“What are your expectations here?” I kept my face forward.
“W-what are y-yours?” he stammered, catching me off guard.
I turned. Taylor was pale, his teeth digging into his bottom lip. He looked on the verge of a panic attack.
I lifted my hands from my pockets, palms facing outward, and stepped back. “Okay. Nope. We’re not doing this.”
His head snapped back, and color flooded his face, climbing from his collar to his cheekbones. His eyes narrowed. “But you want me. I know you do.” His eyes dipped to my groin, to the proof I couldn’t hide.
There was no point in denying it.
Not that he even gave me a chance to.
“And I want you. So fucking much. I’vealwayswanted you, Seb.”
“Taylor,” I sighed, my shoulders sagging and my throat catching. “We both know that’s not true.”
Ten years ago, I’d been young and naive. Foolish enough to hope there was more between us than friendship and fucking. But all I’d been was a fun experiment. A bro to get off with. Taylor had cared for me, I was certain. Just not enough.
He’d never loved me the way that I loved him.
He glared at me. “What the fuck does that mean?”
My lip curled. “I don’t know,bro. What do you think it means?”
He tipped his head back, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Bro?”
“That’s what you called me,” I said, my voice shaking. “We’d just spent all day together in your bed. I’d said your name so many times it stopped sounding like a word and was just the way I breathed. It was just … just … fuck, it was everything.”
My throat tightened, and I held up my fingers, an inch of space between them. “I was this close to telling you I was in love with you. And then you called me ‘bro,’ the same thing you called Mitchie when you were drunk, the same thing you yelled across the cafeteria to your teammates.” I dropped my hand. “It made everything we’d done feel cheap. Like I meant nothing to you.”
The tears I’d been holding at bay burned my eyes.
“I loved you, Taylor. But you made me feel like I was nothing more than a convenient fuck for you.”
He planted his hands on my chest, fingers twisting in my shirt, and his eyes blazing. For a heartbeat, I thought he might pull me in. Instead, he shoved me hard enough that I stumbled. “How can you even say that to me?”
“Because it’s true.”
“You’rethe one who disappeared—not me,” he bit out, his voice cracking. “If anything, I meant nothing to you.”
The anguish in his expression stopped me cold.
This wasn’t the reaction I expected.
What was going on?
Had I gotten this wrong?
My eyes settled on his mouth, tracing the shape of his lips and remembering how they used to taste. A scar on his upper lip caught my eye. It was new. I wondered how he’d gotten it, wondered what else had changed about him in the decade I hadn’t known him.
“What are we doing, Sebastian?” he breathed out, his voice uncertain.
My eyes found his, and I forced myself to say, “Something we should have done a long time ago.”
Taylor nodded, his expression steely. “Yeah,” he rasped, meeting my gaze unflinchingly. “Probably.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. The opportunity to walk away loomed between us, unspoken.
