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I poke his side, but he catches it before I can get a tickle in. He links that hand with his, too, staring down at our fingers as he tangles them together. “I know they aren’t perfect,” he says. “Your family. I know there are ways they’ve fallen short of what you needed, but you have a rare good thing in your life.”
I nod. “My family’s incredible.”
“They are,” he says quietly, his thumbs drifting across my hands. “And I…am so far from that. I didn’t just bolt because of the fucking celiac. I bolted because all I could think as I stood there after your game, all of you looking at me expectantly…” He sighs. “Expectantly. That’s the problem. I haven’t done well, historically, with expectations. And if I want to, I have a lot of work ahead of me before I can meet them and not be a disappointment.”
Tears well in my eyes. “Sebastian, you wouldn’t disappoint us.”
“Oh, I would. If I kept doing what I have been. And I’ve been doing that for a long time; it is deep in my makeup.” He peers up at me. “I’ve got a lot of issues. Dad issues. Stepdad issues. Mom issues. And I’m not saying that to deflect responsibility; I’m saying that to own it. My dad walked out when I was six and never looked back. My mom married a fucking sociopath who messed me up right under her nose, and she either didn’t see it or wouldn’t, and I thought the difference mattered, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it really doesn’t. What matters is that I was an angry, hurt child who only felt in control of his life when he used that anger and hurt to make other people angry and hurt. I acted out and struggled, and I couldn’t get a rise out of anybody—couldn’t earn my mom’s attention, couldn’t provoke an outburst in my stepdad’s anger until it became something Mom would notice and care about. My teachers were bribed and cajoled to go easy on me. My coaches put up with my bullshit because I was too good at hockey to kick off the team.
“I didn’t get in trouble or get my ass handed to me like I should have. I just got told”—he hesitates, before he swallows roughly—“over and over again, what a disappointment I was. So I let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I have been doing that for a long time. To punish my asshole dad and hopefully tarnish his professional hockey legacy with my sordid one. To humiliate my stepdad and show him I don’t give a fuck about his approval, his adamant insistence that he’d break me, control me, that he’d have the final say. To maybe, just maybe, finally, get my mom to see how fucked up all of this has been.”
He shakes his head, then finally peers up, sighing as he meets my eyes. “That’s what I come from. That’s how I’ve operated. I learned a long time ago to live with knowing I disappointed people who mattered to me. Then controlling how and when I disappointed them became taking back the power I never felt I had.
“It got tricky, when I signed with Frankie, and I respected her so damn much, her vision for using a professional athlete’s influence to build a meaningful, generous life and legacy. I warned her who I was, what I was like, but she wasn’t scared of me—hell, she scared me into straightening out some of my shit, doing things I’d put off that were good, that I wanted to do, that made me feel just a little bit better about myself, even if I kept them quiet. Then Ren dragged me kicking and screaming into friendship with him, and that guilt sunk its claws into me, started gnawing at me, making me want to be more careful, to not do things so terrible they’d disappoint him badly or make him regret our friendship. I tried to commit forgivable sins, make less egregious slipups. I made peace with the fact that I had warned him and Frankie I was a lost cause, that they knew what they were getting themselves into, and I’d disappoint those two occasionally, which I have.”
He sighs, brushing our palms together, back and forth. Slowly, he drags his gaze up to meet mine. “But, Ziggy, the thought of disappointing you…I can’t stand it. I have felt so fundamentally unworthy of sharing air and space and even this small fragment of time with you, and for once I’ve just let myself sit in that, soak it in, and it’s changed me. You’ve given me shit when I deserved it, grace when I didn’t. You’ve seen parts of me that no one else ever has, and not only did you stick with me anyway, you saw possibility in me—you believed in me when you had no reason to.”
I blink back tears and squeeze his hands hard. “Sebastian—”
“I’m almost done,” he says quietly. “I promise.”
Slowly, he starts to walk backward, taking me with him, toward the romance aisle, which makes me smile even though my vision is watery with the threat of tears. “I’m telling you all this because I want you to know that you’re the best person I’ve ever known, Sigrid Marta Bergman, and I’m the luckiest to call you my friend.”
He glances over his shoulder, then brings us to a stop. “This publicity stunt we’ve been pulling, I know it was your idea, that it’s working, and you’re getting what you want out of it, but I’ve gotten something so much more meaningful from it, because of you, and I wanted…” He releases my hands, then shoves his back in his pockets, holding my eyes. “I wanted to show you thank you.”
I tip my head, smiling as I try really hard not to cry. “‘Show me’ thank you?”
He shrugs. “Saying thank you is fine, but it wasn’t enough for this, for you. I wanted to show you. So here we are. The place is ours for as late as we want it—well, until they come in at eight tomorrow morning to get ready to open up. And, not that I think you have a free inch of bookshelf space, but whatever you want here, it’s on me.”
“Sebastian,” I whisper, my heart aching as it pounds, those magical blossoms drifting inside me, too much, too wonderful, too lovely. “Thank you.” I step closer to him, until my hands go to his wrists, squeezing gently.
“Ziggy, don’t—”
I set a finger against his mouth. “Sebastian, don’t. Don’t tell me not to thank you. I will thank you.” Slowly, I lower my hand, making sure he’s not about to start his usual self-deprecating nonsense. Satisfied that he’s listening to me, I slide my touch up his bare forearms—warm skin, the shadows of his tattoos, which I finally let myself look at closely—stars and planets, plants and flowers, mythical creatures and bits of words, fragmented, lost, scattered across his skin. Gently, I take my hands higher, over his rolled sleeves at his elbows, up to his shoulders.
He exhales roughly as I bring my palms across his chest, until they both rest right over his heart. “Thank you,” I whisper, holding his eyes. “For telling me, for trusting me with so much of yourself and your past. I can’t…” Shaking my head, I bite my lip. “I can’t imagine going through what you did, when you were little. You had to be so scared, so lonely, so hurt.”
He tears his gaze away, peering down, but I duck my head until my eyes find his again. Slowly, he lifts his gaze and holds mine. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, “for all the ways the people who were supposed to love you and keep you safe failed you. I’m sorry that how you learned to survive hurt you and the people around you. And I’m…so damn proud of you for wanting something more. It takes courage, Sebastian, to want to be something more than you’ve been, to reach for a life beyond the safety and control you’ve built for yourself. I’m lucky to be your friend while you do that.”
Sebastian sets his hand over mine and squeezes, hard and long as he stares at me. “Thank you, Ziggy.”
I smile, tugging one hand away from beneath his palm, lifting it to his hair. “My driving kind of messed up your perfect coiffure.”
He smiles, too. “Well, fix the damage you did, then, woman.”
I lift my hands to his hair, scraping through the wild waves until they fall how he likes, a little combed back, parted to his left, curled right along his jaw. His jaw that I brush my thumb across, savoring the sandpaper roughness of his scruff to his chin and the tiny dimple there. I press it with my fingertip and smile. “Boop.”
He narrows his eyes. “Did you just boop my chin dimple?”
“And if I did?” I stare at his mouth, begging my body to behave itself, not to ruin this perfect moment between us by doing something as reckless as kissing him. “What are you gonna do about it?”
Sebastian leans in, pressing an index finger to my cheek, right in my dimple, then he gently taps the bridge of my nose, above my eyebrow. “I’m gonna boop every damn freckle on your body in retaliation.”
I gasp.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he says, walking closer, making me step backwards with him until my back hits the bookshelves. His hands wrap around me in time and soften the impact of the shelf, protecting me from its hard wooden edge. “There are a lot of those freckles, but I swear to you, Sigrid—and fair warning, I really mean it since, thanks to you, I’ve become a man of my word—boop my chin dimple again and just see where it gets you.”
I stare at him, heart racing, searching his eyes. “A man of your word?” I whisper. “As in honest? You’ll be honest with me?”
