“Sophie says she would like to arrange a visit.”
“Absolutely not.”
Alice’s face transformed from pity to pleading in the space of a few seconds. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “You have no idea what it’s like to be sneaking into a laundromat every night to sleep because your dad would rather suck down a bottle of vodka than look after you.”
Alice looked away and nodded, although he knew she still disapproved.
“Will you be okay if I leave for a few hours?” she asked. “Sebastian needs a ride to the airport, but he can call a cab if you’d rather I stay.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you suppose he’s going to make another go for you?”
She laughed a little. “You never know with Seb, but trust me … I’m finally immune to Sebastian Bell.”
It was the only spot of good news Jack had heard in a week.
Sebastian flirted with her the entire drive to the small regional airport at Newport News. He was back to being his devil-may-care self: charming, arrogant, and vain.
She parked in the lot before the drop-off zone, and Sebastian made no move to leave the car after she turned off the engine.
“You need to watchThe King’s Redemption,” he said in a playfully castigating tone. “I’m telling you, it’s the best work I’ve ever done. Filming on the second series starts next month.”
“What’s going to happen in the second series?” she asked. “I thought the story ends with Charles regaining the throne and his triumphal return to London.”
“It does, but the second season is going to be about the wicked aftermath. It’s going to be veryGame of Thronesas he hunts down the men who killed his father. Charles was willing to forgive most people who fought for Oliver Cromwell, but the fifty-nine men who signed his dad’s death warrant? They went on the run, and he went after them. You’ll have to watch the next season to find out what he did, but it wassavage,” he said with a delicious leer.
Grisly executions never appealed to Alice, but the revenge plot would probably attract a lot of viewers. “So Charles had no forgiveness in his heart for the regicides?”
“None at all. There were hard limits to the king’s clemency.” Sebastian began fiddling with the clasp on his bag, his brow furrowed in concentration. His cocksure demeanor was gone, replaced with a contemplative look. “I admire how he led the country in the years following the civil war. He forgave almost everyone, even though they put him through pure hell. Heck, I was miserable even filming some of the scenes hiding out in haylofts or crouching in streams to hide from Cromwell’s army, and I only had to deal with it for a few days. Charles spent years on the run, starving and searching for a safe place to lay his head for the night. Most of the roles I’ve played in my career are made-up characters, but Charles II was real. I admire him, and come up short in comparison.”
He paused and looked down, clasping his hands together. She waited, sensing he had more to say.
“Alice, I treated you shamefully,” he finally said. “Not many people are lucky enough to meet a woman so genuinely kind. I was the one who made a mess of my life, but you paid the price. Your career is in the toilet because of me, and I’m sorry.”
“Seb, I’ll survive.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “You deserve more than just ‘surviving.’ I let them hustle me into rehab to save my own reputation and never gave a thought to you. Instead of being consumed by my own selfish needs, I should have let the world know you were blameless for my shortcomings. I will be forever sorry about that. Will you forgive me?”
A wave of fondness swelled inside. It had been easy to despise Sebastian while he’d been AWOL and she hadn’t understood what happened or why. Now she understood. She still wished he had been strong enough to have defended her, but at least he understood the magnitude of what his weakness had cost her.
“Of course I forgive you, and wish you all the best. I’ll even watch your movies.” He choked back a laugh, and she opened her door. “Come on. You’ll miss your plane unless we get moving.”
This would be the last time they’d ever see each other. Maybe she would watch his movies in the years and decades to come, witnessing him grow older on film while she aged here in Virginia. If Sebastian’s visit to Virginia brought her nothing else, it had restored memories of a fleeting courtship that would forever add a dash of glamour to her mild-mannered life.
She popped the trunk open, and he lifted out both bags. Sebastian turned to face her, then set down a bag. His expression mirrored her own: regret, affection, nostalgia. He cupped the back of her neck and leaned in to kiss her forehead.
“Take care, Alice.”
She nodded. “You too, Seb.”
She remained beside her car to watch him walk away. A part of her would always love Sebastian’s charming, effervescent good humor, but they weren’t the right match for each other. Sebastian looked amazing in a cravat and could recite aShakespearean sonnet with ease, but those weren’t the things she was looking for in a man.
She needed someone like Jack, who rolled up his sleeves to get a job done, rain or shine, good times or bad. Who defended her when she had no one else on her side. Jack would never have Mr. Darcy’s polished manners or be able to recite Shakespeare from memory, but it was men like Jack who built the world. Men who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and faced each challenge head-on, not with elegant words but with sturdy, unrelenting grit and know-how. They didn’t just preserve what was good; they built it, protected it, made sure it would endure. Jack was no romanticized hero out of a novel—he was real, solid, and someone she would forever admire.
Jack taught her resilience through humor. With his rough hands and easy laughter, he had changed her in ways she couldn’t fully grasp yet, building her up as surely as he built all else in his world. Even though he would leave soon, he would remain forever etched into the framework of her heart, a lesson in strength and joy she would carry forward always.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“You cannot get on an airplane for at least three months,” the neurologist told Jack first thing in the morning. “The changes in cabin pressure during a long flight can cause intracranial bleeding. Do you really want that to happen at thirty thousand feet over the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”
