“I stepped back outside. Needed a moment to myself.”
He offers nothing more.
Nothing less.
A truth, but not the whole truth.
And for some reason, that makes it feel heavier.
I rub the last of the ointment into the base of his thumb, feeling the tension still coiled in his hand. The rest of my body aches from everything that happened, but tending to him offers a strange, grounding steadiness. His breath stutters just slightly when my fingers graze a tender spot, but he stays still, jaw tightening as if he refuses to grant the moment any more meaning than it already holds.
“I ran out because…” I struggle, inhaling once, then again. “Trevor mentioned you. And Theo made some comment about everyone already having… lost it. A normal comment for someone our age.”
Sebastian doesn’t speak, but his attention sharpens.
“And then they asked if I had,” I continue. “As if it’s something you can answer easily. As if I could explain to two people I barely know that I can hardly stomach being touched. That my parents kept Liam and me locked up, terrified of what we were, trying to beat the ‘misfortune’ out of us.”
The words leave me raw.
I look away.
“I got angry,” I admit. “At them. At myself. At everything. When that old man grabbed me… I let it all boil over.”
Quiet settles between us, the kind of quiet that feels too heavy to disturb. I almost expect him to scoff, to make some cutting remark, to use the confession as ammunition later.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, his eyes soften at the edges. Not pity, not even sympathy. Just… understanding. A flicker of something unspoken, restrained, pulled back before it can grow into anything measurable.
He lifts a hand toward my chin, but stops short, letting his fingertips just brush the line of my jaw without fully tilting my face. The touch is so light I almost mistake it for a phantom sensation. He holds it there for a moment, as if uncertain whether he has the right to touch me at all.
“Whoever took your childhood from you,” he murmurs, “should have been stopped.”
It isn’t romantic.
It isn’t seductive.
It’s simply honest, stripped of all pretense.
My breath catches, the intimacy of his restraint warming something deep in my chest. I reach for his injured hand, holding it gently as I dab the rag over his knuckles. He inhales sharply, not a groan, not a grunt, just a tight breath he swallows down to keep from reacting further.
His eyes fall half-lidded, not from desire, but from pain and effort. The proximity between us stretches thin, taut like thread.
“So why were you near the pub?” I ask again softly, refusing to let the question slip away a second time.
This time, he doesn’t dodge it.
But he also doesn’t give me everything.
His eyes lift to mine, darker than before.
“I told you,” he says quietly. “I needed to clear my head.”
A pause.
Small.
Loaded.
