Sebastian’s gaze slid from my hands back up to my face. A muscle ticked in his jaw, the only indication he’d heard me. He kept a white-knuckled grip on the doorknob.
His skin was pale, his eyes were bloodshot, and I could smell the whiskey coming off him from a mile away. He looked like hell, but my heart still wrenched at the sight of him.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was devoid of any warmth.
“I just want to talk.” A hard lump cinched my throat. “Please.”
That one word seemed to undo him.
A visible shudder ran through his frame. His grip tightened on the doorknob before he released it and stepped silently to the side.
I walked in, my body soaking in the relative warmth when Sebastian closed the door behind us. My sweatshirt—hissweatshirt—wasn’t adequate layering for such a cold night, but I needed him to see it. To understand that, even if I couldn’t verbalize it, part of me would always belong to him.
The house smelled like him. The lights were off, but a spillof watery moonlight snuck through the curtains, illuminating his living room. I hadn’t been to his house since he moved downtown a few years ago, but the art, the fireplace, the perfectly worn-in leather furniture—it was all so quintessentiallyhim.
Sebastian came around so he faced me again. “You want to talk. Let’s talk.” His tone was measured, his face carefully blank.
He felt like a stranger, and though he was standing right there, the loss of him hit me all over again.
“I…” I’d rehearsed my speech during the cab ride here, but my mind completely blanked. It was one thing to play out this scenario in my head; it was another to get the words out when he was looking at me like he didn’t know me. But I had to dosomething, so I thrust the envelope at him, my nerves cramping. “Read this.”
His eyes grew colder. “I know what the letter says, Maya. I wrote it.”
Right.
Frustration tightened in my lungs. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I was supposed to walk in, give an eloquent speech about my feelings, and watch everything fall into place, but I couldn’t seem to do anything right these days.
For someone who was used to succeeding at everything on the first try, this was torture, but I deserved it. I didn’t tell him the truth when I’d had the chance, and now I had to start over at square one.
I curled my fingers around the edge of the envelope and tried again. “When did you write it?”
“You know when.”
“I don’t.” The dam broke, and words tumbled out so fast they collided with each other. “That’s what I came here to say. I had no idea you wrote this. I didn’t get—”
“Is this a joke?” Sebastian stared at me in disbelief, his wordslashing through me like a whip. “Is this why you showed up, unannounced, to my house on a Friday night? To torture me some more? Is thisfunfor you?” His voice was low, furious. “You’ve made your point. You fucking win, okay? Congratulations. You win, and I lose. Now leave.”
“No!” Panic scrambled through my chest. My throat tightened as the frustration boiled over, choking me.
I’d been student body president. Debate champion. I was in charge of communications for a Fortune 500 company, for fuck’s sake. So why thehellcouldn’t I communicate properly when it mattered the most?
I drew a shaky breath and silently counted to three before I spoke again. The pause helped clarify some of my thoughts. “I didn’t come to rub the letter in your face. I wouldneverdo that. I’m not sure what happened to make you think I received this, but I truly had no idea the letter existed until a few days ago.”
“Bullshit.”
“Iswear. Why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t know,” Sebastian said flatly. “But you lie about a lot of things, Maya.”
The blow landed somewhere south of my gut. Hard. And I couldn’t even fight back because he was right. From lies of omission to straight-up denial, I’d hidden so many truths from him and, most importantly, from myself.
Pressure built behind my eyes.Do not cry. Don’t you dare cry.
“You’re right, but I’m not lying about this,” I said. “You can ask Diya. She helped me dig up my old school stuff last weekend, and I found it in my social studies notebook. I don’t know how it got there or why I didn’t see it earlier, but that is one hundred percent the truth.”
I didn’t have the best track record, but I was desperate to prove that I wasn’t the terrible person he thought I was. That Ihadn’t come just to fuck with him when he’d been nothing but open and honest.
He could scorn me as a rival and doubt me as a partner, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him loathing me as a person.