Chapter Sixteen
Sebastian
I carried Jesse into the bedroom, and we tumbled onto the bed in a mess of rumpled clothes, bare skin, and tangled limbs. My lungs burned, my body sang, and I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face if I tried.
“Welcome home, dear,” she panted, still catching her breath.
Laughter rumbled in my chest. “Now that’s how a woman should greet her man.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I can do that. Now put on an apron and cook me dinner.”
I chuckled, still dazed with the high of being inside her. “May I take a couple of minutes to catch my breath, Princess?”
“Fine. I’m feeling generous.”
We both laughed, and something warm spread through me that had nothing to do with sex. This felt right—her laughter in my ear, her body curled against mine. I felt I could get used to this.
But then her smile faded, and the air shifted.
She cleared her throat, hesitant. “So… is your sister—I mean, did you explain…?”
The worry in her green eyes tugged at me. I forced an easy smile, wanting to chase it away. “I told her I turned off my phone because I was with someone very special.”
Her face softened, and the tightness in my chest eased.
“I try to stay in touch,” I explained, brushing my thumb over her knuckles. “She’s always worried that I’ll get into an accident on my bike.”
Her brows pulled together. “Your bike? You mean a motorcycle? I didn’t know you had one.”
“Yeah. I don’t use it much. Mostly it just sits gathering dust in a parking garage over on Bleecker.”
Her expression darkened instantly. “You shouldn’t ride a motorcycle in New York City. It’s dangerous. Those things are coffins on wheels.”
I snorted, trying to play it off. “Come on, that’s an exaggeration.”
But the look she gave me wasn’t playful—it was haunted. “That’s what my best friend in high school thought, too. He died in a motorcycle accident on his seventeenth birthday. Him and his girlfriend. Gone in an instant.”
Her voice cracked, and the raw pain in it hit me in the gut. As she told me about Jake—the party, the accident, the instant death—I felt the blood drain from my face. I pictured Jesse at seventeen, getting that phone call, losing someone she loved like that.
My throat went tight. “I’m sorry, Jesse. That’s awful. But I swear, I’m always careful.”
Her jaw tightened. “So were they. They wore helmets and everything. But a helmet doesn’t protect you from a drunk driver plowing through a red light in a two-ton car.”
The fear in her voice decided it for me. “Would you feel better if I promised not to ride anymore?”
“Yes.”
The relief in her words made me ache.
Gratitude softened her whole face. “And I think your sister would thank me, too. I didn’t exactly make the best impression on her this morning.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said with a smile. “If I like you, she’ll like you too. Maybe the three of us can have dinner sometime.”
Panic flared across her face like tabloid headlines screaming in red ink. She reached for the sheet to cover herself.
I couldn’t help grinning. “Is that modesty, or pure terror at the thought of meeting my sister?”
Her shrug was equal parts sass and nerves. “Both. She seems… intimidating. And very protective of you.”
“She is both. She had to play mom more than big sis. Raising a teenage boy isn’t easy.
I owe her everything.” I rolled onto my side to face her, my shirt still hanging off one shoulder.
“But you don’t have to be intimidated. Once she gets to know you, she’ll love you.
And more importantly, she’ll respect my choice. ”
Jesse’s fingers traced idle patterns on the sheet between us. “How old were you? When she had to take over?”
I’d known this question would come eventually. Jesse had a way of asking the things that mattered.
I cleared my throat. “Fifteen. My parents died in a car accident. Black ice on I-95. Jan was twenty-one, had just graduated from college.”
Jesse’s hand stilled. “Sebastian, I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” The words came automatically, but they didn’t feel quite as hollow as they used to. “Jan had been accepted to Columbia Law School with a full scholarship. It was her dream school. She deferred and moved back home to become my legal guardian instead.”
“She gave up law school?” Jesse’s eyes widened.
“For three years. She didn’t start until I went to MIT. Said she couldn’t focus on school while trying to keep a teenage boy from burning down the house.” I managed a smile. “Which, given some of my science experiments, was a legitimate concern.”
She smiled faintly, her gaze tinged with sadness.
I decided to lighten the mood. “She was terrifying, actually. Curfews, homework checks, the whole parental authority thing. I gave her hell for it.”
“I’m sure you were a perfect angel,” Jesse said dryly.
“Oh, absolutely.” I grinned.
Her fingers found mine again, threading between them. “What were your parents like?”
The question caught me off guard. Most people didn’t ask—they just offered condolences and changed the subject. But Jesse waited patiently.
“My mom was a librarian.” I was surprised by how easily the words came. “That’s where I got my love of books. She used to bring home stacks of them every week—fiction, non-fiction, everything. She’d read to me even when I was way too old for it, just because we both enjoyed the stories.”
“That’s beautiful.”
“My dad was a high school physics teacher. Taught at the same school where Jan and I went.” I smiled at the memory. “He ran the robotics club, coached kids for science fairs, that kind of thing.”
“Oh my God, your father was your teacher?” Jesse looked horrified. “How did that feel? That must have been so awkward.”
I chuckled. “You’d think so, right? But honestly, it was great.
He treated me the same as any other student in class—maybe even harder on me, actually.
Didn’t want anyone thinking I got special treatment.
” I shifted my leg under hers. “Outside of class though, that’s when I got the real education.
He’d stay late with me in the lab, let me mess with equipment the other kids weren’t allowed to touch.
Taught me to solder circuits when I was twelve. ”
“That sounds amazing.”
“It was. The other kids used to tease me sometimes—’teacher’s pet’ and all that. But most of them were jealous, honestly. Dad was the cool teacher. The one who made physics actually interesting.”
Jesse smiled. “I bet you missed that. Having him right there.”
“Yeah.” My voice caught slightly. “The worst part was going back to school after the accident. Walking past his empty classroom, seeing some substitute teacher at his desk. I was a sophomore—had just started having him as my teacher that year. We’d been planning out my junior and senior year classes together, talking about AP Physics, maybe even early college courses.
” My voice roughened. “Instead, I finished that semester with a substitute, and Jan pulled me out to homeschool me for the rest of the year. She’d just given up law school to take care of me, and she was trying to figure out how to be a parent while grieving herself. ”
“Oh, Sebastian.” Jesse’s hand squeezed mine tightly.
“Yeah. My dad loved space. He had this beaten-up telescope he’d bought at a yard sale.
We’d set it up in the backyard on clear nights, and he’d point out constellations, talk about how satellites work, why planets orbit the way they do.
” I looked down at our linked hands. “He never got to do the kind of work I do now, but he made sure I could.”
Jesse’s gaze drifted to my chest, where the edge of my tattoo peeked out from under my partially unbuttoned shirt. “Is that why you have all the space-themed ink?”
I glanced down, then back at her. “You noticed that, huh?”
“Kind of hard to miss.” Her lips curved into a teasing smile. “You’ve got a whole galaxy happening on your arm.”
I chuckled, sitting up enough to shrug off my shirt completely. “The space stuff is for my dad. Saturn here was his favorite.” I pointed to my right shoulder. “He said he liked the rings, the way something so chaotic could form something so beautiful and ordered.”
Her fingers traced the lines of the tattoo, sending shivers over my skin.
“And this?” She touched the intricate clock mechanism on my left pec.
“That’s about time. How it keeps moving forward, whether we’re ready or not.
After my parents died, I felt… stuck. Like time should’ve stopped, but it didn’t.
The world just kept going. I had to keep going, even though I didn’t want to for a while.
” I looked down at the tattoo. “This reminds me that moving forward is what we’re meant to do.
We owe it to ourselves and the ones that are still here. ”
Jesse’s eyes softened with understanding. Her silence invited me to continue revealing my ink journey.
“There’s also this one.” I gestured to a spot on my right bicep. “Four stars forming a constellation. It’s not a real one, I designed this myself. Each star represents one of us. The three bigger ones are my parents and Jan. The smaller one’s me.”
Her hand moved to that spot, hovering just above my skin. “May I?”
I nodded.
She traced the pattern, following the invisible lines between the stars. “Your own constellation.”
“Dad used to say we were like stars—separate, but part of something bigger when you looked at us together.” My throat tightened. “I don’t talk about them much. It’s easier not to.”
“I get that.” Jesse swallowed, her gaze turning inward. “After my dad died, people kept wanting me to share memories, to talk about him. But for a long time, it hurt too damn much.”
“Exactly.”
She shifted closer, resting her forehead against my shoulder. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for asking.” I kissed the top of her head.
It was her turn to lighten the mood. “So, how was your day? Anything exciting happen at work?”