Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other, page 26
Sebastian stood there holding Orly’s equipment, silently imploring her to say no. But it had to be her choice. If she’d had half the breakthrough it appeared she’d had—or that she was in the midst of, anyway—this was going to be a tough decision. It was one thing to realize you weren’t fulfilled by the choices you had made in your life. It was another thing entirely to make one more decision and do something about it. He knew that as well as anyone. As much as he wanted her to leap, he knew that if he were in her shoes, he would probably still hedge his bets until he figured out what came next.
“That depends on you,” she finally said after seeming to give it a lot of thought.
“Me? Why does it depend on me?”
Joyous mischief spread across her face as she took slow steps toward him. “Earlier, before you told me to stop talking, I was about to tell you that just on the other side of that ridge right there”—she pointed behind her—“is an old shed with leftover equipment from the ski lift. Years ago, Laila, Addie, Cole, Wes, and I came up here and buried a bunch of sleds underneath it.”
“And you think they’re still there?”
She looked around. “It doesn’t look like anything has changed, so I’m guessing so. We buried them pretty deep.” She reached him and helped herself to the pockets of his jacket. His left hand joined her right, and their fingers looped together inside the pocket. “But I’m finding something to ride down this mountain on, regardless.”
“Well, Ms. Cornell, as fun as that sounds, I’m not sure it’s safe. Warmer weather . . . melting snow . . . avalanches . . . all of that.”
“Oh, good grief, newbie.” She rolled her eyes. “See those gray clouds, way off in the distance? When they get here, we won’t go sledding. But for now . . .” She raised her left hand and ticked her safety tips off on her fingers, one at a time, starting with her thumb. “Avoid thirty- to forty-five-degree slopes. Stay windward. Watch for missing trees below the tree line. Guard against terrain traps. Stick to broad ridgelines . . .” She waved her fingers in the air. “Need me to go on? These are my mountains. Stick with me, baby. I’ll take care of you.”
Sebastian laughed. “Says the woman who got stuck in a tree.”
“Hey! You said you weren’t going to make fun.”
“Not making fun. Just pointing out the obvious.” He tilted his head and leaned toward her and spoke against her lips. “And anyway, what, exactly, does any of that have to do with me and filming?”
She pulled him closer by the pockets and her lips fluttered against his ear. Sebastian, meanwhile, showed the greatest restraint of his life and didn’t throw the film equipment into the air, allowing it to land where it would, devil may care.
“I just think you’d probably only be able to get good shots if you stood to the side or took your own sled.” Her lips left a trail across his jawbone before landing back on his, and she took as much liberty with his mouth as she had with his pockets. “I thought it would be more fun to share.”
Alright. Enough messing around.
Sebastian hooked his arm around her neck and kissed her thoroughly for as long as he could, until he felt her weight redistribute as her knees seemed to lose the ability to support her. Then he broke the kiss but not the embrace—for fear they would both collapse to the ground if they didn’t have each other to hold on to for support.
“Yowza,” she moaned against his lips with halting breaths.
Through jagged breaths of his own, he whispered, “You’re such a dork.”
Then it was another five minutes or so before he finally had the strength to leave her and return the equipment to the Bronco.
She was right. It would be a lot more fun to share.
Chapter 27
Brynn
Wednesday, March 23
6:16 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time
I’d never been so cold and exhausted and sunburnt and windburnt and happy in all my life. And hungry. So unbelievably hungry.
I hadn’t eaten anything all day long but the scone from the inn and a bag of beef jerky from Sebastian’s vehicle. That hadn’t seemed to matter at all when the only choice, if I wanted to eat, was to interrupt the bliss of being with Sebastian on the mountain. I’d have gleefully wasted away to nothing if it meant being able to soar down the path, over and over, with his arms and legs wrapped around me, forever. When our frozen extremities needed a break from playing in the snow, we drove higher. I led him to overlooks he hadn’t yet discovered, and he introduced me to some nature conservancy areas that had still been privately owned when I lived here. Finding food would have meant going back into town, where reality was waiting.
But now the sun was almost completely down, and even our newly discovered method for staying warm wouldn’t keep us from frostbite overnight. Or so Sebastian insisted. I sort of wanted to test it out and see.
“You hungry?” he asked me as we made the last few loops down to the elevation of the town.
“Hardy-har-har.” I squeezed his arm as he teased me. Since I couldn’t kiss him while he was driving, I’d had very little to distract me from how famished I was—so I’d talked about very little else for the last thirty minutes.
“I have to run by my house and let Murrow out, and then we can swing by Cassidy’s and get some dinner, if you want.”
Silence fell over the space as we both grew stone-faced and stared straight ahead. I assumed that he had been as jolted by his seemingly routine suggestion as I had. It carried with it a sense of reality crashing down. It was, maybe, a first date . . . but maybe not. If we had a first date, would there be a second?
It had been an entire day of joy and happiness and truth and contentment. Freedom. It had been an entire day of me loving Adelaide Springs and its breathtaking scenery more than anyplace else in the world. A day of memories and stories and so much laughter. And we hadn’t filmed a single moment of any of it. Had that been me making a decision about my future, or had I just been caught up in Sebastian?
I may have begun accepting a renewed love for my hometown, but what could a future here look like? I couldn’t go from a national platform—the commitments and contracts and obligations tied up in that—to . . . what? Working at a newspaper in Adelaide Springs, Colorado? It just wasn’t possible.
And yet . . . I wouldn’t be the first.
My left hand had been resting on his arm as he drove—I just hadn’t been willing to stop touching him completely—and I ran my fingers down the length of the arm of his jacket until I reached his hand. I wrapped my fingers around his, and he peeked at me briefly and smiled.
“I’m sorry I said that whole dinner thing so casually. I just meant we’re hungry and should get food. I didn’t mean to act like there aren’t still a ton of things to talk about.”
“Sebastian?”
“Hmm?”
I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat so I could watch him. “What happened in Myanmar?”
He kept his eyes focused on the road as he turned off Banyon and, rather than turn toward Main Street, turned down the county road toward his house. “I guess we had to come back to that eventually.”
I cared so much more than I had when the subject was broached that morning. I was so much more invested. I was beginning to know who he was now. Whoever he had been, and how he changed from who he had been to who he was—from the anchor desk to the Adelaide Gazette—all traced back to Myanmar, I suspected.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I wished I hadn’t brought it up. I was pretty sure he didn’t hate me anymore—at the very least, his lips and mine had become very good friends—but I had no idea if I was someone he wanted to discuss this with. Whatever it was. Whoever I was to him. “If you don’t want to talk about it . . .”
He shook his head. “No. Let’s talk about it.” He squeezed my hand and flashed me a comforting smile. “But can we wait until we get to my house?” He swallowed hard. “I haven’t talked about it much—”
“Of course. Whatever you need.”
“It’s just that . . . Well, it’s probably best that Murrow’s there when I do.”
Huh. “Oh. Okay.” I looked away from him, through the front windshield toward his strange little house at the end of the gravel road. I was trying not to be judgmental. I really was. And I was increasingly confident I was still going to like him, no matter what he told me. But what was with him and this dog?
“So, um . . . Murrow’s a psychiatric service dog. I don’t know if anyone in town knows that, except for Doc. It’s not like Adelaide Springs is the type of place to make me dress him up in those harnesses or carry a certificate around. And most of the time he’s just my dog now. But . . . yeah. If I’m going to talk about this . . .”
“You almost talked about it at the Gulch. Was that dangerous?”
He ran his thumb across my knuckles. “I wouldn’t have talked to you about it this morning like I will now.” He pulled into his driveway, put the car in Park, and shut off the ignition. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay.”
“No, Brynn, listen—” He took off his seat belt and shifted to face me. “This is . . .” He sighed. “This is most definitely something that could change your opinion of me. It’s the biggest regret in my life and the biggest pain, and I know you’re leaving in”—he raised his wrist and checked the time, then looked back at me—“forty hours or so. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to—”
In one fluid motion my right hand unbuckled my seat belt and I scooted as close to him as I could. My palm was on his cheek, and I was savoring the feel of his scratchy beard against my tender skin.
“Nothing about this day has made sense.” My voice was soft and shaky. “This week. Yesterday I was convinced you hated me.”
He tilted his head and kissed the inside of my wrist. “Yesterday I may have.”
I smiled. “See? Making sense is clearly not our top priority.”
* * *
Five minutes later, after I had walked into his house and out again, and then repeated that about three more times to make sure I really wasn’t allergic to Murrow, and after Sebastian had taken him outside and then brought him back in and put food in his bowl—and after I raided his kitchen cabinets and found a box of melba toast to munch on—I sat on the couch waiting for Sebastian. I was petting Murrow, who was much more interested in the attention I was giving him than the awful-smelling gravy stuff in his bowl. He was a cute little guy, truth be told. Murrow, I mean. My analysis of Sebastian’s appearance had far surpassed cute. No one that brilliant and fun was supposed to be as hot as he was, I was pretty sure. And I was quite certain that no one wearing an MIT cap and a Janet Jackson shirt at the same time (or separately, for that matter) was supposed to kiss as expertly as he did.
“Who was the last person you kissed? Before me, I mean. Obviously.” It was such an awkward and personal question, but it didn’t feel weird to ask it. Well, it didn’t until I began thinking about the women in Adelaide Springs who might have had the opportunity to go out with Sebastian. And it didn’t take long to realize who the most eligible bachelorette in town was and that Sebastian was most definitely one of the two most eligible bachelors. “Oh no. If it was Laila, don’t tell me. Just . . . I don’t know. Lie to me. Tell me it was someone I don’t know.” Laila and I had never fought over a boy, and I didn’t want to start now.
He rounded the corner from his kitchen and set the dish towel he’d been using to dry his hands down on the counter. “It was someone you don’t know.”
Well, shoot. “Oh. Okay. Um . . . cool.”
He smirked at me as he sat down on the opposite side of the couch, Murrow between us. “Not Laila.”
Thank goodness. I’d been mentally preparing to give her John Mayer’s phone number if that’s what it took for her to let me have Sebastian, but that would have been a disaster. She would have been too nice for him, and John definitely didn’t possess the maturity to handle someone as wonderful as her. He no doubt would have fallen in love with her and written a song about her after he broke her heart, of course, and then she would have gone back to being a crazed fan and ultimately a restraining order would have been necessary for one or the other of them.
“In that case, tell me everything.”
“Wish I could. It was a woman I met at a bar in Dhaka.”
“Bangladesh!” Golly, I was eager to prove to him I was smart. “Sorry. Don’t know why you make me want to win Jeopardy!”
“I always feel the need to prove I could win Jeopardy! No judgment here. But yeah . . . Dhaka. About two weeks before my wife left me.” The corner of his mouth tightened. “I bet it’s difficult to imagine why my marriage didn’t work out.”
He seemed to be watching to see how I would react, so I did all I could to prevent any reaction at all from appearing on my face. He had been divorced for six years and hadn’t kissed anyone in all that time. Whatever had happened in those years, he clearly wasn’t the same guy who had been unfaithful to his wife.
He kept watching me, so I repeated his words. “No judgment here.”
“Thankfully it didn’t go any further than a kiss in a bar. That was bad enough, of course, but . . . yeah. I didn’t know anything about her. It’s mortifying to have to tell you that I don’t even know the name of the last person I kissed, but that’s the truth.”
“Yeah.” I grimaced. “Same.”
He tilted his head and smiled. “You don’t know the name of the last person you kissed?”
I sighed. “I know it definitely wasn’t Harry Styles. Or . . .” Well, shoot. I’d forgotten the name of the other one I knew it wasn’t. “Yeah. Wasn’t Harry Styles. Beyond that . . .” I shrugged.
He laughed. “Wow. There are a lot of possibilities in the world who aren’t Harry Styles.”
My eyes flew open. “No! It was definitely a member of One Direction. I just can’t remember—”
“Louis?”
“You don’t seriously know the members of One Direction.”
“Liam? Niall? Zayn?”
“Zayn! I think it was Zayn! Is he the one with all the tattoos?” I gestured toward my neck and shoulders and chest.
“They all have lots of tattoos, except for Niall.”
“I can’t believe you know that.”
“I can’t believe you don’t!”
I shook my head and smiled. “I know he had really great facial hair.”
“And dark, dreamy eyes?”
A snort escaped. “Yes.”
“That’s Zayn. The ‘bad boy’ of 1D. Did you know his name actually means ‘beauty’ in Arabic? Oh, it’s true. Yep, every man dreams of being the follow-up to Zayn. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go hide in my closet and cry.”
I howled with laughter and stomped my feet at the entire thing—air quotes around “bad boy” and all.
Murrow stood from his curled-up position on the couch cushion, and I felt bad for scaring the little guy with my outburst. Except I didn’t seem to scare him at all. Rather than jump off the couch as I expected him to, he stepped up onto my lap, even as my chest still shook from laughter and my legs were still bouncing up and down. He rested his head against my stomach and settled in. I looked up at Sebastian in adoring surprise.
“He likes you.” He slid over to the middle cushion and overtook Murrow’s abandoned spot. “He’s not the only one.” He leaned in to kiss me, but before he could I reached out and removed his baseball cap.
And then I whimpered. I full-on whimpered like an adolescent girl losing it over her crush. Quite possibly Zayn. But my crush was there on the couch with me, and the removal of his MIT cap had revealed thick, loose, gorgeous, unruly curls that my fingers needed to touch.
Sebastian was trying to slip his hat back on, but I would have none of it. “I was afraid you were going bald.” That had been my most common experience with men who wore a cap all the time, but Sebastian had broken the mold. I grabbed the cap from his hands and threw it across the room, and then dove in with both hands. “Why would you ever cover up this hair?” I asked as my fingers explored and delighted in the soft, curly wonder of him.
His cheeks were red. “I’ve always hated it, and I’m way past due for a haircut.”
“How can you hate it? I love it.”
He chuckled and leaned into my hand. “Well, admittedly, you’re making me hate it a little less.”
I clenched my fists in the curls and pulled him to me. Instantly Murrow jumped down and ran into the kitchen. Apparently loud noises and abrupt movements were of no concern to him, but he wouldn’t tolerate the kissy-kissy stuff.
Chapter 28
Sebastian
Wednesday, March 23
7:19 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time
“So I was in Maungdaw Township in 2016. The Rohingya were being slaughtered by the thousands. Villages being burned, women raped, senseless murders . . . It was awful and endless.” He hadn’t intended to just dive in like that. Especially after a few moments that had been so carefree and passionate. But Brynn was in his arms and he wanted nothing more than to share with her the part of himself he shared with no one. “I was so frustrated—so many people were—because the diplomacy agencies seemed to be spending all their time collecting data and studying the situation, trying to determine if what was happening could be constituted as genocide. Of course it was genocide. Ethnic cleansing, plain and simple.”
She settled her head against his chest and wrapped her arms around him. “Why did the definition matter? To them, I mean.”
“Because they could get more funding for genocide. In the crudest of ways, to the philanthropists who thrive not only on what their money can accomplish in the world but what their impact in the world can do for their name and notoriety, genocide is the flashiest of all atrocities.” Sebastian’s chest rose and fell, and Brynn’s head accompanied it, her pulse calibrated to his. “While the data was calculated, endless lives were destroyed. Generations and bloodlines were depleted, and anyone with power to make a difference sat by and waited for permission to act.”
