Page 37 of Contested

‘That bad?’

‘Worse.’ She got to her feet and stepped toward the door before turning. ‘Good?’

Marcos grinned. ‘Good.’ Then, with a chuckle, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you heard here.’

Paula rolled her eyes. ‘Funny.’

And she left, going back to her room, and Marcos heard the door click shut behind her.

His room settled around him. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

For a few seconds, he just breathed.

And when all that did was conjure fragments of the night, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter and wished he could take it all back.

|| Chapter Nine ||

Sebastian – “What do you want me to say?”

Sebastian’s alarm went off too loudly.

It cut across the room, bouncing against the walls and drilling into his ears. The noise was unnecessary as he was already awake, flat on his back with his eyes fixed on the ceiling and both hands resting over his chest, feeling the steady, useless beat beneath his palms.

He hadn’t slept at all.

For a while, he had tried. He had let the apartment settle after Marcos left. Let the silence spread through the room and let his body drag him down into the kind of tiredness that usually took over whether he wanted it to or not.

Last night, it hadn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, something from the night came back too clearly. Marcos standing in the living room, breathing hard. Marcos’ hands on his face. Marcos staring at him after, mouth parted, chest heaving, exposed beneath Sebastian.

He pushed all of it away. Almost.

The part that stayed was the look.

Once it was over.

The quick drop behind Marcos’ eyes. The way his body had closed around itself too late, as if something had caught him from behind and dragged everything good out through his spine. Sebastian had known what it was before Marcos had even turned away.

He had seen that look on his own face before, staring back at him from the mirror in the bathroom of a stranger’s apartment.

Sebastian exhaled slowly and rolled onto his side to shut the alarm off. The phone screen was bright under his thumb, and before he could drop it again, a text notification caught his eye.

It was his sister, Loren.

Coffee?

Sebastian’s lip went white under the pressure of his teeth.

Loren didn’t text him without a reason. She wasn’t casual with him. Not anymore. Their relationship had settled into something that sat between siblings and distant friends.

She was older by a few years and had always sat closer to their parents. She had chosen differently to Sebastian.

He had no real issues with his parents now, not in a way that made sense to explain to other people. His father wasn’t the same kind of angry he’d been when Sebastian was small, and his mother wasn’t absent in the same way, either.

That didn’t change what had already happened, though.

Sebastian had moved in with his grandparents when he was eight. Loren had stayed. That had split something between them before either of them could really name it, and nothing since had quite closed the gap.

He pressed his thumb into the side of his phone, then replied.