Chapter Nine #2
“Clearly.” Loren gestured at Sebastian’s face, and he rolled his head, feeling it click as he did.
It was a mistake, saying it that way. He knew that before Loren’s face changed. But the defence had come up on its own before he could think about it. Because he needed to keep things simple.
“Look, if it’s not serious, it’s not serious,” Sebastian stated, shrugging. “He’ll get the surgery and be fine. I don’t really think it needs my attention.”
Loren stared at him for one full second.
Then her mouth tightened.
“Tr?i oi, em khó ch?u quá,” Loren muttered. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“‘I got everything I wanted, but I’m still sad.’” Loren mimicked Sebastian’s voice terribly, pulling faces as she did, then went back to normal. “What is so wrong in your life that you can’t even feign some human decency for your family?”
“Fuck you,” Sebastian spat, leaning back in his chair as his hands dropped beside him. He forced them down against the seat instead of letting them curl on the table where she could see. “You don’t know shit about my life.”
A few people at the next table glanced over.
“Because you’re self-absorbed.” Loren threw her hands up, leaning back in her chair. “Like, fuck, man. You try to act all stoic, but the minute something doesn’t go your way or gets under your skin, you run away.”
“That’s not true.”
“Leaving home.” Loren counted on her fingers. “Changing schools when you got bullied once. Barely talking to me because of our parents. Leaving the Rams because of Felicity.”
“I left the Rams because I got offered a better opportunity,” Sebastian defended, forcing his voice to stay low.
“You left the Rams because your only friend didn’t want to be around you anymore.”
Sebastian bit the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tasted blood.
Felicity.
The name cut through him.
For a second, he wasn’t at Stella’s. He was in a different café, years earlier, sitting across from Felicity while she laughed into her cup because he had said something too dry to be funny to anyone else.
She had been the first person outside his family who seemed to understand the shape of him without demanding anything.
High school first, then the Rams. Messages before games.
Calls after bad ones. Her in the stands when she could manage it.
She had been the first person he told when he got signed.
The only person he had ever really let close.
Then she had wanted more.
Sebastian had told her the truth one night because he was drunk and stupid and couldn’t keep lying.
Felicity had only gone quiet in pieces after that.
Shorter messages. Longer spaces between replies.
Plans cancelled because something had come up.
Less eye contact when they did see each other.
She didn’t know how to be friends with someone she wanted more from, and Sebastian didn’t know how to ask her to stay without making both of them feel worse.
The offer from the Mustangs had come a week after they stopped talking entirely.
Money had still mattered. More than Loren understood. The better contract had been real, the security real, the chance to build something bigger than the version of life his grandparents had patched together for him from what little they had.
He hadn’t left Geelong only because of Felicity. But she had made it easier.
Sebastian’s palms pressed harder against the chair. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
Marcos flashed behind his eyelids. Not the way he had looked during what happened, but after. Eyes wide, mouth gone uncertain, gaze refusing to stay on Sebastian’s. The version that had seen too much and left anyway.
He opened his eyes.
Loren was still watching him, but her face had softened. Not by much. Enough for him to see she knew she had pushed too hard and wasn’t sure whether to take it back.
She didn’t.
“What do you want me to do?” Sebastian asked.
Loren pushed her mug to the side and leaned forward onto the table. “I don’t know.”
Sebastian sighed, bringing his hands back to the table and running his fingers along the fine cracks in the wood.
Stella’s had the kind of tables that looked deliberately old even though half the damage was probably real.
He followed one crack with his thumbnail until it disappeared beneath the edge of his mug.
Loren watched him do it. “Look,” she started, reaching her hand across to rest on Sebastian’s. “I know you haven’t forgiven them fully. Or want to get close to them again. But I have. And I am. And I don’t want to lose them.” She paused. “And sometimes I just want to talk to my fucking brother.”
Her hand was warm over his.
Sebastian stared at it, his heart slamming harder in his chest. He nodded. “Yeah. I know. I… I get that.”
“Honestly,” she added with a shake of her head, “none of this lying bullshit you do.”
He glanced up from their hands.
There was too much sitting behind his teeth, wanting to come out. Too much truth he had already hidden behind so many lies.
None of it came out.
Loren’s thumb shifted once over his knuckle, small enough that he could have pretended not to notice.
Sebastian swallowed. “Okay. Yeah. I can do that.”
He didn’t know if that was a lie. He didn’t want it to be. But for now, he was hoping it was enough.