56. Seb
SEB
Lily was athletic, but she didn’t have his stamina, wasn’t used to going full bore for sometimes hours on end.
By the time they were halfway to Millay Tower, they were both soaked and he was dragging her.
When he looked back, her face was ashy in the sidewalk lights.
He turned sharply, pulling them off the path, toward Coleridge House.
“Seb!”
He didn’t respond, just led her to the great weeping beech that kept window-gazing students from getting too dreamy in the language hall.
Needles of sleet pelted the tree’s waxy leaves, but nothing breached its concealing canopy.
The tree was supposedly a favorite spot for semi-public coitus, something he confirmed as he stepped over a used condom.
“What are you doing?” Lily’s teeth chattered as he cast a warming cantrip around them.
“No one’s following us anymore.”
“You don’t know that!”
He shook his head, amazed as always by her stubbornness. “It doesn’t matter. What are they going to do? Fight us on campus? Even they’re not that stupid. Stealing the disc back was fair play.”
“He’s going to make the next month hell,” she said quietly, the fear audible in her voice.
“He’s going to try,” Seb corrected.
Her pocket buzzed and she took out her phone. “Daphne,” she said, texting back. “She wants to make sure we’re okay. Gemma went home.”
Apparently, Daphne was furious with Gemma.
She was horrified that Gemma had attacked Lily.
Blood, it seemed, was not thicker than water, because she appeared more than willing to help sabotage her sister.
He wondered if he could betray Reg so easily, but he and his brother had never been close enough or had enough in common to properly betray each other.
“I’ll drive you home. You shouldn’t bike in this weather.”
“I don’t mind.”
The wet had washed the blood off her upper lip. She stared past him into the weather. He hated moments like this, when he couldn’t read her, when her mind seemed as impenetrable as a block of granite.
“Lily.”
He leaned against the papery gray bark of the tree, marred by years of names and initials, pulling her into him. She resisted at first, then relented, still unyielding in his arms.
“What’s going on?”
She was mostly shadow, even when she tipped her chin up to his.
“Nothing.”
“Lily—”
“It’s…it’s stupid. I’m just being stupid,” she sighed, turning away. He turned her back to face him. “I was just thinking about break. About you going home, and I’ll just be here. Alone. The way I always am.” The hitch in her voice produced a similar sensation in his chest.
“I’ve always been fine, being on the outside. It wasn’t even that hard, because I could kind of just…hate you all.”
Oh.
“I’ve always been good at not wanting what I can’t have, but now, with you…it’s just…harder. You make it harder.” Her voice cracked.
“I don’t mean to—”
She shook her head. “No, no, you’re not doing anything wrong.
You just…you make things feel possible. Even though they’re not.
Listening to everyone’s plans for break—all the ski trips and the parties, and…
Tori going home with Asher to the City, and…
” She slumped against him, almost bonelessly.
“Of course you can’t bring me to Falconstone.
They don’t even know about us, do they?”
Seb closed his eyes.
“It’s just…you make me forget. And that’s a good thing. Except right now. Right now, it sucks.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He wanted to tell her that she didn’t want to come home with him, that he didn’t even want to go; that Falconstone was barely a home.
He wanted to tell her that Tori went home with Asher because her parents remained convinced that they had a son; that Asher had a string of party invitations lined up to distract Tori and keep her from getting suicidally depressed on Christmas.
“I’d rather stay here,” he said, pressing his lips into her hair. “With you. That’s the truth. Maybe we can go out for dinner before I leave? Us, your mom, and your grandma?”
“Uh.” She flushed a damning shade of purple. “I haven’t exactly told my mom? My Gran knows, but…my mom isn’t exactly a fan of Magicians, especially the Great Houses.”
“Oh.” He laughed. “I see how it is. Some double standard you’ve got there, Perkins.”
“Leave me alone.” She squirmed out of his arms. “Just let me have this. Let me feel sorry for myself.” She giggled as she said it.
“Not a chance,” he said, catching her and pressing her against the trunk of the tree so that she could feel him, even through their sodden layers.
“So, we’re star-crossed lovers? Meeting in secret, in defiance of our parents?
” He kissed a line down her throat, starting at her jaw, nuzzling her scarf away with his nose. “I find that very sexy.”
He felt her eye roll in her words. “We’re not having sex under this tree.”
“No,” he agreed, “that would be very cliché. I can’t abide a cliché.” He smiled against her neck as she gasped at his freezing fingers on her stomach beneath her coat. “When I finally get you naked, it will be properly Shakespearean.”
Her voice was husky as she fought for control beneath his hands. “Define Shakespearean.”
“Sweeping,” he breathed against her ear.
“Rapturous. A romance for the ages. You’ll remember it for the rest of your life.
” She stiffened against him, and he pressed forward, senselessly unspooling syllables, unable to check himself.
“When you’re a million years old on your deathbed, you’ll tell our great-grandchildren—”
“I have to go.” She broke out of his arms and ducked under the branches of the tree, sprinting away into the sleeting dark before he knew what was happening.
Her name died on his lips. He stared after her, at the lace of shadows spread by the beech, wondering what on earth he’d done wrong.
Oh, he jolted when he realized. You idiot.