His thumb moved back and forth across my knuckles. "It feels like I am." He dropped his eyes to where our hands were joined.
“Sebastian.” I waited until he glanced back up at me. “I knew what I was signing up for when I invited you here.” I squeezed his fingers. “But you're right. I need to say the words out loud to someone. I need to not—” I broke off, trying to find the right words to express the riot of thoughts running through my head.
“Not what?” he asked softly when I didn’t immediately continue.
“I’m tired of acting like half of who I am doesn’t exist. Just once, I’d like to look a person I respect and admire in the eye and say, ‘Hi, I’m Taylor, and this is the real me.’”
Sebastian’s face crumpled, and he pulled me into his arms, one of his hands coming up to cup the back of my head. “You should be able to do that,” he said quietly.
I buried my face in his neck and just breathed him in as he held me.
“Okay,” Sebastian said after a while, pulling back to meet my eyes.
“Okay?”
“Okay, we’ll go to dinner.” He brushed his thumb along my jaw. “And if you want to tell Bell, then you should do it. I support you.”
My chest felt tight again, but in an entirely different way from before. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said, but there was clear worry in his eyes even as he nodded. “Besides, after knowing what your friends went through, I feel like an asshole for making this about me.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“I’m a little bit of an asshole.” He tipped his face forward and kissed me softly. “But I’m working on it.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me for giving you permission to do something you should have been able to do all along.” He stepped back, firming his shoulders. “What time is dinner?”
“Six o'clock.” I looked at my watch. It was four o’clock now, and Bell’s house was about forty-five minutes away from mine.
“I might be an asshole, but I have excellent manners. We need to bring something. Do they drink?”
A lot of hockey players didn’t, especially not heading into the season, but Bell didn’t subscribe to the idea of denying yourself something you enjoyed, and that man loved a good bottle of red wine. “Wine for Bell; beer for Ethan.”
As I followed Sebastian to my car, I tried to ignore the nervous flutter in my gut—hope, maybe, or possibly terror.
Likely both.
Tonight, I'd sit across from Bell and Ethan with Sebastian at my side, and try to pretend we were simply old friends while my captain watched every interaction with those sharp, assessing eyes that made him so lethal on the ice.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was either going to be the start of something really good for me or it was going to blow up spectacularly in my face.
I just hoped like hell I knew what I was doing.
CHAPTER 16
SEBASTIAN
The driveto Bell and Ethan’s house took us along winding coastal roads where the sun glinted off steely blue water like diamonds. Taylor had one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the center console between us. I kept having to stop myself from reaching for it, practice for tonight. We were heading straight into a situation where touching him would give everything away.
“You’re quiet.” Taylor glanced over at me as we wound around a tight bend in the road.
I looked down at the bottle of wine resting in my lap and traced the raised label with my thumb. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pull this off.”
His hand shifted on the console, his pinky finger brushing against mine for just a second before he pulled it back. “You don’t have to be anyone but yourself.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. Myself around you is pretty damn obvious.”
