Epilogue
SEBASTIAN
T he moon was full, a brilliant glowing nimbus of white gold in an otherwise ink-dark sky. I stared out at the bedroom window at its silver face, trying to keep my thoughts empty and fixed on that one mark.
Otherwise, I’d fall to pieces.
And I’d only just gotten myself together to pack up all my things at the Meyers’s Chelsea home.
I’d arrived there with a single duffel bag, and I was leaving with ten boxes stuffed to the gills.
Chaucer had been there waiting for me with packing tape and stacked cardboard. Her expression was wilted, a little sad and a little arrogant as if she’d told me so.
In a way she had.
Actors , she’d said, like she wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole.
In the future, if I ever found the heart to date again, I’d make that my rule, too.
“I’m sorry,” she’d murmured after half an hour of working silently side by side to disassemble my life as I knew it. “It’s not right, what they do.”
I blinked at her. “Polyamory isn’t wrong, Chaucer.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not some backwoods hick. I meant, the way they take and take until there’s nothing left.”
“I had more left,” I said automatically, feeling the mass of love I had for them in my chest like I was overstuffed with it and bursting at the seams of my skin. “I had two lifetimes worth left for them.”
“So you really loved them, then?”
My laugh was a bitter little cough. “Does it matter anymore?”
She shrugged, sitting on the bed I rarely used in the carriage house folding my clothes. I liked her casualness. Being friends was easy because she made everything easy. No judgement, no games, just the offer of a friendly chat over tea when we had the chance or a stroll to the park when it was a rare lovely day. Even freshly torn in two with heartbreak, she acted like everything was okay, or at least, that it would be.
In an odd way, I appreciated that over sympathy.
I needed to get this done and get the hell out of there before I imploded in on the black hole Adam and Savannah had left in my gut.
“I don’t think they ever loved any of the others. If that helps. It was also very businesslike and proper. They certainly never slept over in the big house.” She bit her lip, smoothing the folds of one of the suits Savannah had bought me. “I’ve worked with Adam for five years, and I’ve never seen him so at ease with himself. I’ve worked with Savannah for five years, and I’ve never seen her act human with anyone, not even him until you. I think you made them real, and I think they’d forgotten how to do that.”
I swallowed convulsively, trying to rid the stone lodged in my throat. “It doesn’t matter now,” I reiterated, trying to convince myself.
“You’re a kid,” she pointed out even though she was only a few years older than me. “You’ll find love again.”
“No,” I whispered because I knew myself well enough to know the mechanics of my heart. It was the one constant in my life of inconstancy. “Even if you can’t always see the moon and the stars in the night sky, they still exist.”
“Poetic, but don’t be so dramatic. You’re nineteen. There will be others. People who actually have the emotional capacity to love you back.”
My smile was a thin slice across my face, sharp and painful. She didn’t understand like I did that the Meyerses did love me back. In fact, I knew in my bones they loved me just as desperately as I loved them.
The difference between us wasn’t love.
It was courage.
Something the nineteen-year-old Italian had in spades that the much older, wiser, and famous duo seemed to be utterly lacking.
Even though rage flickered at the edge of my sorrow, a small part of me was convinced it was something more than that for Adam. The way he’d reacted had been too acute, a trigger for past trauma more than a fresh response to the scandal.
Something like this had happened before, maybe.
Something worse.
If he’d let me, I could have carried some of that weight for him. I could have helped him lay it all out on the floor to organize it properly and painfully piece by piece until it didn’t hurt him so badly.
But he didn’t trust me enough, or maybe himself enough, to do it.
And so here I was.
Packing up my shit only hours after he’d finally told me he loved me.
After he’d inscribed my watch like a fucking blood oath, promising me to be there at the end in all the ways we both wanted to be there for each other.
Pain sliced through me like a blade cutting through butter, top to toe.
I swayed, and Chaucer caught me by the elbow.
Her wide eyes were filled with concern in her freckled face as she stared up at me.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked softly. “You don’t look good.”
Heartbreak didn’t look good on anyone , I thought.
“Eventually,” I said.
“Where will you go?”
As if on cue, which wouldn’t have surprised me given who I knew waited outside for me, a honk sounded.
“Andrea’s. He doesn’t know the details, so I’m not sure he’ll let me stay. If not, I’ll get a hotel. The Meyerses did pay me to be their driver.”
“You could stay with me,” she offered hesitantly. “If you need to.”
Warmth licked at the edges of my cold heart. “That would be very awkward for you.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about a career change anyway.”
My laugh was a mere exhale, but I was still grateful to her. “I won’t put you in that position, but don’t forget my phone number, si ? I’d like to stay friends. Have one person who knows what happened here.”
“I’m happy to be the tombstone marking that grave,” she said solemnly, with a twitch to her mouth. She shifted her arm to my waist and wrapped me in a tight hug. “I’ll miss you around here. And not just because they’ll be unbearable without you.”
I squeezed her back, dipping to kiss the top of her red head. She reminded me a little of my sisters, and I took comfort from it. “ Grazie , Chaucer. I’ll text when I’m settled.”
Moving away from her, I grabbed the folded note I’d left on the dresser and pressed it into her hand.
“Can you give that to Savannah when you get a chance?”
It wasn’t cool of me to ask her, but I had to.
Because I wasn’t willing to give up on her.
She might not have come with me that night in the thick of it, but she wasn’t the type of woman to leave her husband in the middle of a crisis.
It didn’t mean she wouldn’t leave him at all.
I knew, looking at her gorgeous, brokenhearted face, that she’d wanted to say yes.
All I could hope for was that one day she would.
The note said: Vivi la tua vita senza rimpianti, duchessa. Vi aspetto .
Live your life without regrets, Duchess. I’ll be waiting.
It was all I would do.
Both of them knew who I was and what I wanted.
A love that moved the sun and the stars.
And if they didn’t feel that way…
Well then, I wouldn’t see either of them ever again.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall as I collected the last two boxes and went down the stairs where the rest of them waited by the open door. Andrea had already started to move them to his car, and he was on a return trip when my feet hit the landing.
“Sebastian, amico mio , you look like hell,” he stated plainly, fisting his hands on his hips as he studied me.
A broken laugh escaped my mouth, and I gave a little shrug. “I’ve seen better days.”
“It’s your birthday,” he reminded me, and honestly, I’d forgotten since the day had been derailed, but it made sense in a way.
Last year, I’d said goodbye to Cosima on our birthday.
This year, I said goodbye to Savannah and Adam.
I swallowed thickly and shrugged again because it was all I had to offer.
Andrea’s lips thinned. “ Bene , andiamo . Get the last of the boxes, and we will leave.”
I nodded, following him mutely as we efficiently packed the rest of my things into his Lamborghini Urus SUV. When we were done, I turned back to the cottage one last time and committed it to memory. Chaucer stood in the doorway hugging herself, but she lifted a hand when I opened the passenger door, and I reciprocated before closing it on my life as I’d known it for the past year.
Andrea didn’t say a word. He put on a playlist through the speakers, snorting a little under his breath when un anno d’amore started playing. When he moved to change it, I knocked his hand away and settled comfortably against the window, staring out into the dark streets and up at that glowing face of the moon.
“I take it you’ll be staying with me until we leave for New York,” my friend said after some time when we were racing through the outskirts of London on our way to his hamlet in the countryside.
“If you’ll have me. I know Adam is a friend, and we met through him. I’m not sure what this means for you now that our… friendship has ended. If you’re still committed to Blood Oath–– ”
“Let me stop you right there, ragazzo ,” he insisted, holding up a hand. “If I stopped projects the moment someone had a falling out with someone else, I’d never film a movie. I am not trivializing what you have been through, but this happens in an industry where sex and ego are rampant, hmm? Do not worry about me. I fell in love with Blood Oath before I met you, and now, we are friends, si ? Neither have anything to do with Adam Meyers.”
“He’s a producer,” I pointed out.
He shrugged in that same way I had, one shoulder quirked casually. “He’s also an idiot. I doubt either will change because of some silly gossip.”
My sigh exploded from my slack mouth. “You saw?”
“I am a film director. I heard because it is my business to have my fingers to the pulse.”
I waited for him to say more, and when he didn’t, I pressed, “Well, don’t you want to ask me about it?”
“If you would like to,” he offered flippantly. “But I do not care if Adam Meyers kissed a bloke nor do I care if that bloke was you. I care about the hearts and minds of my friends. So if you need to tell me about what happened, I will listen. However, I suggest we wait until we reach the house because I believe this calls for good wine or grappa. But if you want to never speak of this with me, then, that is okay, too, Sebastian.”
He slanted me a look, mouth curling slightly at my shocked expression. “This is friendship,” he said in Italian. “To me, this is what it means. Being here for you however you need me because your grief is yours alone until you want to share it.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, trying not to cry for the millionth time that night. At this point, my eyes were so dry from their effort that my lids felt like sandpaper. “I think for now, I don’t want to speak of it. It’s too… raw.”
“ Bene ,” he said as if the matter was closed. “We will thank our lucky stars that we met, no matter who introduced us, and we will focus our considerable efforts on creating the best movie the world has ever seen, shall we?”
Despite everything that had happened in the past few hours, I found myself grinning at him. Because I might have lost Adam and Savannah, but I hadn’t lost everything.
I still had the friends I’d made, Chaucer, Linnea, and Andrea.
I still had my family, even if we were scattered across the world.
And I still had other dreams.
Ones I was in control of seeing come true.
Was there any other cure for heartbreak as healing as throwing yourself into work?
I was ready to find out.
And if I wondered secretly whether Savannah and Adam would see my meteoritic rise to fame and fortune and wonder forevermore if they’d made the worst mistake of their lives, well, that was a secret I’d keep just for me.
In the next few weeks, things moved quickly, even though my wounds healed at a glacial pace.
Andrea and I moved to New York City to film Blood Oath .
Elena and Mama came with us.
Using some of my savings and money Cosima sent from a particularly lucrative modelling contract, we put a down payment on a small brownstone in Little Italy for them. Andrea had an old friend who ran one of the best Italian kitchens in the city who gave Mama a job, and Elena was accepted in the law program at NYU.
They were safe and happy.
Knowing I’d played a part in that helped fill some of the bottomless pit the Meyerses had carved out of my soul as I worked tirelessly on the passion project they’d set into motion for me. I poured all the angst and turmoil and anger they’d left me with into my role as Roberto. It was healing only a little more than it was painful. Being on set of the film they’d both believed in so profoundly reopened my wounds every single day.
But it meant I gave the performance of a lifetime.
Or at least, that was what Andrea said every time we went over the dailies together.
Honestly, I had to agree with him.
We were just finishing filming in Naples four months after I’d left behind my life in England when the news broke.
Savannah Meyers had filed for divorce from her megastar husband, Adam Meyers.
My heart stopped clean in my chest for so long, I worried it wouldn’t start again.
But when it did with a shuddering jolt, it beat harder and faster than it had in weeks.
Because I thought I knew what this meant.
She was coming for me.
My note had hit its mark, my love had left an indelible tattoo on her heart, and my duchessa was coming for me.
I waited for her to arrive every day for the rest of the week of filming in Naples, leaving orders with the crew to send her directly to my trailer.
When she didn’t come, I figured she was waiting for me to wrap up filming. As a consummate professional, that would be important to her.
I returned to New York City and waited some more.
I woke up with her name in my mouth and went to sleep dreaming of her clothed only in moonlight approaching the side of my bed with open arms.
Six weeks passed, and she did not come.
Finally, I reached out to Chaucer to ask her if she knew anything.
My friend had, unsurprisingly, decided to stay working for Adam instead of Savannah after the split, but last she had heard, Savvy was moving to America.
My heart beat faster. I could taste the metallic surge of adrenaline on my tongue every time my phone rang or my email pinged.
Still, nothing.
And then, two weeks after that, I was out for dinner with Cosima who had recently moved to the city for good, when I noticed I caught a faint whiff of lilac and freesia.
Instantly, my heart moved into my throat, and I lifted my gaze from my sister to scan the restaurant.
“Are you looking for someone?” Cosi asked with a teasing lilt.
Her usually bright yellow eyes had been stale since she moved to the city, but they were crinkled now with mirth.
“I thought I smelled something,” I said before I realized how that sounded and winced.
Her laughter soothed my nerves. “Ah, so you’re looking for a woman. Of course. Well, one just walked behind you to that table over there.”
She tipped her chin over my shoulder with a coy smile half-hidden behind a wine glass.
My breath crystalized with hope in my lungs as I turned slowly to face where she indicated.
And there she was.
Savannah Meyers in the middle of a posh New York City restaurant looking every inch la duchessa . Her short, pale blonde cloud of hair was curled into a soft halo around her delicate face, blue eyes bright even from halfway across the room. She was wearing her iconic white, a cashmere cream dress that accentuated her slight curves, and those red-soled boots I’d watched her buy one day in Harrods last year.
The sight of her punched a hole straight through my chest.
She was here .
And while she didn’t appear to know I was in the restaurant, that didn’t mean she wasn’t in town to find me.
Finally.
“I should go say––” I started to excuse myself to my sister.
But then I noticed the man striding through the tables to meet her.
He was tall and thickly built like a retired linebacker but elegant in his three-piece suit with a head of thick silver hair.
Tate Richardson.
The man Savannah had lunch with and kissed too intimately on the cheek.
A kiss like a love note.
And here he was, stalking across the restaurant to claim her, which he did with a proprietary hand on her chin to tip her face for his kiss.
Savannah reached a hand up to hold her to him.
And a massive fucking diamond ring winked at me under the thousand lights of the chandeliers in the restaurant.
A ring that I knew was not her old engagement ring from Adam.
That ring had been understated and refined, not too big but absolutely beautiful.
This had to be five carats, an enormous rock that called attention to it like a beacon.
And it had mine completely.
I might have made a sound or maybe the reverberation of my shock could be felt across the entire restaurant because when Savannah pulled away from the kiss, her gaze snagged on mine.
I watched as expressions flipped like a stop-motion film across her features: shock, joy, hesitancy, fear, and obstinacy.
We stared at each other across a space cluttered with fashionable diners and clanking ceramics for much too long for propriety, but neither of us moved.
I didn’t breathe and I wasn’t sure I blinked.
Because there she was like an apparition from my dreams, but she wasn’t there for me.
She wasn’t even there for Adam.
She was with a new man.
Engaged to a new man.
Without a word, without an explanation, she had moved on from us both.
What was left of the hope I’d harboured those long months expelled from my body in a gusty sigh as she wrenched her gaze away from me and sat down in the chair her fiancé held out for her.
He sat down across from her, reached for her hand, and she gave it to him with a smile.
She didn’t look at me again.
“Sebastian,” Cosima called, reaching for my own numb hand. “What’s happened?”
How was I supposed to share the dismantling of my entire universe with her?
How was I supposed to explain that I’d lost my dream and, in doing so, had lost the ability to be a dreamer myself?
I stared down at the watch I wore every single day that she and Adam had given me and woodenly took it off my wrist.
“Excuse me,” I said to a passing server. “Could you please give this to the woman sitting at the table near the back with her fiancé? She’ll know what it means.”
He looked unsurprised by my request, but I didn’t watch him deliver it. Instead, I left a handful of bills on the table and left mid-meal to take my sister to a different restaurant for dessert.
She didn’t complain.
But then, she had her own heartbreak in her eyes, so I thought she understood.
The End For Now.