How did you not know if you were with someone?
“Care to elaborate?”
He exhaled hard, his fingers coming up to comb through his hair. Pushing off the window, he crossed the room and lowered himself onto the edge of the bed with a groan. “I don’t have the first clue where to start.”
“The beginning, maybe?”
“Are you sure you want to hear all this?”
I was dying to know.
“Yeah. Lay it on me.”
He blew out a breath, seemingly steeling himself.
“I met Wyatt seven years ago.” His eyes met mine briefly and then skipped away.
“We hooked up at a wedding. He was …” Sebastian paused and shook his head.
“Anyway. It was what I needed when I needed it. A hot guy I actually liked who was in the closet? Sign me up. Over time, we became friends and formed a professional partnership. He’s not my boyfriend—not in the traditional sense of the word.
Definitely my lover, though I despise that word. ”
I couldn’t explain it, but jealousy burned through me, sharp and unwelcome. I forced myself to breathe slowly—in through my nose and out through my mouth, the way my therapist had taught me.
Despite the acid churning in my stomach, I had so many questions.
“And the woman?”
“That’s Celine, his fiancée. They’re getting married in a couple of weeks. They brought me to Vegas to celebrate.”
That explained the dancing, I supposed.
“So, what? You’re all together?”
Sebastian had once told me he was gay, but that had been a long-ass time ago, and sexuality was a spectrum. Maybe in the past ten years, he’d become a bit more fluid in his preferences.
And it wasn’t like I didn’t know relationships like that existed.
I had a teammate back in Vancouver who was seeing two different women.
They found out about each other, and instead of it all blowing up, the three of them ended up in a poly relationship.
When I was traded to Chicago, they were still together, though a couple of years later, I saw on Insta that he had married someone else entirely.
Sebastian forced out a short, dry laugh. “God, no.”
My expression must have given away my confusion because he let loose a put-upon sigh, like he was having to explain a very cut-and-dry situation to someone like they were stupid.
To be clear, nothing about this seemed cut and dry.
“It’s like this: She fucks him. I fuck him. And he fucks the both of us. We aren’t a throuple, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I didn’t want to judge—I mean, whatever worked for you—but it very much sounded like this arrangement didn’t work for Sebastian.
And the fact that he kept talking, kept unburdening himself to me like this was the first time he was getting a chance to voice any of this out loud, only cemented that notion further.
“But lately, it’s gotten a bit …” He paused, as if searching for the right word. “She seems to be operating under the assumption that even though she and I aren’t anything, she still gets a say in my life.”
Do not ask. Do not ask. Do not ask.
“What do you mean?”
So much for not asking.
“This morning she announced that she’s buying the condo across the hall from them, so that it’s easier for Wyatt and me to be together.
Fewer chances, I suppose, of getting caught leaving each other’s apartments.
” He snorted loudly. “Down at the pool today, she called us one big happy family.” This last sentence was spoken almost as if he was only just now processing the weight of that.
As if he was in too deep and didn’t know how to handle it.
Shit. No wonder he was a mess. I could almost understand if he—
“Do you love him?” I asked, rubbing the heel of my palm over my chest, trying to ease a sharp ache there.
Sebastian shook his head and let out a cynical laugh. “I don’t think I know how to love anymore.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him. I couldn’t imagine devoting that much of myself to someone and not feeling that way about them.
His shoulders drew in, his spine curling.
He rubbed his face with both hands. “Christ, listen to me.” He dropped his hands and straightened.
“Anyway, enough about my sad, fucked up life. You came up expecting an orgasm, so …” His gaze landed on my dick, which hadn’t been hard in almost an hour, before meeting my eyes again.
It was like a switch had been flipped, and it took me a moment to recalibrate.
And when I did, a sickening thought took root—Sebastian was using me as a revenge fuck. I was his way of proving to Wyatt that he could fuck other people, too.
Was I his way of striking back at the lover who’d hurt him?
Heat crawled up my neck. I’d been fine with the idea of casual sex between old friends. One last hurrah to scratch an itch.
But this? Being his distraction from a messy breakup? A convenient body to make him feel wanted?
That made me a pawn in a game I hadn’t signed up to play.
I stood up too fast, my knees knocking the edge of the coffee table. “I’m leaving,” I said through clenched teeth, anger bleeding through despite my effort to control it.
Sebastian surged forward, his fingers wrapping around my forearm, tight and possessive.
My body reacted before my brain could catch up, and a different kind of heat flooded through me, instant and undeniable.
His grip had always made me react like this, a trigger I’d never been able to shake. A touch that bypassed every rational thought.
Suddenly, I was back in our old dorm room, Sebastian pinning my wrists over my head, his body moving against mine.
My heart pounded, and blood rushed south, my cock instantly hardening despite the anger simmering in my chest.
Fuck.
I shook my head hard, trying to clear the fog. “Look, I’m a lot of things, Sebastian—most of them not so great—but I don’t let people use me like this.”
He released my arm like I’d burned him and took two steps back, turning his head away, but not before I caught the flash of hurt in his eyes. “What? No. That’s not … I just want to talk.”
“Really?” I crossed my arms over my chest, my fingers digging into my biceps. The pressure helped to keep me from doing something stupid—like reaching for him. “Why?”
After a few seconds that felt like decades, Sebastian turned back to me, his jaw shifting from side to side.
Another switch flipped.
“Because I think I might have fucked up ten years ago, all right? I think maybe I never should have cut you out of my life the way I did.”
“So why did you?”
His whole body seemed to collapse in on itself. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed again, and he squeezed his eyes shut briefly, then opened them. “You have to understand, I couldn’t keep pretending that I didn’t want more. I thought …” he trailed off.
I loosened my grip on my arms, the left one falling away, then the right. “What did you think?” I whispered, taking a small step forward, the need to know pulling me toward him.
For a long while, Sebastian simply searched my face—looking for what, I could only guess. Judgment? Permission? Some sign I’d bolt if he kept going.
“Please, Seb. Just tell me.”
He pulled in a deep breath and then blew it out in a long, slow gust. “I thought it was just me, okay? That I’d built us up into something that wasn’t really there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes you made me feel like I was just a friend you fucked around with when you were horny. Just once, I wanted you to tell me you felt it, too. That I wasn’t alone. When you never did, it broke me. I … I had to protect myself, Taylor. I was fucking dying, and you didn’t even notice.”
I hated myself in that moment because Sebastian wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t noticed any of that. I’d been on top of the goddamn world, and I’d just assumed he was right there with me.
Well, I could tell him now.
“I was so fucking happy, Seb. I don’t even have words for how lucky I felt being with you.
You were the best goddamn thing in my life.
When you left … fuck.” I tipped my head back, looking up at the ceiling, squeezing my eyes shut against the tears I could feel forming.
I slowed my breathing until I felt in control of my emotions again, then dropped my face forward. “It broke my heart.”
“I didn’t know,” he murmured, his throat working as tears shimmered in his eyes. “You never said.”
My anger faded instantly, leaving something fragile and terrifying in its place. I moved closer without consciously deciding to. One second, I was standing there; the next, I was between Sebastian’s knees.
“I’m so sorry I made you feel that way,” I said, reaching out with my right hand to cup his jaw, his stubble rough against my skin.
He turned into it, his whole body curving toward me, and pressed his lips to the side of my wrist before dragging his teeth over my pulse point. Then he flicked his eyes up to meet mine, and there was nothing tentative about the look he gave me.
No questions. No hesitation. Just pure fucking want.
“Taylor. Please.”
My name, on his lips, spoken like a plea?
I didn’t stand a chance.
Whatever resolve I’d been clinging to vanished in that moment. I leaned in, closing the distance between us. The second my mouth found his, Sebastian’s hands tangled in my hair, and he yanked me closer, taking our kiss deeper.