Chapter Fifteen
“Are you really leaving tomorrow now?” I ask after we’ve been driving for a few minutes. Neither of us said anything when we got in the car, letting the last conversation with his mother sink in.
“No. I need more time with you. I’ll leave Monday like we planned.”
I smile excitedly because it means we’ll have the entire day tomorrow together. “I’m guessing we aren’t going to Sara’s for brunch tomorrow?”
“Not a chance.” He chuckles. “Want to go out tonight?”
“Like… downtown?”
“Or maybe just a bar?” he asks. I already know the type of night we could potentially have if we go out tonight and don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow.
“You’re so stunning all dressed up, and I know we haven’t had that much fun tonight.
Maybe we could change that.” He reaches over and grabs my knee, stroking it gently before dragging it up my thigh.
“Speaking of, are you okay about what happened there? With Sara?” I hadn’t expected his comments about making me the mother of his children, and I can’t ignore the feelings of giddiness floating through me at the thought. But the rest of the conversation with his mom wasn’t exactly pleasant.
He rubs a hand over his jaw while gripping the steering wheel with his other hand tightly. “I just have to hope that one day she’ll get over it.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then I guess our kids won’t have grandparents at all.
” He smiles at me, but I see the heaviness in his eyes from that comment, and the weight of that hits me.
I’m obviously used to living in a world without parents, but the thought of my children not having any grandparents at all makes my heart hurt for them.
Grandparents are supposed to love you in ways that are different from your parents, and I hate that they’ll have no one to run to when they think their father and I are being unfair or too strict.
No one to teach them things that I can’t.
Not to mention, in a world where Wild and I aren’t together, my children would at least have had him as an uncle, but in this life, he’ll be their father, leaving them without that relationship as well.
I don’t realize that a tear has rolled down my cheek until I feel his thumb under my eye. “Don’t cry, baby.”
“I just hate that idea. I’d like for them to have grandparents, and it just never really hit me that they may not.”
We make it to Oak and Ember, a local bar that I’ve been to a handful of times when I’ve been home.
For the most part, Wild and I didn’t go to many bars in town.
Once we were old enough, we wanted to be free to be ourselves, and we knew we couldn’t do that in the town where we grew up and at the bars our friends would randomly frequent.
But I remember the last time I was here, when one of our mutual friends was celebrating his twenty-first birthday.
It was April of my junior year and Wild’s senior year, and we both decided to come home for the weekend.
“I’m surprised you wanted to go here?” I tell him as we make our way inside, wondering why he chose this one of all the bars on the block.
“I thought you liked this place,” he says as we find two seats behind the rich mahogany bar. He pulls out the barstool, and he helps me onto it, then drags me closer to him by my seat and presses a gentle kiss to my cheek.
I turn toward him, letting our noses briefly graze each other. “Don’t you remember the last time we were here?” I ask him.
“No?” He frowns, trying to recall the painful memory I have from this bar.
“This is where you told me you were moving to Seattle.” I swallow. “You had planned to tell me that weekend, but you got too drunk, and you let it slip. I guess you were anxious about telling me… about leaving me, I guess.”
“Fuck. That was here?”
I nod, remembering the heated argument we’d had outside.
Halle: 20 years old
Sebastian: 21 years old
He can barely keep his eyes open, but he’s absolutely going to give me some fucking answers.
“Wild,” I grit out, tears springing to my eyes as I think about the man I love moving across the country in two months.
“You… you said you’d never leave me. Why the fuck would you agree to move to Seattle?
Without me? Or without even talking to me first? ”
“You have school. Another year,” he murmurs before pulling the bottled beer to his mouth. “You couldn’t come.”
“Stop it,” I say, moving toward him and yanking the beer from his hand. “Enough.” He leans up against the brick building and pulls a cigarette out from his pocket. I grab the pack from him, too, because I desperately want him to quit the habit he’s picked up over the last year. “Tell me why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you do this to us? Move so far away from me?” My lip trembles, and while I’m not as drunk as Sebastian, I still feel the effects of all the alcohol I’ve consumed tonight, making me more emotional than usual.
“WHAT US?” he yells, and my eyes widen in response to his outburst. My mouth falls open because not only has he never yelled at me, but I’ve also never heard him speak that way about our relationship.
There’s always been an us. For as long as I could remember, it was him and me.
He’s been the one constant in my life since I was four years old.
The one person I could depend on, and now he was just… leaving?
“Sebastian, what are you saying?” I use his name so he knows I’m serious.
He rubs a hand over his face and lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry I yelled,” he says before he continues. “I got a job, and… this will be good for me.”
“I didn’t think being that far away from me would be good for you,” I retort, thinking about every conversation we’ve ever had regarding that exact subject.
“It was never going to work between us, Saint. No one will ever understand. You deserve better than all of this. Better than me. Better than a forbidden relationship, no matter how much we want it.”
I move toward him, placing my hands on his cheeks and forcing him to look me in the eyes. Tears are rolling down my face at the thought of not being with him, and I swear I can feel my heart breaking in my chest. “Please don’t do this. Don’t… leave me. I love you,” I whisper. “Don’t you love me?”
“With everything I am,” he slurs. “But sometimes that’s not enough.”
“Shit, baby. Let’s go. We don’t need to be here.
I forgot about that. I think I block that night out of my memory.
” He grabs my hands, revealing my tattoo on my wrist, and rubs his lips over it.
“Remember what happened the second I got out there?” I don’t respond because, of course, I do, but I want him to say it.
“I regretted it and called you immediately, telling you how much I missed you and how sorry I was for leaving you like that.” He kisses my knuckles one by one before resting my open palm against his cheek.
“I’ll never stop being sorry for that. For starting a life so far away from you when you were always the center of it,” he says before pressing a kiss to my open palm.
“I guess I’m sorry for not coming there after I graduated and going to grad school in New York.
” I briefly considered moving to Seattle to be with him, but a part of me—a part I often hated on the nights when I missed him so much—didn’t want to follow a man.
He’d made a decision for him, and I wanted to do the same.
So I moved to New York for business school, which was a loose plan Wild and I had made in high school.
He was the one who up and changed everything without talking to me first.
Why should I follow him when it wasn’t what I wanted?
“I’m not upset about that. I’m proud of you for going after what was best for you and your future career.”
The bartender, a man on the shorter side with tattoos covering every inch of skin that’s exposed except on his face, approaches us, and I order a dirty martini.
Wild orders a scotch along with two shots of tequila for us.
“So we’re taking an Uber to the hotel, then.
” I giggle just as the bartender puts the shots in front of us.
“It’s only ten minutes from here. Either that or we walk,” he tells me, reminding me how terrible my sense of direction is because I definitely hadn’t realized that.
The bartender is back with our other drinks, setting them down in front of us and taking Wild’s card before retreating to the center.
“Ready to take these?” He holds his shot glass up, and I tap mine gently against it. We down them, and just as I’m taking a sip of my martini, I hear my name.
“Halle St. John and Sebastian Wilder? Well, I’ll be damned.” I look up just in time to see Noah Carr, a friend from high school, making his way toward us.
“Jesus, do people not leave this town?” Wild murmurs just before Noah makes it to where we’re seated.
He looks about the same, just with dark facial hair against his brown skin and a little more weight on him.
He’s wearing a cashmere sweater with a button-up beneath it and jeans, giving him the look of a young professional who just got off work on casual Fridays.
“Noah!” I stand and let him envelop me in a tight hug before he picks me up off my feet. When he puts me down, he moves to Sebastian and embraces him as well before slapping his back.
“What are you guys doing here? I thought you lived in New York and you were out in Seattle?” Noah sits down in the empty seat on the other side of me.
“My mom is getting married, and tonight was her engagement party,” Wild answers, and I can already see the annoyance at him sitting down, meaning he wants to catch up.
“Oh shit, that’s awesome. Tell her congratulations,” he says.
“Do you still live here?” I feel a little bad that he clearly keeps up with me, and I have no idea where he lives.
“Sure do.” He chuckles. “Came back right after college. I guess I wasn’t as brave as y’all. Say, what are you doing tonight? I’m meeting Zack. You guys should hang out.”