AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So it’s with supreme confidence, easing back in my chair, that I tell her, “I mean it.”
I’ll never forget this—the long, silent moment she absorbs my words, as if waiting for me to draw them back, before she turns and, finally, fully looks at me.
The last golden streaks of dusk pour down her, liquid gold transforming her hair to living fire, her eyes to blazing emeralds, every freckle to amber embers lighting up her skin.
Air whooshes out of my lungs more violently than after the most brutal check I’ve ever taken into the boards. In that moment I see it. I feel it. The spark of what’s forged inside her—a spine of steel, a white-hot intensity, simmering beneath that seemingly sweet, serene surface.
Her eyebrow arches as she looks at me, and a slow, dawning smile warms her face. Her hand reaches out toward mine. “Then you have yourself a deal, Sebastian Gauthier.”
5
ZIGGY
Playlist: “bad guy,” Billie Eilish
I think I might have made a massive mistake.
Sebastian clasps my hand, and heat seeps into my skin. I feel my heart sprint in my chest.
I was very sure that I could do this, that we could pull this off. But maybe that was the boozy strawberry milkshake talking.
I stare at Sebastian, his face all sharp, lean angles, cool silver eyes, and warm golden skin—the stranger I thought I had a handle on, whose desperation I could leverage to counterbalance my own.
But now I’m sitting here, smelling weed and whiskey titrating out of his system. I’m seeing purple smudges under his eyes and a pale, thin scar slashed across his left eyebrow. A freckle at the base of his throat.
Now he feels…human. Formidably, terrifyingly human. Humans are hard for me. To read, to learn, to understand. Looking at him, I’m wondering if I bit off way more than I can chew.
And I’m also feeling how strong he is.
His grip is very strong.
I stare down at his hand covered in intricate webs of ink, numbers, and signs, fragmented words twisted around his fingers, curled down his wrist to his arm.
Heat floods my cheeks. It’s better to stare at his hand, considering the tats on his hands have nothing on what’s stretched across his bare chest, beneath those silver chains. I’ve always stared longer than I should when I’m curious. And I’m very curious about what’s inked across his torso. I don’t want to stare at Sebastian Gauthier—his torso, or otherwise. At all.
A growing sense of dread seeps through me. I could not be more his opposite. How the heck am I going to pass as this guy’s friend? How are we going to convince anyone that we’re actually people who share the same world?
“Ziggy.” Sebastian’s voice is rough at the edges, ragged from what I imagine to be some combination of smoke and sleeplessness and too much alcohol. He sounds dangerous and daunting.
And yet, I still glance up, meeting those sharp, silver eyes, telling myself to be brave. “Yes, Sebastian?”
He draws his hand away and folds his arms across his chest. “Stop calling me that.”
“Why?”
His eyes narrow. “I told you this already. You infiltrated my property. You don’t get to ask questions.”
“But we’re friends now,” I remind him, smiling sweetly. “Friends tell each other these things.”
“We’re pretend friends. Pretend I told you.”
“Hmm.” I tap my chin. “Maybe it’s our ‘friend’ thing. I call you Sebastian. No one else does. Yeah, I like it.”
His hands come to his face, scrubbing it. “I need a drink.”
“Pretty sure you’ve got a couple still sloshing through your bloodstream.”
His hands drop, and he flashes me an exasperated look, chased by a wolfish smirk. “Never stopped me before.”
