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“You knew them more than I did. Had more time with them. The thing is, we build people up to be what they’re not. I did the same with you.” He opens the jewelry box and takes out the photo. He smiles, holding it up. “I remember this.”
I snort. “You don’t. You were all of six months old.”
“Yeah, but I remember being safe. Protected. Most of all, loved. By them and by you.”
“You don’t care that they weren’t who we thought?”
He turns over the picture. “I never saw that. I’d rather remember that they loved us.”
My chest tightens unbearably. Holding my brother at a distance has been harder than I thought, but safer.
Sebastian straightens, lifts the ring out of the box like I did. “‘Through everything’.” He arches a brow. “Guess they knew life wasn’t perfect either.” Sebastian shuts the box and sets it on the bedspread. “You won’t save this, I will.”
I nod. “Sebastian?”
He glances up.
“When did you become an adult?”
“Legally, on my eighteenth birthday. Sexually… far sooner. Though, honestly, I’d take it back if I could.”
My chuckle rumbles through my chest, dislodging some of the pain. “Do you want to go through the rest together?”
“Let’s get lunch first.”
We head back out to the hall.
“You know,” he tosses over his shoulder as we head down the hall to the stairs, “I told Rae you didn’t deserve her.”
I pull up, incredulous. “What? When?”
“Yesterday.” He pauses at the top of the steps. “But I was wrong.”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “I asked if she wanted me to stop pursuing her.”
“Why the fuck did you ask that?”
“Because I didn’t think she would say yes!”
He rubs a hand over his face, and for a second, I feel like the little brother.
“It was a bluff.”
“No, it wasn’t. You meant it, and that’s why you’re freaking out, because now you have to honor it.”
He’s right, damn him.
“She’s the only woman I can see in my life. The only one I want by my side. She’s infuriating and argumentative and sullen and beautiful. I don’t know how not to go after what I want, Sebastian.”
I get that she’s angry, but I never expected the feelings beneath to erode.
Now, the prospect of life without Rae makes me howl.
My brother’s mouth twists. “Take it from someone who’s been there. Loving something you can’t have is better than not loving at all.”
