His arms came around me, and he lowered his chin to the top of my head. “It’ll be okay, my darling,” he whispered.
My eyes squeezed shut. “It won’t.”
But breathing was getting a little easier.
“It will. I promise. Anything that’s been broken, we can fix. I’ll help you in any way I can.”
I let my hands drop and shook my head against his shirt. “I don’t wantyouto fix it.”
Because then he wins. Then he’s right.
“It can’t be you.”
We stayed silent for a while, a small stretch of time where he kept gliding his hands over my back. Comforting.
The longer it went on, the more I melted into him, until my ear was pressed over his heart and its steady thumping drowned out the noise in my head. Everything smelled like him.
His palm brushed over my arm.
Up and down.
Up and down.
How could I have been so stupid?
“I’m always going to be on your side. Always, okay?” His voice was even deeper now, rumbling straight from his chest. “Even if you feel like you can’t tell me, I promise I’m never going to think less of you.”
Was that true? How could he not? I was supposed to be a grown man. I was supposed to be proving a point right now.Instead, the only thing I was proving to him—of all the fucking people in the world—was that I was still too naïve and immature to function in society.
“I fucked up,” I said.
“Tell me about it. If you don’t want my help, that’s fine, but I can still listen. I can still be here for you while you figure it out.”
Fuck.
And he was even better than before. Of course he was. It felt like the universe was mocking me. Why wouldn’t Sebastian Langley suddenly become mature and empathetic?
I took a deep breath. “I really fucked up, Ash. I don’t think there’s any way to fix this.”
His arms tightened around me. “Big problems feel like that sometimes.”
I bit my cheek and closed my eyes. “Do you promise you won’t tell anybody?”
“Not a soul.”
I sat up—not exactly pulling away, but enough to see his face. “I mean it. Nobody.”
Sebastian’s eyes ran over mine, his lips twisting a little before his thumb brushed a tear off my cheek. He nodded, concern still written all over him.
“I lost my trust,” I said, the words almost too quiet to hear.
But he did. His shoulders tensed just a little as he waited for me to continue.
“I’ve been talking to my dad again. I don’t know if you knew about that, but Char stopped talking to him too after…” My eyes dropped to my lap. I shrugged. “After.”
Sebastian’s hand returned to my arm, his knuckles moving back and forth in slow strokes. “Oli said something about that a while ago.”
“He showed up again last year. He apologized—for how he acted after the wedding—and said he wanted us to have arelationship again.” I bit my lip, a fresh wave of guilt washing over me. “He said we should keep it between us.”
