Chapter 24
SEBASTIAN
I had three missed texts from Taylor. The first had arrived about ten minutes into the meeting.
Taylor
I’m sorry things got weird in the car.
The next was timestamped an hour later.
Taylor
I’m assuming you’re already in the meeting.
Call me when you can.
The last one was delivered while I was speaking with David.
Taylor
I hate how we left things.
Please call me.
I stared at the screen, my throat tight. Taylor had every reason to be furious with me, and he was the one apologizing to me?
I typed and deleted four responses before I shoved my phone into my pocket, grabbed my coat, and left the building.
During the half-hour drive, I practiced everything I wanted to say until I thought I could get the words out. By the time I’d figured out precisely how I wanted to approach this conversation, I was pulling into his driveway.
Taylor opened the front door before I’d even made it halfway up the walk.
He was barefoot, wearing sweatpants and a faded t-shirt, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest and watching me approach with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Relief, maybe. Wariness, definitely.
“You didn’t call,” he said.
“No.”
“Or text.”
“No.” I stopped at the bottom of his porch steps and looked up at him. “Can I come in? Please.”
His expression softened, and he stepped aside.
The second the door closed behind us, I pulled him into me, pressing my face into his neck, breathing him in. He smelled like soap and clean laundry and the wintergreen muscle rub the trainers frequently used on his back.
His arms came around me slowly, like he wasn’t sure he’d forgiven me yet but couldn’t hold himself back from touching me all the same.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I know.”
He held me tighter.
We stood there for a long time. When we finally parted, Taylor studied me, his eyes flicking over my face.
“What happened, Seb?”
“I talked to David.”
He swallowed? “About this morning?”
I moved into the living room and lowered myself onto the couch. Taylor followed, sitting sideways to face me, one knee drawn up, his chin resting on it.
“Not just this morning," I told him. "Turns out there's been a significant amount of speculation about Wyatt and me going back years. Us being together was basically an open secret in certain circles.”
Taylor’s jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin at his temple. His gaze dropped to his hands, and I watched him wrestle with his thoughts, attempting to smooth his expression into something neutral. He didn’t quite get there.
“How did hearing that make you feel?” he asked eventually, not meeting my eyes.
“Terrified.” I let my head fall back against the cushion. “And somewhat relieved, if I’m being honest. Which terrifies me even more.”
“Did you confirm his suspicions?”
“Yeah,” I breathed out. “I mean, not exactly. But I did tell him I’m gay.” I rolled my head to look at him. “He said he’d pretty much already figured that out, given this morning.” The corner of my mouth lifted despite the nerves rocking through me.
Taylor unfolded himself from his end of the couch and settled beside me. “How did it feel, saying it out loud?”
My free hand went to my chest, pressing against my sternum where, during that conversation, my heart had felt like it was going to explode in my chest. I’d been convinced that I was going to die before I could finish the sentence.
“Good and bad in equal measure. Good because the second I said it, I realized how badly I’ve wanted to say it.” My throat closed around the next words, and I had to wait until I trusted myself to keep going. “For so damn long, Tay.”
Taylor pulled back, his brow creased. “Seb. Every conversation we’ve had since Vegas has been about how no one can ever find out.
How your career wouldn’t survive it. How we have to be so fucking careful.
” His voice wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t gentle either.
“And now you’re sitting here telling me you’ve wanted to come out this whole time?
” He shook his head. “Make it make sense. Please.”
The accusation landed hard. Not because he was being cruel—because, sadly, he was right.
“I don’t know how to make it make sense other than to say I’m still trying to get a handle on it myself.”
We fell quiet, and I pressed my fingers into the base of my skull, where a knot had been forming ever since this morning.
Taylor didn’t fill the silence with questions or reassurances. He just sat there, steady and patient, giving me the space I needed to find my way to whatever I was trying to say.
I appreciated it more than I could convey because I knew it must be killing him.
“After David left my office, I sat there asking myself why I’ve been holding on so tight.
And the answers I kept coming up with—my family, my career, my clients—they’re real.
My family would likely disown me. Some of my clients would wonder what else I might have lied about.
But when I actually forced myself to sit with it, to be honest with myself, I realized they weren’t the main thing keeping me in the closet.
” I dropped my hand and made myself look at him. “Wyatt is.”
Taylor’s grip on his knee tightened, his knuckles whitening against his sweatpants.
“Everything I’ve built for myself is tangled up in him.
His success is my success. His reputation is my reputation.
If I come out, people don’t just reassess me—they reassess every campaign I’ve ever run for him, every time they’ve seen us together.
And then they start asking questions we can’t afford to answer.
Not when the end goal is the White House. ”
Taylor pushed to his feet and crossed the room, stopping at the window with his back to me. “The White House,” he repeated, his voice flat. “You’re telling me you’ve given up everything to see Wyatt Fucking Hastings elected president?” He spun to face me.
“It’s not that simple, Taylor.”
“It sounds pretty fucking simple from where I’m standing, Sebastian.”
I flinched at the anger in his voice.
This conversation wasn't going how I'd envisioned. I could feel Taylor building a case against me with every word I said.
If I couldn’t make him understand why I’d sacrificed what I had, then every choice I’d ever made collapsed into nothing more than a closeted man too weak to walk away from a toxic relationship.
And I couldn’t live with that being my story.
“Wyatt is a lot of things,” I said carefully. “Some of which you’d be justified in hating him for. But he would be a good president. His policy instincts are sharp, he’s respected by his colleagues, and most importantly, he’s electable in ways that matter—except for the fact that he’s bi.”
Taylor stared at me for a long moment, his expression cycling through disbelief, hurt, and something that looked dangerously close to disgust.
“So you’ve been willing to toss away everything that we could have had to see your boyfriend in the White House? Do I understand that right?”
I exhaled through my nose, the action slow and controlled, the way I did when I was trying to keep from unraveling.
It didn’t work.
“He’s not my boyfriend!” I shot back, a blaze of anger cutting through my guilt. “I ended things with him so I could be with you. You’re my boyfriend.”
Taylor laughed, a short, sharp sound that had nothing to do with humor.
“Am I? Truly? Because it doesn’t feel like you ever actually left him.
You broke up, sure, or whatever you want to call it when you tell your engaged fuck buddy that you can’t be with him anymore.
But you’re still going to protect his secrets.
Don’t you see it, Seb? You’re making decisions about our life based on his needs. ”
He lifted his arms and linked his fingers atop his head, blowing out a heavy breath before turning to pace the length of the room.
“All this time, I’ve thought the biggest obstacle to any relationship we might have was you being in the closet.
But you built the fucking thing for him, and have voluntarily locked yourself in it despite having the gall to claim you wanted to come out for so damn long.
” He lifted his hands and made air quotes with his fingers.
I was on my feet before I even knew I’d moved.
“You think I don’t know that?” My voice cracked, but I didn’t care.
“You think I sat in that office today and didn’t come to the same fucking conclusion?
That I don't know every choice I’ve made for the last seven years has been for a man who used my mind to build his career and my body to get off? ”
Taylor turned to me, his face red. He opened his mouth to respond, but I beat him to it.
“I know what I gave up. I know what it cost me. I know better than anyone that I’ll never get those years back.”
I was shaking again, worse even than before. I balled my hands into fists at my side so he wouldn’t see just how badly.
“So don’t you dare stand there and throw my words back at me like I was performing for you.
I have wanted out of this for so goddamn long that I forgot what it felt like to want anything else.
And the fact that I couldn’t do it—that I was in too deep, too afraid, too …
whatever—doesn’t mean I don’t fucking want it. ”
My chest heaved, and I couldn’t breathe.
The room suddenly felt too small. Too hot.
My vision tunneled, the edges going dark and fuzzy.
I gripped the arm of the couch because my legs suddenly felt like jelly.
I sat down hard—or maybe I fell, I really wasn’t sure—and bent forward, gulping air that didn’t seem to make it to my lungs.
At some point, I became aware of Taylor’s hands on my wrists, gently pulling them away from my hair. “Hey. Hey, look at me.”
His voice sounded muffled and far away, as if he was speaking through water. “Breathe, Seb. You’re okay.”
I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t do anything except try to force air into lungs that had forgotten how to work.
Taylor’s hands moved to the sides of my neck, his thumbs pressing lightly against my jaw, tilting my face up. “Eyes on me. Breathe with me. In through your nose.”
I tried, but my breath shuddered and stalled.
“One more time. Slower.”
I managed a full inhale on the second attempt, and then another.
Taylor continued breathing with me until the room stopped spinning.
“You okay?” he asked eventually.
I nodded and pulled away.
He settled back on his heels, his hands dropping to rest on my knees. I stared down at them—at the knuckles raw from the punches he’d thrown on the ice a couple of nights ago—and felt nothing.
No, not nothing.
I felt broken.
And so fucking angry.
Taylor had taken the most honest thing I’d ever said and thrown it back in my face. Had mocked me while doing so.
A feeling of coldness settled over me, the same one I got right before I went for the jugular with an opponent. The part of me that knew instinctively where to cut so it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
“You want to know what the real tragedy is?” I asked, my voice low and devoid of emotion. “None of this had to happen. Not Wyatt. Not me being in the closet. Not any of it.”
Taylor’s brow furrowed with obvious confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“College,” I spat. “If even once you had said what we were doing together meant more than just getting off, I would have come out. I would have called my parents and detonated my entire fucking life for you. All you had to do was ask.”
I watched the color drain from his face and felt a momentary surge of vindication. But it wasn't more. I was a greedy beast that needed more.
“There would have been no Wyatt," I continued. "No closet I built for someone else. No lifetime of hiding. I couldn’t do it for myself, but I would have gladly done it for you.”
I stood, and Taylor’s hands slid off my knees as I stepped around him. He didn’t move from where he knelt on the floor, just watched me move away from him, completely rocked to his core.
“But you were too busy convincing yourself we were just bros who fucked to notice that I was in love with you.” I moved to the door and paused with my hand on the knob. “That you were in love with me, too.”
And then I left.