CHAPTER 29
Maya
“HI,” I SAID, MY VOICE SMALL. “CAN I COME IN?”
Sebastian’s gaze slid from my hands back up to my face. A muscle ticked in his jaw, the only indication he’d heard me. He kept a white-knuckled grip on the doorknob.
His skin was pale, his eyes were bloodshot, and I could smell the whiskey coming off him from a mile away. He looked like hell, but my heart still wrenched at the sight of him.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was devoid of any warmth.
“I just want to talk.” A hard lump cinched my throat. “Please.”
That one word seemed to undo him.
A visible shudder ran through his frame. His grip tightened on the doorknob before he released it and stepped silently to the side.
I walked in, my body soaking in the relative warmth when Sebastian closed the door behind us. My sweatshirt—his sweatshirt—wasn’t adequate layering for such a cold night, but I needed him to see it. To understand that, even if I couldn’t verbalize it, part of me would always belong to him.
The house smelled like him. The lights were off, but a spill of watery moonlight snuck through the curtains, illuminating his living room.
I hadn’t been to his house since he moved downtown a few years ago, but the art, the fireplace, the perfectly worn-in leather furniture—it was all so quintessentially him.
Sebastian came around so he faced me again. “You want to talk. Let’s talk.” His tone was measured, his face carefully blank.
He felt like a stranger, and though he was standing right there, the loss of him hit me all over again.
“I…” I’d rehearsed my speech during the cab ride here, but my mind completely blanked.
It was one thing to play out this scenario in my head; it was another to get the words out when he was looking at me like he didn’t know me.
But I had to do something, so I thrust the envelope at him, my nerves cramping. “Read this.”
His eyes grew colder. “I know what the letter says, Maya. I wrote it.”
Right.
Frustration tightened in my lungs. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I was supposed to walk in, give an eloquent speech about my feelings, and watch everything fall into place, but I couldn’t seem to do anything right these days.
For someone who was used to succeeding at everything on the first try, this was torture, but I deserved it. I didn’t tell him the truth when I’d had the chance, and now I had to start over at square one.
I curled my fingers around the edge of the envelope and tried again. “When did you write it?”
“You know when.”
“I don’t.” The dam broke, and words tumbled out so fast they collided with each other. “That’s what I came here to say. I had no idea you wrote this. I didn’t get—”
“Is this a joke?” Sebastian stared at me in disbelief, his words lashing through me like a whip.
“Is this why you showed up, unannounced, to my house on a Friday night? To torture me some more? Is this fun for you?” His voice was low, furious.
“You’ve made your point. You fucking win, okay?
Congratulations. You win, and I lose. Now leave. ”
“No!” Panic scrambled through my chest. My throat tightened as the frustration boiled over, choking me.
I’d been student body president. Debate champion. I was in charge of communications for a Fortune 500 company, for fuck’s sake. So why the hell couldn’t I communicate properly when it mattered the most?
I drew a shaky breath and silently counted to three before I spoke again.
The pause helped clarify some of my thoughts.
“I didn’t come to rub the letter in your face.
I would never do that. I’m not sure what happened to make you think I received this, but I truly had no idea the letter existed until a few days ago. ”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear. Why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t know,” Sebastian said flatly. “But you lie about a lot of things, Maya.”
The blow landed somewhere south of my gut. Hard. And I couldn’t even fight back because he was right. From lies of omission to straight-up denial, I’d hidden so many truths from him and, most importantly, from myself.
Pressure built behind my eyes. Do not cry. Don’t you dare cry.
“You’re right, but I’m not lying about this,” I said. “You can ask Diya. She helped me dig up my old school stuff last weekend, and I found it in my social studies notebook. I don’t know how it got there or why I didn’t see it earlier, but that is one hundred percent the truth.”
I didn’t have the best track record, but I was desperate to prove that I wasn’t the terrible person he thought I was. That I hadn’t come just to fuck with him when he’d been nothing but open and honest.
He could scorn me as a rival and doubt me as a partner, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him loathing me as a person.
I spotted a tiny crack in Sebastian’s mask before his face hardened again. “I don’t need to ask Diya anything. I know you received the letter when I first sent it. Do you know how?” He took a step toward me, his eyes smoldering with anger. “Because you wrote me back.”
The ground fell away beneath my feet. I swayed, reeling at the revelation. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it? I can tell you what you said, word for word.” His voice was clipped, his recitation cold and deliberate.
“Sebastian, thank you for your note, but I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.
Our relationship isn’t, and has never been, anything more than a semi-friendly rivalry.
I appreciate that you’ve developed romantic feelings for me, but in the spirit of full transparency, I don’t feel the same.
I just don’t see you that way. I’m sorry.
However, I don’t want to make things awkward since our families are friends, and we’ll be attending the same college.
So for the sake of preserving our peace, let’s chalk your letter up to misguided infatuation and pretend it never happened.
Please don’t mention any of this again. Best, Maya. ”
Nausea curdled my stomach. I wanted to throw up. I wasn’t sure what sickened me more—the casual cruelty of that response or the fact Sebastian had memorized every word.
For fourteen years, he’d lived with the mistaken knowledge that I knew how he felt and didn’t care. Every conversation we’d had, every moment we’d shared—tainted by some evil alternate version of me who’d tossed his feelings aside like trash.
How could he stand to look at me after that?
“I didn’t write that.” My voice sounded too thick and watery to be mine. I kept shivering, my skin icy despite the heat blasting through the vents. “I—”
“I still have it,” Sebastian said, his tone cutting. “Your response, signed and dated with your signature.”
No. That couldn’t be right. Someone had to have forged my signature, or… or…
Doubt clawed at me. Had I somehow blacked out and actually written that response? Even if I had, the odds of me completely forgetting about his letter and mine were slim to none.
There had to be another explanation, but I’d figure it out later. I had a more urgent problem to fix at the moment.
“Seb.” I grasped his arms, my chest pinching at the way he stiffened at my touch. “I swear on my entire family’s life that I never wrote it. I don’t know who did. But you know me. Even if I didn’t—even if I felt that way, I wouldn’t have responded so callously.”
Sebastian stared down at me. For a second, I thought I might’ve gotten through to him, but then he shook his head and pulled free of my hold.
“Fine.” The anger drained from his face, and he suddenly looked exhausted.
“You didn’t get the letter, and you didn’t write that response.
It doesn’t matter. I told you, in person, how I felt last month.
I asked whether you felt the same, and you didn’t.
That’s all there is to it. We don’t need to rehash something that happened over a decade ago when I already have my answer. ”
“But you don’t. That wasn’t…” I dragged in another unsteady breath and spoke carefully.
I had to get this right. It was my last chance.
“I didn’t have an answer at the wedding because I was scared, okay?
Scared that things were changing too fast and I wouldn’t know where we’d end up.
I don’t like change, and I hate uncertainty.
They’re inevitable, but you—us—that’s always been something I could count on to stay the same.
So when I started to feel… differently toward you, I didn’t know what to do.
I was terrified of ruining that stability.
Most of all, I was terrified of how real things felt with you.
You made me feel so seen and wanted, and I both loved and hated it because that type of relationship would require me to show up.
Showing up means risk. It means potentially getting hurt.
And I think…” My voice hitched. “I think any hurt that came from losing you would devastate me more than never having you to begin with.”
Sebastian’s face was so stony, he appeared carved out of marble. If it weren’t for the uneven rise and fall of his chest, I would’ve thought he hadn’t heard me at all.
“When you asked how I felt, the doubts started,” I said.
“I wanted to say yes, but being in a different country, knowing we’d slept together the night before…
I wasn’t sure if we were just caught up in the moment.
What if the sex was clouding our judgment?
What if I was something you needed to get out of your system, and you get bored with me in a few months?
This was before I found your letter, and I couldn’t stop second-guessing everything.
I panicked, so I didn’t give you a real answer.
But I’ve had two weeks to sit and digest everything, and honestly…
” My chin wobbled. “I missed you. So much. I had a taste of what life would be like without you, and the emptiness of it overshadowed all of my earlier doubts.”