Chapter 13 #2
He wasn’t wrong. Wanting Sebastian back then had been the easiest thing in the world—as easy as breathing.
“Yeah, I totally would have,” I agreed, my voice soft.
He held my gaze for a beat, a quiet acknowledgment passing between us that didn't need words.
Then his mouth quirked up, and I couldn't help but mirror his expression. We stood there like idiots in the snack aisle, grinning at each other over our shared memories.
He broke first, clearing his throat and turning back to the shelf.
“The only thing worse than these were those Styrofoam cups of ramen your mom used to send us.” He placed the chips back on the shelf.
I made a gagging noise.
“Do you remember how excited we’d get when she would tell us she was making a Costco run?”
“And then we’d ration them out.
“Bullshit.” Sebastian laughed. “You’d eat half the case the first week, and then feel guilty about it.”
I chuckled at the memory. “I really had no self-control.”
“Still don’t, apparently.” He nodded at the second bag of Doritos I’d just added to the cart.
“Apparently not.” I grabbed a third bag and tossed it in just to fuck with him.
As we wandered the rest of the store, filling the cart with an odd mix of fresh ingredients and junk food neither of us needed but both of us wanted, it felt less like ten years had passed and more like ten days.
I’d always been skeptical of people who talked about how you could go years without seeing someone, but then, when you did, it was like no time had passed at all.
I got it now.
At the check-out, Sebastian pulled out his wallet before I could reach for mine. “Let me get this.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.” He tapped his card against the reader. “You’re putting me up for two weeks. The least I can do is contribute.”
“Sebastian.”
“Taylor.” He raised an eyebrow at me, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to eat half of it anyway."
“Thank you,” I said as we left the store.
“It’s nothing.”
It really wasn’t.
It wasn’t him paying—it was the way it felt normal. Like this was how it could work for us. He’d grab the groceries; I’d cover the hardware store run. No discussion. No scorekeeping. Just life. I could see myself doing this with him in a way I’d never been able to picture it with anyone else.
The thought left behind a bittersweet ache—like I was missing something I’d never actually had.
“Man, I could get used to this.” Sebastian turned his face up toward the sun.
I stared at him, his words landing hard. They were too close to my own thoughts to be comfortable.
I absolutely could get used to this, and that was dangerous. We were slipping into something easy without stopping to consider what came next.
We had two weeks, and then what?
“As opposed to?” I asked, keeping my tone light despite the knot forming in my gut.
He opened his eyes and turned toward me.
“In D.C., I’m always on. Aware of who’s watching, who might recognize me, what everything looks like to the not-so-casual observer.
” He shook his head. “But here? Nobody knows me. Nobody cares if I’m talking to this person or that.
No one is trying to interpret every word I say for hidden meaning. I can just … be.”
The relief in his voice made that knot in my gut twist, even as I heard myself say, “You can always just be with me.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “I’m starting to remember that.” He smiled then, but it wasn’t a happy sort of look. In fact, it appeared almost sad as he opened the door and settled into the passenger seat.
“Yeah, me too,” I whispered before sliding behind the wheel.
Back at the house, Sebastian took over my kitchen, unpacking and sorting our groceries while I sat at the counter and watched.
“Are you sure you don't want me to do anything?” I asked for the second time.
“You can go start the grill,” he said, looking up from the steaks he was unwrapping. “And maybe find me a cutting board and a halfway decent knife?”
I pushed away from the counter and rummaged through the drawer until I found my sharpest chef’s knife—which, admittedly, wasn't all that sharp. I set it on the counter next to the cutting board anyway, and Sebastian picked it up to test the weight and balance.
“This’ll work, but just barely.” He pulled the asparagus toward him and started trimming the ends with quick, precise cuts.
I headed out to the deck to scrape down the grill and check the propane. When I came back inside, Sebastian had moved on to mincing garlic, the knife rocking against the board.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked, gesturing at his hands.
“YouTube, mostly.” He scraped the garlic into a bowl and grabbed the basil. “Turns out when you’re single and tired of eating takeout every night, you learn to cook.”
“I never did.”
He huffed out a quiet laugh. “I’m aware. By the way, this knife is terrible.”
“Hey, at least I have one.”
“Singular.” He looked up, flashing me a wide grin before going back to rolling the basil leaves into a tight tube and slicing them into thin ribbons. “One I’m guessing you’ve never had professionally sharpened.”
“Wait. There are people who do that?”
Sebastian’s hands stilled mid-cut. He looked up at me, eyebrows raised, his expression caught between disbelief and amusement. “Taylor.”
“I’m kidding. Mostly.”
I opened the fridge and grabbed two beers, twisting the caps off and sliding one across the counter toward him. “So, what’s the plan here?”
“While you’re on steak duty, I’m going to finish making this caprese and arugula salad, since apparently you need me to introduce you to the concept of eating your vegetables like a big boy.”
“I eat veggies.”
“Lettuce on a burger doesn’t count.”
I took a long pull from my beer, biting back my grin. “What if there’s also a tomato?”
I caught the edge of his smile before he went back to chopping, and I headed out to the deck to fire up the grill.
When I returned, the salad was ready. Sebastian gathered up plates and cutlery and took them out onto my patio.
I grabbed the salad—which, admittedly, looked really damn good—and joined him.
The heat from the grill warmed my face as I flipped the steaks. Sebastian lounged at the table, idly swirling the remnants of his beer as the sun turned the sky a riot of pink and purple.
“It’s so quiet here,” he said, lifting his glass to his lips.
“Yeah,” I agreed, flipping the meat. “Pretty different than D.C. I imagine.”
“That’s an understatement.” He spun to look out over the woods. “I haven’t had a night like this in … I don’t know how long. Years, maybe.”
“Well, we’ve got almost two weeks of it.”
“Right,” Sebastian said. “Two weeks.”
We ate as the sun finished setting and the fireflies started blinking in the grass. Sebastian told me about some of the campaigns he’d worked on, the personalities he’d dealt with, and the crises he’d managed.
I told him about last season—the few wins, the many losses, and the injury that had scared the shit out of me because it wasn’t clear right away how bad it was or wasn’t.
In the end, I’d only been out six games, but the doc had been pretty clear that if I’d landed differently—if my head had hit the boards first instead of my shoulder—it could have been a season-ender.
“That must have been terrifying.” He pushed his food around his plate with his fork.
“Yeah,” I said, setting down my utensils.
“Concussions are always a possibility. I’ve had two already.
One more bad one, and …” I shook my head, pushing the thought away.
“When doctors start using words like ‘permanent damage’ and ‘cognitive decline,’ it puts shit in perspective really fucking fast. That’s when you know it’s time to walk away, whether you feel ready to or not. Thankfully, I’m not quite there.”
Sebastian went still, his fork hovering halfway to his mouth. He set it down carefully, like he needed a moment to process what I’d just said, and then sat back in his seat. “How long do defensemen usually play?”
I picked up my beer and took a long swallow, stalling for time. “Realistically, I've got three to five years left. Maybe more. Maybe less.”
“Then what?”
“Honestly? I don’t really know.”
Sebastian frowned. “You haven’t thought about it?” His tone wasn’t judgmental, just surprised. “Like at all?”
“Well, I’m not really good enough to go into coaching like a lot of other players do, or savvy enough to become an agent. I guess I could go back to school, but I don’t even know what I’d study.”
“Is there anything you’d want to explore you didn’t get to the first time around?”
I blew out a breath and looked away. “I dunno. There’s nothing I’m really passionate about, you know?”
“No hobbies?”
I brought my eyes back to his and gave him a flat look. “Do you have hobbies?”
“Fair point.”
Sebastian was a self-avowed workaholic. Playing professional hockey wasn’t quite the same thing as what he did, but like him, my hours were long and exhausting. When I wasn’t playing hockey, I was thinking about hockey or training for it.
“Still,” he said, his tone dubious.
I got it. Not having a plan in place wasn’t the best strategy, but I genuinely didn’t know what came next.
“Maybe it’s avoidance, or I’m just falling back on self-sabotaging behavior, but right now, my future's just a big old blank.”
“Taylor—”
“Look, I’m just being honest. This house is great, but I’m not the type of guy who’s going to get into flipping historic houses or the real estate business. Hell, maybe I’ll sell it. It’s not like I have a spouse or kids or anything like that to fill it. Or even family nearby to visit.”
Audrey was great, but as an E.R. nurse whose hours were dictated by a Nurse Ratched-like woman who took glee in denying her underlings' vacation requests, our schedules didn’t often sync up. And my parents hated to travel, which meant I was the one who visited them.
“I'm not fishing for sympathy or anything. I’ve always been fine with the way things are." A lie.
But with Sebastian suddenly back in my life, I was remembering what it felt like to have someone. And now I was realizing how much I'd been settling for fine instead of trying to actually be happy. "But yeah, I’ve got some shit to figure out.”
I pushed my chair back from the table. The conversation had become heavier than I liked—touched on things I tried not to think about too often—and I felt myself wanting to retreat. “Anyway, I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Sebastian's gaze followed me as I gathered up our empty dishes, and I could feel him trying to decide whether to push or let it go.
Thankfully, he didn’t push.