Page 34 of Trust Fund Baby

“I don’t know if I can forget what you did,” I said, eyes locked on his. “I don’t know if I want to.”

“I’m not asking you to,” he blurted. “I want you to remember. You can hold it over my head if you need to. I just …” He exhaled, shaking his head again as if to clear his thoughts. “I just don’t want to be a stranger to you anymore.”

The thought of the two of us being strangers felt almost ridiculous. He’d never been a stranger. Not really.

Even after everything, he still felt like a thread stitched into every good memory I had of my childhood and my teenage years.

My eyes fell to the beer I was holding; the glass beaded with moisture in the sticky air. I took a sip of my drink, mostly to distract myself, and then I slowly went back and sat on the edge of the lounge chair, my gaze fixed on the pool. I didn’t look at him. Not yet.

God knew that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to think properly. Those stupid tattoos all over his beautiful body did things to me I didn’t want to name, or that chiseled jawline I caught myself staring at far too often this weekend.

“I can’t promise anything,” I murmured.

“That’s okay.”

“I’m still angry.”

“I’d be concerned if you weren’t.”

I glanced over at him, catching the faintest curve of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Not smug. Not sarcastic. Just … sad.

“But maybe,” I said slowly, like the words had to be tested first before they became real, “we can try to be … something.”

His brows lifted. “Something?”

“Something honest,” I echoed. “Whatever that ends up looking like.”

He sat in the lounge chair across from me, our knees nearly brushing. “That’s more than I hoped for.”

I looked up at him, I took in his face, the parts that I knew, along with the edges of him that had shifted. The man he’d grown into who was once the boy who broke my heart.

“I still don’t trust you,” I said.

“I’ll earn it.”

“If you mess this up—”

“I won’t.”

It wasn’t a promise. It was a plea. And that made it harder to argue with.

We sat like that for a long while. Not saying anything. Not needing to. Just letting the night be quiet for once. The moonlight danced across the water, casting soft ripples of light across our skin. And suddenly the silence that used to live between us didn’t feel like a wall.

It felt like a beginning.

13

Seb

“So are you finally going to tell me the truth about Roxie?” James asked me as the two of us ran along the beach the following day. He’d tried to get the story out of me earlier by the pool, but I’d refused. Clearly, he thought I’d be more loose lipped a few miles into a run.

If I didn’t love him as much as I did, I would have strung him up by his perfectly tailored pants.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I gave him the same response I always had whenever he asked about what was going on between me and Roxie.

But it looked like he wouldn’t settle for the same excuse this morning.

“Cut the shit, Seb.” James gave me a look as we continued running, sand slicing through the air behind us. “What the fuck is going on between you and Roxie? That is Hallie’s best friend and I am not about to let you pull your usual shit with her.”