Page 31 of Trust Fund Baby

I’d had enough after a few moments of us being silent. It was time for us to put the past behind us. Given Hallie and James’s blooming relationship, there was a good chance we were going to be spending more time together. If I didn’t have a chance with her romantically, no matter how I felt about her, I at least wanted things to be civil between us. And that meant we needed to talk.

“I never intended everything to happen the way that it did,” I said, still not looking at her. If I did, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get the rest of what I wanted to say out. “I was jealous and hurt. Hell, I know that’s not a good excuse for what I did. I just wanted to get back at you, but I know what I did hit you ten times harder than what you did to me.”

“What I did to you?” Confusion colored Roxie’s voice as she asked the question. “What the hell did I do to you?”

I finally turned to look at her. She couldn’t possibly be serious. She couldn’t possibly have forgotten one of the most pivotal moments in my life. All the years of pent-up anger I had for her suddenly teetered on the edge of meaning nothing.

“That party the summer before we were meant to go to college, the one at that senator’s house further up the island. His son sent out a blast about having a free house, and we decided to go with our friends?”

Roxie nodded. “I remember that party. You disappeared about an hour into it, and that was the last time we were … us.”

There was so much history loaded in that last word. But Roxie remained completely silent about what she’d done with that guy when she thought I couldn’t see.

I stared at her. My teeth pressed together, and I felt the strain build in my jaw.

“You’re really not going to mention him?” I asked.

She blinked, brows pinching. “Mention who?”

“The guy in the varsity jacket. The one you were kissing in that back room that night.”

Her mouth parted, eyes going wide. “What?”

I studied every inch of her beautiful face, absorbing the way confusion clouded her eyes. God, how different life could have been if that night had gone differently. “I went upstairs because I’d told you I wanted to talk, that I had something to tell you.”

Roxie blinked, clearly trying to follow what I was saying.

“I was looking for you,” I continued. “Someone said you’d gone into one of the rooms upstairs. So I followed. Opened the door to one of the back rooms, and that’s when I saw you.” A lump formed in my throat, and I took another swig of beer to wash it back down. “You were right there when I opened the door. With some jock all over you. Kissing you.”

Her eyes widened. “Sebastian, no. That’s not what—” she broke off, turning her body on her lounge chair so her knees knocked against mine. “I was looking for you.”

“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t in that guy’s mouth—”

“I walked into the wrong room,” she cut in, her voice sharp and fast, like suddenly the most pivotal moment of our teenage years was finally coming into focus. Every missing piece was now painfully there for us to realize how big of idiots we’d been. “Yes, I was trying to find you because you wanted to ask me something. But I opened that door and they were playing spin the bottle. The guy you saw kissing me had just spun and he pulled me in and kissed me.”

I stared at her. Completely dumbfounded. I had to repeat her words three times in my brain before I could understand.

“I shoved him off.” Her voice cracked now. “I told him to get lost. I just remember pushing him away and turning to keep looking for you. But I never found you.”

That was because the second I’d seen her in another guy’s arms I’d turned, stormed out of the house, and gone home. The plan to ask her to be my girlfriend that night totally ruined.

I remember slamming the front door of the house hard enough for one of the light sconces to fall and shatter. The senator sent my dad a bill once he found out I’d been the one to do it. But I hadn’t cared in the moment or even when my father had berated me for being so reckless. All I cared about was getting as far away from that house and her as fast as I could. I’d walked out of that house the same way I’d walked out of Roxie’s life, without ever giving her the chance to explain. I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t waited. I’d just assumed the worst and let it fester into something cruel and permanent.

But I hadn’t stopped there. I’d done the worst possible thing instead.

The beer in my hand felt warm now, forgotten. My mouth was dry, but I didn’t dare reach for another sip. A strained laugh bubbled up from inside me as I realized how completely ridiculous the end of our friendship had been.

“I thought …” My voice came out hoarse, like it had been scraped against gravel. I shook my head, trying to shake the jumble of thoughts away. “I honestly don’t know what I thought.”

Roxie let out a bitter laugh, no humor in it at all. “Of course you didn’t. Because that’s what you do, right? You act on instinct without having the full truth.”

Her words hit hard—but they weren’t wrong. I’d done exactly that. Not just then, but more times than I could count in recent years. Hell, that attitude was exactly why I was in the position I was with my father and Whittaker Holdings. Dipping when something got hard was always my first instinct.

It was a shield, a reflex. Simpler to deflect than to confront. Easier to crack a joke than to examine the wreckage. I had created a clever facade, and it had trapped me. Now, the walls were crumbling. I reached out, not for a witty comeback, but for something real, something solid to hold onto before the whole structure collapsed entirely.

“I was going to tell you that night,” I said. “The truth.”

She looked at me, cautious. Guarded. “Tell me what?”