“Could be a Gen Z thing.”
He nodded. “Could be, but like, if we ever found out there was more there, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
I thought back to how Sebastian and I had been right around that age. The easy comfort we’d shared. The way I felt like I always had to be touching him, and if we couldn’t touch, I had to be near him. How I felt like my best self whenever he was around.
And that was before anything had ever happened between us. Once I’d seen him naked, once I knew what it felt like tobe with him in that way, the compulsions had been ten times worse.My body went warm with the memory.
“Sebastian and I were a lot like that.”
Bell huffed out a laugh. “Not Ethan and me. It was always fucking or fighting—sometimes fighting that led to fucking. None of that sweet shit for us.”
I nudged him with my shoulder. “You’re disgustingly sweet now.”
His eyes went wide with mock offense. “Take that back.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
He smiled and clapped his hand on my shoulder, squeezing once. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
The room was mostlydark when I pushed the door open, the sole light coming from Sebastian’s laptop screen. He was sitting exactly where I’d left him. The bed was still made, and there wasn’t any evidence he’d ever eaten anything—no dirty dishes, no room service tray. He hadn’t slept or eaten. Hadn’t done anything in the four hours I’d been gone but sit in the dark and chase a ghost.
The worst part was that I understood. Knew that the search for his sister was the only thing standing between him and everything he wasn’t ready to face yet. My heart ached for him.
“Hey,” I whispered, crouching down next to him, my hand landing on his thigh.
It took him a few long seconds to acknowledge me. When he finally dragged his gaze from his screen to my face, his eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.
Fuck. He’d been crying.
I wanted to kill his goddamn parents.
“Baby.”
He exhaled slowly and turned his laptop toward me, the screen showing two photographs side by side—the first featured a curvy, dark-haired woman, maybe in her late forties or early fifties, standing next to his dad at what looked to be a black-tie charity event. The second was an older image, the quality much grainier, showing the same woman, only much younger, Charles’s hand at the small of her back.
“These were taken seventeen years apart. You see it, right—that’s the same woman?” His eyes moved back and forth across my face, blinking rapidly, the whites shot through with red.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, licking my lips.
He nodded, turning the computer back toward him before typing something into the search bar. “I’ve got a first name from one of the captions, but I haven’t been able to uncover a last name yet. I’m close, though. I can feel it.”
“Sebastian,” I said, squeezing his knee. “Hey, look at me.”
He dropped his head forward, twisting slightly to catch my eye. “What?"
"Have you taken a break today?"
"No."
"Maybe you should."
"Look. I know what you're thinking.”
“What am I thinking?” I asked, my voice soft.
“Like I can’t deal with the actual problem, so I’m inventing smaller ones to solve instead.” He spun to face me fully, blowing out a breath. “I just ... if I stop looking, if I close this laptop and let myself sit with the knowledge—” He cut himself off, his voice cracking. “Everything they ever asked me to do. Every goddamn charity event I smiled through, every time I kept my mouth shut about who I was because I didn’t want to blow up my relationship with them.” He flattened his lips, tipping his head back, his throat working. When he eventually tilted hisface forward, his eyes were wet, tears clinging to his lashes but not falling.
I didn’t have words to describe what seeing him like this did to me. How much it hurt to watch him fighting to hold himself together. I hated his parents—and Wyatt, too—for the influence they’d wielded against him. For the way they'd sacrificed him for their own gains.
