Sebastian almost smiles.
When the food comes, my jaw hits the floor. A whole lobster with a buttery spread of mashed potatoes and lettuce, a creamy soup with spices floating on top, fancy bread coated with cheese, a salad with cranberries and walnuts…
For a second, I’m worried Tanner’s going to burst into tears. Then I’m not worried anymore, because he dives in, fork first. My face still red, I shake my head. “This all must be so expensive! I can’t possibly—”
“Expensive?” says Renée, looking up and frowning from the cloth she was tucking over her lap. “Not at all. Eat or I’ll be quite upset.”
How wealthy
is
Sebastian’s family?
Despite Renée’s cheerful insisting that we eat our fill—which Tanner takes to heart—Sebastian barely touches the food. His face is still carved from granite. I wonder how he can be so cold when his stepmom, from what I can tell, is such a kind person—a little odd, but considerate. Why does he act like it’s painful to see her?
Suddenly I worry that he could be embarrassed—embarrassed for his cultured stepmom to see him hanging out with a ditz like me.
When we’re done eating and Tanner is done devastating the plates, Sebastian inhales slightly and narrows his eyes. “Why did my father send you?”
For a second, I think I see Renée’s smile slip. “He wanted to know how you were, and of course you know how busy he is, and I was in the area—”
“You’ve never been a good liar, Renée. Don’t embarrass yourself trying.” Sebastian’s lip curls. “What does he really want?”
Renée looks distressed. I fight the urge to start talking loudly about how nice the weather is. I doubt this is the time for one of my outbursts. Tanner wipes a crust of bread in the sauce on his plate, his head cocked to the side.
Renée dabs lightly at her lipstick. “Just to make sure you’re healthy and—”
“I have very little patience for lies.” Sebastian knocks back his chair and stand up. Even in a state of tightly-controlled rage, he’s graceful. “If he wants to know that my grades are still perfect, they are. Nothing’s changed. Nothing will ever change.”
Renée bites her lip.
Sebastian turns sharply and strides back into the restaurant.
SEBASTIAN
She’s here to spy for my father.
To make sure I’m not going out at night. To make sure I’m not being reckless. To make sure I remain the perfect son, his perfect heir. Most importantly, to make sure I’m not distracted by relationships.
I hear my father’s voice in my head: “
Sebastian, I’m forbidding you from having friends. Especially female friends. This is for your own good. Other people are a distraction. When you care about people, your enemies can use that to get to you. That’s why your mother died.”
He’ll be furious when Renée reports back to him that I’m spending time with May and Tanner. I have no idea what he’ll do, but it won’t be good. He’s never been unwilling to hurt other people to get what he wants. And what he wants is for me to be alone.
I want it too. “
That’s why your mother died.”
My father might come after May.
May, who wants to help me despite how cold I’ve been to her, who wants to be close to me. She has no idea what she’s getting into. The danger she’s putting herself in.
The most dangerous part is that I can’t stop thinking about her.
She’s like no one I’ve ever met. Beautiful, inside and out. Kind. Kind enough to care about a hardened person like me. No matter how little I deserve it.
The first time in years that anyone has indicated they care whether I live or die.
I’ve been weak. I keep telling myself I’m trying to drive her away, but I haven’t really been trying. Not yet. I’ve been letting myself be near her. Standing in the sunlight.
But if I really care about her, I have to protect her from me.
No matter how little I want to.
Or how much it hurts.
CHAPTER
SIX
MAY
“Sebastian!” I cry. Careful not to look at Tanner, I stammer a quick apology to Renée and dash after Sebastian. He’s already down the stairs, and it’s not until I burst onto the hot sidewalk that I catch up with him. Panting, I grab his arm. He shakes me off so hard I almost fall, giving me an icy look.
“Tanner’s car is still at Strawberry Hat,” I say lamely.
“It’s a ten-minute walk to campus.” He pulls away, glaring at two girls across the road who’ve been giggling and whispering at the sight of him.
“Sebastian, I…” For some stupid reason, I feel momentarily choked up. I get control of myself. “Are you sure you want to leave? Renée seems nice, and…”
“She’s my father’s spy,” he says shortly. “You know nothing about her.”
“I know, but…”
“Why is it so difficult for you to understand that I don’t
want
to waste my time with other people?” A flash of something almost like pain crosses his face. “Alone is how I want to stay. The last thing I need is to be tailed by a little girl and her pet bodyguard, so find someone else’s life to interfere with.”
The anger bubbles up.
“Yeah, I can tell you’re really happy with how alone you are by the way you don’t sleep and you look miserable ninety percent of the time.”
“Don’t pretend like you know anything about me,” he hisses.
I throw up my hands, trying to look exasperated, though my heart is pounding wildly. “If you’d tell me anything, I wouldn’t have to pretend.”
“Why would I tell you?” The sneer on his face is unmistakable. The way he says ‘you’
is a punch to the gut—like he was pronouncing the name of some insect he’d just scraped off his shoe. I feel flattened. “You think you’re special? That you’re the one person who can trick Sebastian Crane into caring? I do not
care
about anyone. Especially you.”
The sting reverberates all the way through my spine.
He’s halfway down the road before I can blink away the tears swimming in my eyes. I feel so stupid for crying—I feel so stupid in general. He’s right. I had thought I could help. I’d wanted to. It was presumptuous of me.
But I hadn’t thought he’d hated me quite that much.
I wipe my face and take a few deep breaths before hurrying back into the restaurant, amid the clinking and clattering of silverware and cups. When I get to our table, however, Tanner’s gone.
“He said to tell you he forgot that he has a three o’ clock class,” Renée says apologetically. “He remembered and had to run. I said I’d give you a ride back to campus.”
I sit down slowly. Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure Tanner really does have a class. But he’s not usually adverse to skipping when attending is an inconvenience. I really hope he ran out because he had a test, and not because he was too freaked by me dashing after Sebastian. I blink away any water that’s still in my eyes.
“He left, didn’t he?” says Renée, in a surprisingly sober voice. I don’t think she’s talking about Tanner.
I nod, hoping there won’t be a quaver in my voice. “Actually, I should probably head out too…”
“Nonsense,” she says bracingly, waving at the waiter for the check. “If I can’t hang out with my stepson, I can at least get to know his new friend. We’ll find something fun to do around here, right?”
I unwrap her sweater from my waist and hand it back. The water has mostly dried. “I’m not…Sebastian’s friend.”
“What are you talking about?” She tucks the sweater around her shoulders, her brow furrowing. “Of course you’re his friend.”
“I’m actually pretty sure he hates me.” The lump expands in my throat and I have to fight not to cry again. I don’t know why I’m being such a baby—I just keep picturing the hard look in his eyes. “Which is totally fine, I mean, he should feel however he wants about me—”
“May,” says Renée. “He doesn’t hate you. I can tell you that with certainty.”
I force a bright smile onto my face. “It’s really okay—”
“He looks much better than the last time I saw him,” she interrupts. “Truly, the difference is incredible. I was absolutely shocked. I don’t know what you’ve done for him, May, but please keep
doing it. I know him about as well as anyone can know Sebastian, though he’d never admit that, and I can tell that something about you has stuck right in his heart.”
I don’t trust myself to speak.
She leans forward with sudden intensity, clasping my hand in hers. “Please, May. Don’t give up on him. I know he can be sharp, and intimidating, but I promise the iciness is just an act. He needs someone to see the kind of person he really is. A good person.”
“I really believe that he’s a good person,” I say uncertainly. “
I just…don’t want to push myself on him. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“He needs someone to keep trying, no matter how hard he tries to shove them away,” says Renée, sighing. “I’ve tried, but he doesn’t trust me. He thinks I’m too close to his father. But you…you have a chance. I can see that he wants to trust you. He just doesn’t know how.”
I really wish I could believe what Renée is saying. But Sebastian himself told me I couldn’t help him. Wouldn’t it be making his life worse for me to keep trying? I couldn’t let another person be miserable because of me—even if it meant bowing out on Opal’s bet.
“I’ve been worried about him for years, honestly.” For a moment, Renée looks older. “I’ve been friends with his father long before I married him, and I remember what Sebastian was like when his mother was alive.”
“His mother’s dead?” My heart drops a few notches in my chest. “I assumed his parents were just divorced.”
“No.” Renée shakes herself out of her thoughts long enough to sign a check for the waiter. “I thought he might have told you.”
“How did she die?” I whisper.
“When Sebastian was twelve, he was abducted.”
“Abducted? As in kidnapped?” I say, hardly able to believe what I’m hearing.
“Sebastian’s family has always been very wealthy, you see, and these people wanted to hold him for ransom. His mother—” She stops herself, twisting the bracelet around her wrist. “No. It’s not my place to tell you. He’ll do it himself, when he’s ready.”
I bite back my questions. She’s right—it’s Sebastian’s decision whether or not he wants me to know what happened. But it’s like my heart is caught in a vise. I had no idea something so horrible had happened to him. And with no friends, he has no one to talk to when bad memories surface. I wonder if that’s why he swims at night—to keep away the nightmares.
“Okay,” I
say, swallowing and steeling myself. “I won’t give up. I’ll stick with him whether he likes or not.”
“That’s the nicest thing I could hear.” She smiles at me warmly, and suddenly she’s back to her bubbly self.
“So, where do you want to go? Clothes? That’s always my first pick.”
“Um,” I start, blushing. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but…I don’t have much money with me—”
Renée waves this away. “My treat! I don’t have a daughter, so I’m always looking for someone to spoil. Truly, you’d do me a big favor if you let me indulge a little.”
“I don’t want you to pay—” I begin, but Renée catches me by the elbow and sweeps me out of the restaurant, steering me with surprising strength for such a delicate woman.
The next hour is basically a blur. Renée directs the driver to the mall, where she whisks me to those expensive department stores I always walk through on my way to the bargain section. Actually, for a few years now, I’ve been buying most of my clothes at Goodwill. But Renée doesn’t act like she’s ever heard of a red-tags-half-off deal. She hands me a flowery dress with gauzy fabric, a white wraparound top (“You look so cute in white!” she exclaims) a couple floaty skirts, a pair of lacy tights, and about a million other things before shoving me into the dressing room, telling me to show her how everything looks.
My head is still spinning with all I’ve learned about Sebastian, and my feeble protests are no match for her as everything rings up at the register to an amount that drops my jaw. She pays for it like she’d drop a coin in a vending machine. “And we have to do something about that hair,” she adds, fingering the long ends of my streaky blonde-brown tresses. “The stylist who did your highlights might as well have been a drunk girl in her bedroom.”
I opt not to tell her that my “stylist” was, in fact, a drunk girl in her bedroom. She drags me back to the car, both of us weighed down with bags that I can hardly believe are mine. I have no idea how she’s going to find a salon when I don’t even know where one would be, but after scrolling through her smartphone for a minute, she gives the driver the address and we’re off again.
I should be happy, and grateful. Sebastian’s stepmother is being unbelievably kind to me. But all I can think about is Sebastian. Abducted…I can’t begin to imagine how terrifying that must have been. And somehow, it resulted in his mother’s death. No wonder Sebastian is so cold. If something like that happened to me, I wouldn’t want to smile either.
My heart twists with guilt at the way I snapped at him. I blamed him for not telling me anything, but I didn’t even think of how traumatic it might be for him to relive bad memories.