Chapter 14
Sebastian
I DIDN’T ASK HER TO stay because I didn’t want to risk saying something I’d regret.
Not because it wouldn’t be true, but because knowing Ruby as well as I did, I knew her besieged heart couldn’t hold what I might have said. Feelings—with a capital F—meant other F-words to her. Future. Forever.
Things she swore she didn’t want, wouldn’t do, and couldn’t care less about. “Maybe when I’m ninety,” she’d told me once. Once when I’d been on board.
But these days, I wanted all the F-words. Even family.
I used to think deep feelings were noise. But she made them sound like music.
Ruby thought she’d only had my body. But somewhere between that first kiss and this very moment, I’d handed her my heart without even realizing it. And now, I wasn’t sure how to get it back.
So I rinsed her smell off my skin, and got into the bed that she’d picked, in a vacation cabin she’d designed, in a place that was entirely her.
We had a lot of work ahead to save it.