Page 51 of Shadow Secrets
She blinked. Of all the things she’d expected him to say—some version of I’m pulling back, or this is moving too fast, or I need space—she hadn’t expected this.
She’d known the media pressure was building. Vivi and Garrett had briefed her on the cable news coverage, and Sebastian had warned her at the compound that the hospital incident would accelerate everything. But she’d been processing it as something to deal with when it got closer, as the ambient hum of a world that had always been slightly hostile to her.
“I mean—I know they will, eventually,” she said. “Vivi said a week, maybe more. But the news cycle burns hot and moves on. I’ll be a story for a minute, and then they’ll forget me.”
“No.” His voice was quiet. Absolute. “They won’t.”
“Sebastian—”
“It could be months, a year. Longer. I’ve lived this, Sutton. The attention doesn’t die; it mutates. One day you’re a headline and the next you’re a subject, and after that you’re a character in a story you never agreed to be in. You lose your privacy. Not some of it—all of it. People will crucify you more now than after Penn’s death. They’ll find every photograph you ever posted, every old Tumblr post from high school, every relationship you’ve had. Your website will get attacked. Trolls will target your shop, leave reviews, flag your account. Your name will be splashed across every entertainment outlet, podcast, and clickbait aggregator that can monetize the association. Your dream of going back to school on your own merit—gone. Every admissions officer at every program will recognize your name before they open your application. Every scholarship committee. Every peer in your cohort.”
He paused. His voice got quieter. “Everything you do will be scrutinized to death. Every piece you post will be run through the filter of who you’re dating. Every interview you give will circle back to Penn and Ginger and me. Every success you achieve will have an asterisk. For years.”
The apartment was quiet except for the rattle of the laundromat dryers through the floor.
Sutton sat down slowly on the edge of her bed. The air in her lungs felt thin. She’d lived pieces of what he was describing after Penn’s death—the Googling professors, the whispered recognition, the sister-of-an-assassin asterisk that had chased her from D.C. to Blackridge.
But the shape of it had been small. The thing he was describing was something else—a national megaphone pointed at a life she’d just started rebuilding.
“Are you trying to get me to break up with you?” The words came out flat.
Sebastian’s face tightened, his jaw flexing. “I want you to walk into the future with your eyes open. If you want a fresh start, Sutton—a real one—it can’t involve me. My name is a spotlight. I can’t turn it off. I’ve tried. I moved two thousand miles and changed my entire life and here we are.”
“So that’s it.” Her voice was gaining an edge. “Was I just a fling, then? Something convenient while you were protecting me?”
“Of course not,” he said instantly. “You came in like a storm and bulldozed every wall I’ve built over the past six years. You’re—” He stopped. Regrouped. “That’s the problem. Whatever this is between us doesn’t negate the fact that I’m bad for you. Being seen with me will cost you. And eventually, when the cost accumulates, it will lead to resentment.”
Something hot and sharp rose in her chest. She stood, crossed her arms, and planted her feet on the scuffed wood floor of the apartment. “You don’t get to decide what I feel,” she said. “Or what decisions I should make. Give me a little credit, Sebastian. I’m not an idiot. I know the media can be brutal. I’ve lived a version of what you’re describing—smaller, yes, but real. I know what it is to walk into rooms where people already have opinions about me. I’ve been doing that for six years, and I’m still standing. I’m more prepared this time, not less. And I’m not walking away from whatever this is because you’ve suddenly decided you’re an inconvenience.”
He flinched. She saw the slight widening of his eyes, the recalibration that happened when someone you cared about told you your assumption about them was wrong.
“I just want you to be happy,” he said quietly.
She closed the distance between them and stood in front of him close enough to feel the heat of his chest. She could smell the soap on his skin, and she was so close that he couldn’t look anywhere but at her face.
She put a hand on the solid heartbeat in his chest. “I am happy,” she said. “More than I’ve been in years. But you have to tone down the overly protective lynx in you right now. You can’t save me from everything. You can’t arrange my life to shield me from difficulty. I’m stronger than you’re giving me credit for.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s my nature.”
“I get that, and you’re good at it. It’s one of the reasons I’m standing here instead of lying on a slab at the mortuary. But we made a pact, remember?” She held his gaze. “No more regrets about the past. We’re done letting it control what happens next.”
“Some things you can’t outrun, no matter how hard you try.”
Frustration spiked inside her. “Then we don’t outrun them,” she said. “We face them. We confront them. We live the life we want and we don’t apologize for it. I spent six years apologizing for existing, Sebastian. For having Penn’s last name. For being in rooms where people had already decided what I was. I’m done apologizing. And I’m not letting you apologize for me, either. As long as I have you, I don’t care what people think.”
She could see the war in his head playing out on his face—the part of him that wanted to believe her was fighting the part of him that had built his entire post-shooting identity around the conviction that distance was the only kindness he could offer the people he cared about.
“Your art means everything to you,” he said. “I don’t want that to end up tainted because of me. I can’t stand the idea of people looking at your work and talking about who you’re dating.”
“Are you kidding me?”
His eyebrows rose.
“You’ve inspired a whole new fantasy line.” She waved a hand toward the desk, where the stolen notebook sat beside Penn’s sketchbooks. “Bodyguard warriors. I’m pairing them with my existing women warriors series. They’re going to have animal callsigns. It’s going to be epic. The dragons are not going to know what hit them.”
He stared at her. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Absolutely not.” She grinned, wicked and true. “You’re going to love it. The first one is definitely a lynx. Tall, dark, haunted expression, about to punch someone. Very mysterious. Very moody. A real heartthrob.”
