Chapter 27
TAYLOR
The house was dark when I let myself in. I dropped my bag by the door, shrugged off my coat, and let it fall to the floor. I loosened my tie, pulled it free, and tossed it to the side, not really caring where it landed.
I stood there in my empty foyer for a long moment, my keys still in my hand, feeling listless and unmoored.
The Marauders had unexpectedly won tonight. I should have been riding high—Brooklyn was a tough team, and I had fed Bell a gorgeous pass in the third that he’d buried top shelf.
Everyone else had been buzzing on the flight home. Not me, though. I’d sat by a window with my headphones in, curled in on myself, listening to nothing but white noise.
I unbuttoned my shirt collar and headed to the kitchen for a drink of water. My body was sore and dehydrated, and I hadn’t eaten enough today. I could practically hear Bell’s voice in my head, reminding me that I needed to take better care of myself.
Before I reached the fridge, my phone rang. I fumbled it out of my pocket to see Sebastian’s face lighting up the screen.
My heart slammed into my ribs so hard I had to grip the edge of the counter with my free hand to steady myself. For half a second, I was convinced I was hallucinating—that my exhausted, sleep-deprived brain had finally snapped and was showing me what I wanted to see.
“Sebastian?”
A low sob came through the line, followed by, “I miss you.”
My knees gave out. I turned and pressed my back against the fridge, sliding down until I was sitting on the kitchen floor, the cold tile bleeding through my dress pants.
“Seb,” I breathed out, not trusting myself to say more.
Everything I wanted to tell him—that the last couple of weeks had been the worst of my life, that I’d barely slept, that I’d picked up my phone a hundred times even though he’d told me not to contact him—all of it was fighting to come out at once, and I was terrified that if I said too much, I’d spook him and we’d be back to square one.
“I know I told you I need space,” he said, his voice raw and shaking in a way I’d never heard it before. “I know I told you not to contact me, and that I shut you down when you tried.”
The Sebastian I knew simply didn’t sound like this. He was measured and precise and very nearly always in control.
“It’s okay,” was all I could think to say.
It wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot. But if agreeing kept him on the line, I’d have said the sky was green, and the grass was blue.
“None of it’s okay, Tay.” He pulled in a shaky breath and then sniffed. “You were right about Wyatt and me. About all of it. I was too … I reacted like an asshole. I was being a coward.”
I pressed the heel of my free hand against one of my eyes and breathed through the pressure in my sinuses. “You’re not a coward.”
Yes, I’d called him that. And I’d meant it at the time, when my anger was boiling over, and I couldn’t see past it.
I’d been so focused on what Sebastian wouldn’t give me that I’d never stopped to consider what his relationship with Wyatt had cost him.
He’d spent years with a man who was never going to choose him, and rather than walking away, he’d made himself indispensable instead.
It took a certain kind of bravery to show up every day for someone you knew was never going to put you first.
And when Sebastian had asked me to be patient, to trust him, to love him even when the situation was impossibly hard, I’d lasted all of five minutes.
“I said shit I shouldn’t have,” I managed, my voice thick. “I was jealous and cruel, and I used things you’d told me in confidence, and I don’t … I don’t know how to take that back. How to make it right.”
“You weren’t wrong, though,” he said, his voice tired and shaky.
I’d been second-guessing every word I’d said during our fight, wondering if my jealousy had warped everything—if I’d seen threats where none existed, or if I’d been so terrified of losing him that I’d manufactured reasons to push him away first.
I’d been drowning in doubt, and those four words managed to pull me to the surface.
I felt like I could breathe again for the first time in weeks.
I dragged the phone away from my ear to swipe at my eyes with the back of my wrist before bringing it back to my ear in time to hear him say, “I’ve been thinking about how long I’ve been hiding.
I used to tell myself it was for Wyatt, for the cause, for something bigger than me.
But the reality is, I couldn’t even remember what I was protecting anymore.
It just became the way things were. I hate to say it was a habit, because that’s too simple an explanation, but yeah. Something close to that, at least.”
Easy as it was to blame Hastings, he was only part of the equation. Sebastian’s parents—the Carruthers name and the politics attached to it—had been shaping Sebastian’s choices long before he had ever entered the picture. I might have missed a lot back in college, but I hadn't missed that.
“And your parents?” I asked, afraid to open a can of worms that he might not be ready to open.
Sebastian exhaled loudly, followed by a wet-sounding chuckle. “One identity crisis at a time, Tay.”
We fell silent then for a long beat, though I could hear that his breathing had become steadier, less erratic.
“I did something today,” he whispered eventually.
Through the phone, I heard the rustle of sheets and the creak of a mattress—Sebastian shifting in bed.
“What’s that?”
“I came out to the team.”
The phone nearly slipped out of my hand, but my grip tightened on it just in time. “Say that again.”
“At work. I came out.”
What the ...
“And how did that go?”
I was proud of myself for having the emotional intelligence to ask that, rather than blurting out a hundred other inappropriate questions.
Questions like, “What were you thinking?” And “Was it terrible?” Or “Was it amazing?” and “Again, what were you thinking?”
Mostly, what I really wanted to know was “Why now? Why these people?”
Through the line, I heard him chuckle. “Maya was doing her usual Monday bit—you know the thing where she introduces everyone on the team, calling me the straight white guy. This time, I corrected her.”
“You corrected her? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Sebastian confirmed with a small huff. “I mean, I planned it. Sort of. Turns out, it was surprisingly easy.”
“Seb,” I breathed out. “That’s … I don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just … I needed you to know that I’m really trying.”
I was moving through the kitchen and down the hall before I'd even registered that I was no longer on the floor, grabbing my keys off the hook by the door.
I scooped my jacket up, wrestling my arms into it one at a time while I pinned the phone between my ear and shoulder.
I locked the front door behind me and practically ran to my car.
When I started the engine, I transferred the call to my speakers.
“Tell me everything,” I said, my voice steady despite how badly my hands were shaking.
Sebastian described Maya’s reaction to his announcement and how David later brought him pizza. He even told me that Wyatt had been blowing up his phone, but he’d ignored every call and text.
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel on instinct—Wyatt’s name would probably always trigger this territorial feeling in me that I wasn’t proud of.
But Sebastian was volunteering this information unprompted.
He wasn’t deflecting or minimizing the situation.
He was offering up the truth, handed over freely.
That was new.
And it mattered more than I knew how to say.
“Are you still at the office?”
I turned onto the highway and pointed my car toward downtown.
“My apartment. Why?”
“Just wondering,” I said, pressing my foot on the gas. I was well over the speed limit, but the road was empty at this time of night, so I probably wouldn’t get pulled over. If I did, I just hoped the officer was a hockey fan. “Keep talking. I missed your voice.”
“About what?”
“Anything. I don’t care.”
Sebastian's voice softened, reminding me of late nights back in our dorm room, when everything was still so new and confusing. We’d lie there in the dark, talking about everything and nothing until one of us eventually fell asleep.
“I shaved my beard off tonight,” he told me.
I smiled for the first time in days. “Yeah?”
“David told me I looked like shit, and I couldn’t argue, so ...”
“I liked the beard.”
I liked him clean-shaven, too. I liked every version of him.
“It was a mess. I was a mess. These past few weeks have been terrible, Tay.”
Hearing Sebastian so easily admit that this separation had been just as hard for him as it’d been for me finally settled the constant roiling in my stomach. I hated that he’d been hurting, but I liked knowing that I hadn’t been alone in my misery.
“Taylor?”
“Hmm?” I said, slowing down to take the exit at a safe, reasonable speed.
“Are you driving?”
“Nope,” I said, suppressing a grin.
“I can hear road noise.”
“That’s the, uh … the street. I’m sitting outside. A motorcycle just drove by.” It was the worst, most convoluted lie I’d ever told, but no one had ever accused me of being quick-witted.
“It’s November,” he countered skeptically.
“I run hot after games. You know this.”
It wasn’t unusual for me to wander around the house in nothing but boxer briefs after games, my skin still radiating heat hours later, while Sebastian sat on the couch wrapped in a sweatshirt and blanket like a human burrito.
“You had a game tonight.”
“Yeah,” I said, not bothering to turn on my blinker as I slowed down and took a hard right turn. “We finally managed to beat Brooklyn.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should let you sleep,” Sebastian said, his voice filled with apology.
“I’m not tired.”
Tired wasn’t even in the same universe as what I was feeling right now. Every nerve in my body was lit up, a constant spike of adrenaline sending a tingle through my limbs. I was going to crash spectacularly at some point, but that was a problem for Future Taylor.
“You’re always exhausted after games, though.”
“Not tonight.” I scanned the empty road and blew through a four-way stop, only slowing down when I crossed Franklin and entered the Old Port district.
“Hey, Seb?”
“Yeah?”
“What does your building look like again?”
“What? Why?”
“Just curious. I’m … uh, trying to picture where you are.”
Another terrible lie.
“It’s this beige modern block that doesn’t really match any of the surrounding buildings. There’s a coffee shop on the ground floor that’s never open when I actually need it to be.”
I spotted it almost immediately and pulled into the garage next to it. My tires squealed as I stopped in the nearest open space. I killed the engine, grabbed my phone, and climbed out, walking fast.
“Is your light on right now?” I asked, standing beneath what I hoped was his window.
“How would you know my—” His breath caught. “Taylor.”
“There’s a light on the third floor. Tell me that’s you.”
“That’s me,” he whispered. “I’m the only one staying here right now.”
“Buzz me in, Seb.”
A sound that was a mix between a laugh and a gasp reached my ear, and then the building’s front door buzzed loudly.
I yanked it open and took the stairs two at a time.
Sebastian was standing barefoot in a third-floor doorway, dressed in navy sleep pants and a white t-shirt, his face freshly shaved. His eyes were red-rimmed and wide, looking at me like it was impossible that I was actually here.
I didn’t pause. I didn't slow down. I walked straight to my man, cupped his face in both hands, and kissed him.