That should be all he was thinking about.
Not trying to ease the jealousy sloshing through his mid-section or thinking of ways to send his brother out of the country for eight years or more.
It was irrational and out of fucking order, but it was his truth.
He wanted the girl he’d grown up with, who hero-worshipped him, and the girl he adored right back.
But shit was complicated.
Not only because she hated him now, but also because they were in an emotional place they’d never been in before.
“Sunshine?” he said after a while.
The sky was dark, and they were about eighty miles from home.
“What?” she snapped, and he smiled. Her attitude was so fucking cute.
“How long do you think you’re gonna hate me for?”
He heard her inhale before letting it out slowly.
“I don’t hate you, Sebastian.” She stated. He could hear her emotions just by listening to her voice. “I just wish I’d kept my mouth shut. I wish many things, but mostly that, so I don’t have to feel humiliated every second of the day.” There was another strong inhale from her side of the truck. “I don’t hate you.”
“Then you’ll talk to me again?”
The silence drove him mad.
She was never without things to say, and now she was weighing up her words like she was divvying out candies and didn’t want him to have any.
He wanted all her words.
She owed him a year’s worth, and he was figuring out how to get them back.
“I’d prefer it if we kept things as they are.” She said in a small voice, and Seb’s skull nearly imploded as the truck ate up the road ahead of him without him seeing any of it.
“No,” he growled low. “That’s not an option here, Sunny. It stops now. You’re gonna talk to me again, and it’s gonna be just like it used to be.”
“You can’t say that.”
“I just did. Make peace with it because that’s what’s happening. So many things have gotten twisted up. We won’t be something I can’t fix.”
Even if he had to haul Sunny over his shoulder to get her back to the happy place they were at before. He was sick of this ghosting bullshit.
He needed to talk to her every day.
The intensity of his daily need to see her was unbelievably insane. It was like needing drugs and being unable to get those drugs because his drugs were a stubborn little thing and wouldn’t answer his calls.
That meant Seb had stooped to dangerous levels over the past year. Though stalking didn’t come naturally to him, it hadn’t stopped him from using it to get his Sunny fix.
He’d jump on his bike and head to Texas at any opportunity. Sometimes, he’d spend hours there, then drive back to Colorado, exhausted but happy that he’d gotten to see her up close.
It was the only peace that settled his restless heart.
Though near her, he could see that every sip of coffee she’d taken hadn’t truly felt like peace. It was torture to be that close to Sunny, yetnot close enough. He’d call occasionally, only to see her frown at her phone and leave it unanswered.
That’s how he’d known she wouldn’t have been receptive to seeing him on her doorstep.
So he did like all nefarious idiots and watched her from afar. He told himself it was just checking up on her, making sure she was alright at college and no one was bothering her, but it was a load of crap.
