CHAPTER 23
Maya
SEBASTIAN’S WORDS HUNG IN THE AIR.
The ensuing silence was so pure, so absolute, that my ears rang from the clarity.
She wasn’t the one I wanted to be here with.
“So who did you want to be here with?” The question slipped out with a touch more breathlessness than I would’ve liked.
For the past week, my mind had churned out dozens of images of what Sebastian’s date might look like—statuesque blondes, sultry brunettes, voluptuous redheads. There’d been no Stop button, and after all that mental energy, it turned out the date didn’t exist at all.
I hated the tingle of relief in my chest.
“That’s not how this works, Sal,” Sebastian murmured. His grip was firm and steady, and I couldn’t pull away even though I knew I should. “One question per person. It’s my turn.” His eyes bored into mine. “Why didn’t you bring your date?”
My mouth dried, the truth hovering on the tip of my tongue.
I really had planned on bringing Zack. After my fight with Sebastian, I’d gone home, updated my RSVP, and sent Zack the wedding itinerary.
But in the end, I’d chickened out and canceled, saying it was too late for me to add a plus-one. I would’ve brought him mainly to spite Sebastian, and that wasn’t fair.
I knew deep down he was just a placeholder because when I pictured myself dancing with someone, I didn’t see Zack, Nikhil, or any of the dozens of men I’d been on dates with.
I saw dark hair and amber eyes, tanned skin and an infuriating smirk. I heard the trace of a French accent and the familiar cadence of a lazy drawl. Anything else felt wrong, like I was trying to squeeze into shoes that were a size too small.
And that scared the crap out of me because I was not supposed to feel this way about Sebastian Laurent. I couldn’t. It went against the natural order of things.
“Zack couldn’t make it.” I forced the truth back down. “Work.”
Sebastian’s eyes flickered. “You’re lying again.” It was a gentle reproach, but with one look, I felt like he could dig beneath my skin and uncover all my secrets.
The DJ returned from his break. Music blasted again, muffling the rising panic in my thoughts, but pressure ballooned behind my ribcage like a bubble on the verge of popping. The walls seemed to close in on me, and my breaths came out in short, shallow bursts.
“I need—I need air.” I yanked my hand out of his and shoved my way through the newly gathered crowd, my ears ringing. The other guests melded into a blur of bright colors and warped laughter.
I kept moving, too afraid to stop, until I burst out of the tent and into the open night.
I gasped in a lungful of fresh air, and another, and another, until my heart slowed and the world steadied.
Eventually, my vision cleared, revealing the gardens separating the wedding tent from the main hotel.
Ten-foot hedges lined the path to a small lake dotted with lily pads.
Strings of fairy lights twinkled overhead, and the scents of jasmine and marigolds perfumed the air.
A pale wash of silvery light cast an ethereal glow over the scene, but I couldn’t enjoy it.
The soundproofed tent masked the party going on inside, and the sudden silence was disorienting.
“Maya.”
I spun around, my breath hitching again when Sebastian came into view. The darkness pooling near the hedges hid his expression until he stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. For once, he wasn’t wearing his trademark smirk.
“You shouldn’t have followed me.” I hated how my voice trembled. “I want to be alone.”
“Second lie of the night.” He stepped closer, his eyes smoldering with challenge. “Care to tell me another so we can make it an even three?”
“Stop it.” A burst of anger ignited in my chest. “I am so sick of you acting like you know everything all the time. Maybe I’m a liar, but at least I have the courage to give you an answer.” I held his gaze. “You never answered my question earlier, Sebastian. Who did you want to be here with?”
His jaw ticked.
“You can’t say because you’re either afraid or you don’t know.
” Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. “You didn’t bring that poor girl because, what?
You’re afraid of intimacy? She’s too easy, so you got bored?
Or maybe it’s because you’re Sebastian Laurent, and no one can meet your impossible standards.
How long did you string her along before you decided she wasn’t good enough? ”
Sebastian remained silent, but his eyes darkened with each passing second. He was so still he could’ve passed for one of the marble statues dotting the gardens.
I forged ahead through the danger brewing in the air.
“Tell me.” I couldn’t make sense of the emotion surging in my chest. Why should I care about Sebastian’s mysterious relationship with a girl I’d never met?
But I did, and that pissed me off even more.
“Does she know what happened at the bar on Valentine’s Day? Do you—”
“No!” The word exploded out of him with enough ferocity to stun me into silence. Restrained fury carved through his composure. “She doesn’t know, and I didn’t string her along because she never fucking existed. I never asked anyone to be my date. There’s your answer. Are you happy now?”
Just like that, my anger seeped out of me, leaving me hollow and confused. “Then why did you say you did?”
Sebastian’s harsh laugh singed the air. “For someone so smart, you can be so goddamn clueless.”
He took another step toward me. I swallowed, my nerves taking flight. He was so close I felt the heat radiating off his body. “I told you I had a date because you were going to bring that guy from the bar, and I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing you two together. So I lied.”
Despite the heat, goosebumps pebbled my skin. “That doesn’t make sense. You hate me.”
Another laugh, this one low and laced with frustration. “I never hated you, Sal,” Sebastian said. “Not once. Not ever.”
The ringing in my ears returned.
I was good at connecting the dots. I solved puzzles in my free time, and I played logic games for fun. But Sebastian had always been an enigma, and my brain couldn’t reconcile what he was saying with the long-standing preconception I’d had of our relationship.
He can’t mean…
“If I hated you, I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t—” He stopped, his throat working. “I never hated you,” he repeated. “Not even after what happened.”
It wasn’t his first time alluding to something I’d done in the past. It could be any of the thousand times I’d insulted or one-upped him, but I had a feeling he wasn’t referring to those. It was something deeper.
I tried to ask for clarification, but the question lodged painfully in my throat.
Instead, I stared up at him, my blood pounding. I’d known him forever, but this was my first time really seeing him. The honesty. The longing. The anguish that reached into my chest and twisted something deep inside me.
I saw him, and I’d never witnessed anyone or anything more beautiful.
“You said you wanted to be alone, so I’ll give you a choice. I can walk right back in that tent, and we’ll pretend this never happened. Or I can stay.” His eyes bored into mine. “What do you want, Sal?”
Once again, words refused to come out.
I felt like an observer of my own life. My brain was screaming at me to speak, move, do something, but I was utterly frozen.
“Tell me the truth. No more lies.” Sebastian’s breath whispered across my skin. “Do you want me to leave?”
A touch of vulnerability crept into his voice, and that was what undid me.
I kept my eyes on his as I slowly, deliberately shook my head no.
Time suspended for a long, agonizing moment.
Then his breath shuddered, and I barely had time to inhale before Sebastian crushed his mouth against mine.
The world upended. There was no other way to put it.
Everything I thought I knew—every certainty, every preconceived notion—flew out the window as Sebastian Laurent kissed me like a man starved… and I kissed him back.
I slid my fingers into his hair, reveling in its softness while he cupped the back of my head and deepened the kiss.
He tasted like strawberries and whiskey, hunger and desperation, and I couldn’t get enough.
It was like I’d had my first hit of sugar after a lifetime of deprivation, and I shamelessly lapped it all up.
My other hand fisted the front of his shirt. He was the only solid thing left in a sea of sensation, and if I didn’t hold on to him, I’d melt into a puddle right there at his feet.
I whimpered when Sebastian broke away to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss against the hollow of my throat. I wondered if he felt it, that wild flutter of a pulse gone rogue. My lungs burned, and each heartbeat was a drum of raw, aching need.
My fingers dug harder into his hair as he kissed his way up my neck. “You still think I hate you?” he murmured.
“No,” I gasped, my head falling back when he nipped a particularly sensitive spot behind my ear. Tingles exploded throughout my body.
A low groan rumbled from his throat. He dragged his mouth across my jaw, sending new bursts of electricity across my skin. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” he whispered. “T’as encore un meilleur go?t que je ne l’imaginais, mon ange.”
His lips claimed mine again, and any questions I’d had about how long that was, exactly, floated away like dust in the wind.
It didn’t matter how many years we’d been rivals or how deeply I’d loathed him at one point in my life. None of that seemed real. There was only the grip of his hand in my hair and the slide of his tongue against mine. Everything else was swallowed up by a flood of desire.
I sighed, drunk on the moonlight and the potency of our kiss. It was diabolical, the way he shattered my every inhibition with one touch.
Sebastian’s free hand gripped my waist. I arched into him, urging him closer, desperate—
“Maya!”
My name drifted over on the wind.
I ignored it and continued the kiss. I needed—
“Maya, are you out here? Helloooo?”
The voice was now close enough for me to recognize Priya’s singsong cadence. My eyes flew open as the realization tossed an ice bucket of water over the moment.
Sebastian and I wrenched apart just in the nick of time. My sister rounded the corner, her face lighting up when she spotted me.
“There you are!” Her eyes were suspiciously bright. I wondered how many drinks she’d had after she left the dance floor. “I was looking all over for you. Radhika wants to get a picture with all the cousins, like, right now.”
“Okay,” I squeaked. I cleared my throat. “I mean, I’ll be right there.”
“Great!” She waved at Sebastian. “Hey, Seb.”
He gave her a grim smile, his face flushed.
Thank God Priya was so drunk. If she were sober, she might’ve questioned what we were doing alone in the gardens, our clothes rumpled and our chests heaving as we struggled to catch our breath.
As it stood, she didn’t ask any of those things. She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the party, chattering the entire way about the celebrities she’d met that night.
I looked back at Sebastian. He hadn’t moved from his spot by the hedges.
Our eyes connected, and another breathless shiver rolled down my spine. I was so distracted I didn’t notice my dupatta slipping off my shoulder and fluttering to the ground.
Before I could say anything—a goodbye, maybe, or a “let’s talk later”—Priya pulled me into the tent, and chaos enveloped us once more.