Chapter 2 #3
After walking past the main elevators, I punch my code into the keypad and step into the private elevator for the penthouse.
Worry coils through me as the elevator carries me upward. I pull my phone out of my pocket and sigh.
The security system still hasn’t sent an alert to the penthouse of an impending visitor like it’s supposed to.
I step out into the receiving area and stride past the couches to the front door. After unlocking and opening it, I sigh and stop in front of the security system panel.
Music plays down the hall from my mother’s studio, but the living room and kitchen are empty.
“Ma! Nana! Are you home?” I call out.
Movement precedes my mother’s head peeking out from the last room on the right.
“Sebastian! You’re back early. We weren’t expecting you for a few more hours. Is everything okay?”
Suspicion roars through me when she lingers in the doorway instead of starting down the hall toward me.
“Everything would be fine if this thing worked like it’s supposed to. Did your phone chime with a notification?”
“Oh, it um… might have made a noise.”
When she doesn’t offer more information, I sigh, turn the panel screen off, and step deeper into the apartment.
“Ma—”
“Don’t you take another step, young man,” she warns.
I freeze.
She hasn’t used that tone of voice with me in ages.
“Nana is in the garden. She said something about the sunset. Go enjoy it with her while I clean up,” she instructs.
I hold up the bags and angle the label of her favorite shop toward her.
“Is that any way to treat the son who brought you a surprise, Ma?” I tease.
Her eyes widen in delight.
“Are those—”
“Your favorite,” I agree.
“I don’t deserve you, Sebastian. Head on up to the garden. I’ll be right there,” she says.
I try to hide my smirk until I turn the corner and walk out of sight, but her chuckle assures me I failed.
Glowing from her praise, I skirt around the sewing tables in the living room and past the entertainment system to the propped-open back door.
I step into the short hall shared by the main suite and the smaller apartment where I live.
Instead of recalling the elevator—which only moves between the top floor and the private rooftop—I take the single set of stairs and shoulder through the metal door at the top of the landing.
Concern spears through me and I bite back a curse before setting the bags on the table and rushing forward to take the potted plant from weathered hands.
“Nana, you shouldn’t be lifting something so heavy.”
“Don’t scold me, boy. I know what my body is capable of. What am I supposed to do, wait until you come home?”
“No, Nana, you’re supposed to call me. I’ll drop everything and—”
“Which is precisely why I don’t. You’re busy enough as it is. I can’t distract you from becoming successful.”
“First off, I’m plenty successful already. Secondly, where do you want this?” I ask while hefting the plant.
She gestures to the far corner of the patio. I dare a disapproving glance at her before following her directions.
“You can never be too successful, Sebastian, so long as you have a happy balance between work and family,” she says.
The words aren’t new. She says them often.
“Nana, I’ve made so much money I won’t be able to spend it all in my lifetime, much less yours or Ma’s. I might have to adopt an entire football team of kids just so it doesn’t go to waste when I die,” I half joke.
“I have nothing against adoption, but don’t you want kids of your own? Or is there something you want to tell me?”
“He’s not gay, Ma,” my mother says as she sits on the cushioned wicker couch.
“How do you know? He’s never brought a girl home,” Nana quips.
“He’s never brought a man either, but don’t you remember the way his face lit up when he talked about that girl who tutored him in high school?”
I freeze in disbelief.
For fifteen years, I silently begged for whatever breadcrumbs I could find of Penelope, now, in one day, I not only quite literally bumped into her, but my mother also casually brought her up in conversation?
Life is too cruel.
Realizing I never told her how young Penelope was at the time, I snap my mouth closed so fast my teeth audibly click together, and I speedwalk across the rooftop.
I may have been an eighteen-year-old blockhead, but I was not sexually attracted to a twelve-year-old girl. If my face lit up when I spoke about her, it was because she was brilliant.
She still is, except she’s an adult now, and I am very much attracted to her.
It’s too much to explain.
My matriarchs shout for me, but I yank open the door and descend the stairs as fast as my legs will carry me. My mother’s laughter follows me down the hall and to my apartment.
I close the door behind me and drop my forehead to the cool surface.
Unsettled, I sit down with my laptop for a few minutes of work only to curse an hour later when I realize I went down a research rabbit hole and confirmed Penelope’s educational prowess.
I need her expertise.
And her.
Fuck.
I’m smitten.