Page 105 of Rule 2: Never Join a Christmas Dating Show
“Gosh.” Troy still gives me the same strange look. “I have noticed you’re pretty big, but um...”
He swallows hard, then backs away, his cheeks redder. “Shredded, huh.”
“Shredded,” I repeat again, nodding some more, happy Troy is backing away.
I close the door. He’s gone. My heart leaps, and I wait for the covers to move and my sweatshirt to move and Sebastian to move from the bed, like the glistening, glowing angel he is.
Instead, there’s no movement on the bed.
I press my lips together, and something nudges at my chest, like maybe I haven’t handled that as well as I thought I did.
I move toward the bed, trepidation pounding my heart. I lift up the cover, but Sebastian’s face is pressed against the mattress, and I cannot see him.
Maybe he fell asleep. That warm feeling moves through me again. I don’t need Caribbean vacations when I can simply look at Sebastian, and I’m surrounded by heat.
Sebastian is St. Thomas and Aruba and Jamaica. He is the Florida Keys and Cancun.
He is...
I kneel by the bed and turn him over. His hands move to his face, which is weird, and when I look at him, he is lying still, his face burrowed in his hands.
Is he...
Worry moves through me.
No, not that.
I didn’t fuck things up much, did I? No...
But my heart pounds and maybe, maybe I did.
Maybe Sebastian is crying. My heart breaks, and I lower myself to the ground, kneeling on the centuries-old hardwood floor. “Baby. It’s okay. It’s fine.”
My voice is desperate and raw, but Sebastian doesn’t lower his hands, and everything inside me breaks.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Sebastian
I should probably open my eyes. And lower my hands.
But once I do, he’ll see how upset I am, and I don’t want that. He doesn’t need to see the salt tracks trail down my cheeks, and he doesn’t need to see my nose red and blotchy and terrible, the way Bryce made me look sometime in junior high, when his words and my life and everything got to be too much.
I am Seb—
My brain is thick. Slush rises through it, destroying all my neural connectivity. I inhale and release. Inhale and release.
I am Sebasti—
I square my shoulders.
I am Sebastian Archer, TV Host Extraordinaire. I am...
I frown. My mantra appears in my mind, and I want to hold onto it. I want to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it until I am all the things I want to be and have left behind all the thing I do not want to be.
But I stumble over the words, even in my thoughts, and all I am aware of is that I have failed once again.
I am not the put-together TV host I want to be. Not now. Not with Luke beside me. Not with the man I most want to see me in a good light.
