Page 83 of His Obsession
“You’re a bad liar.”
He comes in slowly and crouches in front of me. He doesn’t touch me right away. Just looks at me sitting there in a towel, wet hair dripping down my back, whatever dignity I have left somewhere near the shower drain.
“I hate that he’s dead and I’m still scared,” I say.
Sebastian’s face changes. Not much, but enough.
“That’s normal. You’ve still got a lot of trauma to process. Your body hasn’t caught up to the fact that the danger’s passed.”
“He’s gone,” I say.
“Yes.”
“So why doesn’t it feel like it?”
Sebastian sits on the bathroom floor in front of me, dressed in dark pants and a white shirt like this is a perfectly normal place for him to be.
“Because he spent a long time making sure you were afraid of him. His death doesn’t undo that in three days.”
The next morning, I make it downstairs because I’m sick of the bedroom and I need some vitamin D. The kitchen is quiet when I get there. Sebastian is at the island with coffee, his phone, and a stack of papers he immediately turns over when he sees me. I pretend not to notice. He pretends not to know I noticed. We’re very mature.
“Coffee?” he asks.
I give him a look.
He smirks. “Tea?”
“Fine.”
He gets up and makes it himself, even though there are at least four people in this house who’d probably materialize out of a wall if he snapped his fingers. I sit at the island, one hand resting on my stomach, and watch him move around the kitchen like he’s not entirely sure where anything lives.
When he sets the mug in front of me, I wrap both hands around it.
“I meant what I said,” I tell him.
He stops.
I don’t look up from the tea. It feels easier to say it that way.
“In the basement,” I add. “I meant it.”
He sits down across from me. “I know you did.”
I finally look at him.
“Can you just let me be emotionally brave for at least fifteen seconds?”
“All right.” He smirks.
I take a breath. “I love you. I’m scared of that. I’m scared of needing you. I’m scared of how much easier it would be to trust you if I could pretend you weren’t dangerous. But you are. You’re also kind to me in ways I don’t always know what to do with. That makes it worse.”
His face does something I don’t know how to read.
“I love you,” I say again, because the first one didn’t kill me. “Even though you’re bossy and impossible.”
For a second, he doesn’t say anything. Then he laughs, not that anything’s funny. More like he’s exhausted and relieved and didn’t expect his body to make that sound before he could stop it.
I stare at him.
