Page 84 of The Moon & His Tides
“I may be the actor in the family, but she doesn’t lack drama,” he quipped. “She was already angry with me for other things. Jealous, too, I think, that I’ve taken the lead on producingBlood Oath. She had a meeting with Tate Richardson from Hypnosis Studios the other day about financing without realizing we already decided to take an independent approach.”
“Che cavolo, she would not like that.”
“No,” he agreed, gesturing to the thrown vase remnants. “It escalated from there. I am not a good client, and I am not a good husband, though that was only said as an afterthought.”
“Where did she go?” I wondered.
“Bobbi’s husband has an estate in Yorkshire. She went for the weekend to clear her head.”
I pursed my lips, thoughts colliding into each other with such force, it made it difficult to keep them from spouting from my mouth.
Adam seemed to sense my tension and smiled slightly at me, moving his hand up to my neck to give it a squeeze. “What is it, Sebastian?”
“Do you love her?” I dared to ask because the truth was,Idid.
I loved her so much that I often woke up in my small room in Italy with the smell of freesia in my nose and Bach stuck on a loop in my head. I loved the way she made me feel worthy of the success I’d yearned for since my youth. I loved the way she let just a little of the true Savvy, that teenage Southern girl in the grass longing for more, peek through when we were together. Loving her felt like a privilege, even if she never returned the sentiment, and I was unsure if I could give it up.
Even for the man I was falling in love with, too.
Adam’s sigh was long and soft as an unspooling ribbon dropped at my knees. When he looked into my eyes, his were fierce and filled with fundamental certainty. “I do,” he said. “But does that matter if the woman I love doesn’t love me?”
I blinked, caught off guard by his honesty. “She loves you, Adam.”
He only arched a brow in question.
“She does,” I insisted. “Why would she be so intense about your career, about your success if she wasn’t? Why would she bring me into the equation unless it was because she hoped it would help your marriage?”
Because she’s selfish.
Adam didn’t say the words, and I was reluctant even to think them, but they were a whisper at the back of my mind that was hard to ignore, a whistling wind through a crack in the door.
Adam didn’t say the words, but he did say, “It’s my birthday today, did you know?”
I rocked back to sit on my heels, staring at him a little slack-jawed. My hand would have slipped off his thigh if he wasn’t holding it like an anchor. “Are you serious?”
“As death.”
“Well…” I tried to find a way to rationalize Savannah’s tantrum on her husband’s birthday, but I honestly couldn’t understand it.
In my family, no matter that we had no money, birthdays were a big deal. It was the day to do exactly what you wanted with exactly who you wanted. Just one little day in 365 of them each year. It wasn’t a big ask, really.
Not diamonds or Aston Martins or castles in England.
It was just the simple belief that you deserved to be loved on your birthday just a little more than you were loved every other day of the year.
And Savannah had left him for a country house in the north because she was frustrated with his work ethic.
My jaw clenched with a spasm of anger I couldn’t control.
I had to remind myself that this wasn’t reallymylife or my relationship. Sure, I’d been invited in, something more than a guest but less than a permanent fixture, but it didn’t mean I really got an opinion on their marriage.
So I rolled my lips between my teeth to keep my thoughts sealed and stood, clapping my hands together. “Well then, get up right now.”
Adam stared at me with a knot between his brows, but I only shook my head and offered him my hand again to tug him to hisfeet. The length of his body pressed along the length of mine, hot and hard, sparking an electric current between us.
“It’s your birthday,” I repeated, a little soft, tipping my head to press my forehead against his so those tangled brown lashes and Granny Smith-apple-green eyes were all I could see. “And it’sillegalto mope around on your birthday. So enough of this. We’re going to spend the day having fun.”
“I have a meeting at half past nine,” Adam started to say, but I pressed my entire palm over his mouth and leaned back a bit to smile at him.
