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Just because she couldn’t take what Ty had to offer, she could bloody hold her useless brother to account. For all the times he’d failed her. For all the times he’d shunned her and dismissed her and refused to see her pain because he was too busy wallowing in his own. He’d made her feel like nothing for so long, and she didn’t want to feel like nothing today.
She stepped into the palatial roof garden, and stopped dead, stunned for a moment by the heady fragrance and the sight of the beautiful twisting vines, clinging to the garden’s latticed ironwork in riotous profusion. Seb stood in the sunlight at the end of the terrace, his dark hair tinged with gold, his face for once devoid of its usual brooding scowl, a tool belt slung low on his hips as he hammered the trellis against a wall.
The fury surged back. What right did he have to be so content, when she was so miserable? And then the volcano in her chest erupted right out of her mouth.
“You cold, heartless, son of a bitch.”
Sebastian jerked round, his hand plunging into a clump of roses, then swore and yanked his hand back to suck on his thumb.
Good, she was glad he’d pricked himself, because he’d been a total prick to her for far too long.
“Zel, what are you doing up here?” The nickname that he hadn’t used since they were children, plus the complete astonishment on his face, made her hesitate for a second. But then she gathered her strength and her fury and marched towards him to jab a fingernail into the center of his shirt.
“So this is why you’re too busy to have dinner with me.”
“I have work,” he said, but she could see the lie in his dark shuttered eyes. “I was taking a short break.”
“Bullshit. You’d rather spend your evenings here than spend any time with me. I’m your sister, Seb, and we’ve been living in the same house for months and you know how many times we’ve dined together?”
He didn’t answer, his brows lowering in the familiar frown.
“Twice. And both times you spoke approximately twenty words to me. Why do you find my company so excruciating? I’m not drinking anymore. I won’t get hammered or high and make a spectacle of myself or start gushing uncontrollably. I just want to be able to talk to you. Occasionally, like a normal human being. Like your sister. Instead of being treated like someone who has the plague.”
She wanted him to care enough to be interested in what she had to say. All those mundane details of her life. The way Ty had been interested.
/> “I know we can never be a normal brother and sister.” She continued when he remained stoically silent.
Or rather, she’d spent the last five years forcing herself to come to terms with the fact their family could never be as warm and loving and supportive as the Sullivans.
“But why can’t we at least talk to each other? You’re the only family I have left, Seb?”
“I’m well aware of that,” he said, turning away. But she noticed the fine lines round his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the scar that bisected his lip going white with stress. He was hating every second of this.
Seb didn’t do confrontation. He didn’t do soul-searching. He had never even admitted he had a problem. So it had been far too easy for him to make her think that all their problems had been hers alone.
Why had she let him have his way for so long? She wasn’t nobody. Or nothing. And she wasn’t the only one to blame for their estrangement. Ty had noticed that, why hadn’t she?
“Did you even know I’ve given up my modeling career?” she tried again.
Even if going postal on Sebastian could never make up for losing Ty, she needed to at least try to sort out this area of her life one last time.
“I could hardly fail to know it,” Seb said, his expression rigid, his voice tight. “Given that those bloody parasites have been besieging us since five this morning.”
She heard accusation in his tone and her pride kicked in. “What they’re saying isn’t true. I didn’t go on some alcohol-induced weekend jolly and shave my head. I made a conscious decision not to sign another contract.”
“It makes no difference to me,” he said, the brooding expression back to hide his discomfort. “What you chose to do with your life, Zelda, is your business. I’ve never interfered.”
“Didn’t it ever occur to you that I wanted you to make it your business?” she said, forcing herself to say the words that had been buried inside her for so long—and had come out in so many self-destructive ways.
She’d made a decision five years ago during rehab to stop trying to attract Seb’s attention. To stop caring about what he thought of her, because it had only made her think less of herself. But Ty was right; she didn’t deserve to be treated this way, not anymore.
“When they kicked me out of St. J’s? I would have loved you to interfere then. But you didn’t say one word in my defense. They tore me away from the only friends I had. Mercy and Dawn and Faith were so important to me, and yet you didn’t do a single thing to stop them.”
“If you’d wanted to stay at the school, you shouldn’t have stolen the bloody wine,” he said with unswerving certainty.
But I didn’t steal the bloody wine.
She wanted to scream the truth at him. But the futility of protesting her innocence, ten years after the fact was obvious. And it would only make her remember the man who had been convinced of her innocence after knowing her for only three days. Not that she was ever likely to forget him.
