How long had they been back in Seacroft?
“What day is it?”
“It’s Monday.” Martin tilted his head, and the panic drained, leaving sympathy in its place.
That wasn’t any better.
Seb had called Kenneth at some point.
“It’s not insured,” Kenneth said.
“People insure art all the time.”
“Art that has been purchased or assessed. If it’s your personal collection and you’ve never had it valued, it won’t be covered. Who’s to say how much it’s worth?”
It wasn’t about the money. Not in the way Kenneth might have assumed. The pieces in his apartment, the pieces he’d kept, were the most valuable, but only to him. The books he painstakingly sliced out, word by word. The whole point of his work was taking something mass produced and making it unique, and in the process, he made something that couldn’t be replaced.
But the insurance would at least have told him it was worth it. That someone else could still see the value of what was lost in a heap of ash and charred covers.
Egg-flavored bile rose in his throat.
“Seb?” Martin’s worried face swam into focus, and he had to wipe tears he didn’t know he’d been crying from his cheeks.
He swallowed down the sour taste in his mouth and sniffed, forcing iron into his spine. “I’m fine.”
“You aren’t,” Martin said. “But it’s okay. We’ll get through it.”
The words did little to fill the empty ache in Seb’s chest. All he could see was the black nothing where his home, his studio, and all his work had been. It was gone. No amount of quiet sympathy and warm meals would make that better.
“We’ll figure it out when Oliver gets here.”
Martin’s statement took a minute to filter through Seb’s circular thoughts. When it did, it seemed impossible that he’d heard right. “Oliver?”
“Yes.”
“He’s coming here?” Seb’s heart started to pound.
“Tomorrow. He couldn’t get away from work today.”
“Martin’s been taking care of everything.” Penny’s smile, like everything else that was happening, was probably meant to be kind, but she obviously knew more about what was going on than Seb, which only made the roar in his head grow even louder.
“Ollie,” he said again. Oliver was coming. Coming here. Seb had spent the last few days in bed, helpless and oblivious while his family—
“He was really worried. “
“You called him?” The question came out like a croak as Seb’s throat tried to close over again. Oliver. The golden boy, the good son, was coming to rescue Seb and—
“He called me,” Martin said. “Or, actually, he called you, but you weren’t home and your phone—”
“You answered my phone?” Seb had lost everything, including his privacy apparently. Oliver was coming, and Martin couldn’t even respect basic boundaries.
“He called and—”
“Is anyone else coming?” Seb really was going to be sick. If Oliver knew, the rest of the family knew. His sisters, his father. They knew. They’d had time to plan and organize while he’d been wallowing in pointless self-pity. Parker would treat him like another project. His father would stand at the edges of the bookstore’s remains and shake his head like he’d known it would come to this all along. In this moment of loss and weakness, they would suck him back into the fold, and it was his fault for not seeing it coming.
“Hey.” Martin came around the table as Seb pushed away from his chair. “Hey, it’s okay. What’s wrong? What do you need?”
Seb shook his head, shrugging away as Martin tried to wrap his arms around him. He needed an escape. They were coming. It was too late to stop them or protect himself from them.
