I wanted to think he would, but part of me wasn’t entirely sure. Coming out to people who actively abhorred everything about who you were was daunting as hell. And doing it right after you’d just been blindsided by a man you thought you could trust with that part of yourself?
No, I wasn’t sure at all.
I slowed my pace and stepped off to the side to let some people pass by, pulling Sebastian with me. “Hey, so … about your parents. Are you sure?—”
“Come with me, please?” he blurted, cutting off what I’d been about to ask.
“Are you sure you want me there?”
He laughed humorlessly. “I don’t wantmethere, but yeah. I kind of need you to be there with me. I can’t …” He stopped, blew out a breath, then started again. “I’ve never had someone in my corner for something like this. I don’t know how to do this alone.”
“Then you won’t,” I said, pulling him into me.
His arms came around me immediately. “Thank you,” he murmured against my ear before pulling back and stepping away. He ran his hands down his face, tugging at his cheeks before dropping them to hang limply at his sides. “God, why am I so fucking nervous?”
I took hold of his hands, folding them between mine and rubbing warmth back into them. “Because you’re about to do a really scary thing.”
“I’m thirty-two years old. I shouldn’t be scared of confronting my parents.”
“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but your parents are fucking scary. If you weren’t afraid of them, I’d wonder what’s wrong with you.”
Sebastian’s lips tilted to the side. “You just called me sweetheart.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“Of course I have.”
He shook his head, his smile growing wider. “You haven’t.”
Heat crept up the back of my neck. “Is that … is it okay? It just came out, and I don’t want—” I realized I was babbling, and clamped my mouth shut.
But then a horrifying idea took root. “Wait, Wyatt didn’t call you that, did he?”
Sebastian’s smile didn’t waver as he shook his head. “God, no.”
“Okay, good.” I exhaled. “So it’s okay?”
He stepped into my space, backing me up against a brick wall, and kissed me, right there on 45th Street. “I liked it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He straightened my beanie, tugging it down over my ears, then stepped back and held out his hand. “Let’s go get this over with.”
CHAPTER 36
SEBASTIAN
Taylor moved in a slow circle,taking in the Christmas decorations adorning the hotel’s grand lobby. “Fancy,” he murmured.
“Only the best for Bernadette and Charles Carruthers.”
I’d spent a lot of Christmases in this hotel as a child, convinced that everyone’s family gathered in penthouses and ordered from room service and argued loudly, not caring if they disturbed the neighbors. It wasn’t until college that I realized my childhood was the exception, that people could save up their whole lives and still never be able to afford to stay here.
Not that any of it had ever been good enough for my mother. If I had paid closer attention back then, I would have realized it would become a recurring theme in my life. Tonight’s conversation wouldn’t be any different. I could already hear her cataloguing all the ways I’d disappointed them.
