Lucian shrugged and let out a long breath. “It’s possible. I’ll do whatever I can to find out if you have any other loan sharks looking for you. But even I can only do so much. And we’re not paying him. You are. I’m merely the broker.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small stack of papers. “Your trust fund. I’m signing it back over to you. Well, what’s left of it, anyway.”
“You used this money to bail me out in the past, didn’t you?” asked Sebastian, skimming through the pages.
“I certainly wasn’t using my own money, brother.”
“Good. Thank you.” He pushed the papers back toward Lucian. “But I don’t want it. I don’t trust myself with access to that kind of money.”
Lucian nodded slowly. “When you haven’t gambled for a year, then.”
Sebastian shook his head. “No. I don’t want it.”
“Fine. I’ll just wait until you marry Kayla and I’ll give it to her as a wedding gift.”
“You’ll be holding on to that gift for a long time.” The words were bitter in his mouth. Bitter with truth. Bitter with disappointment. Bitter with self-loathing.
Lucian’s expression turned to granite. “Oh, Christ. What did you do?”
Sebastian dropped his elbows onto his knees, his body heavy with loss. Grief. “I had to protect her. I had to keep her safe. If she’s tied to me, there could always be someone out there coming after her. She doesn’t deserve that. She deserves so much better than my fucked up life putting her in danger.” He looked up, forcing himself to meet his brother’s eyes. “I’m not worthy of her, Lucian, and I never will be. Not after what happened.”
“That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“I have to keep her safe!” The words exploded out of him, desperate and sharp. “I love her so fucking much that if something happened to her, I wouldn’t survive it.”
Lucian studied him intently, a frown wrinkling his forehead. “How many times have I punched you in the face?”
“Three.” Sebastian remembered every single time; Lucian had a nasty right hook.
“It’s about to be four if you don’t get your head out of your fucking ass.”
Sebastian said nothing, just shook his head. There was nothing left to say. This was his mess, and he couldn’t risk Kayla becoming collateral damage any more than she already had.
“We will fix this, Bastian,” he said quietly. “We’ll deal with Coldhurst. We’ll make sure your debts are gone. And then you can live your life.”
He shook his head again, self-loathing burning through him, making his bones ache. “No. I love her, and that means she needs to stay the fuck away from me. It’s the only way. It’s the right thing.”
“I know you feel responsible for what happened to Kayla and Willa yesterday, but don’t you think breaking up with her is just another impulsive decision you’re going to come to regret in the near future?”
“No. Pushing her away is the only smart thing I’ve done lately. She deserves so much better than me. This is the way it has to be.” A desperate determination to do something right for fucking once in his life gripped him.
“Fine. We don’t have time to argue about this right now, but we’re not done talking about this. Let’s go over the plan for when Coldhurst arrives. I don’t want anyone getting shot today.”
20
Kayla stepped through the elevator doors and into Lucian’s penthouse, her home for the past week now. To say that it felt strange to be living with the brother of the man who’d broken her heart would be a massive understatement. But she had nowhere else to go. While she knew that they’d successfully paid off Coldhurst, Lucian was still determining if there was anyone else Sebastian owed money to. It wasn’t safe to go back to her apartment, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Willa was staying with her brother, Elliott, and from her late night chats with Willa on the phone, Kayla knew they both felt the same way about their old apartment. What had once been a cozy little home now felt violated.
So she was stuck here for the time being, trailing after Lucian like a puppy for scraps of information about Sebastian. All she knew was that he was alive and safe. She didn’t know where he was staying, or if he’d gone back to Vermont. He hadn’t returned any of her texts or voicemails. He’d cut her off, completely.
He might as well have cut off her arm because that probably would’ve hurt less, honestly. She’d spent the past week in a fog of grief. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She was going through the motions and phoning it in big time at work, something she was sure Stammler had noticed. Before, bombing at work would’ve bothered her, but now, she didn’t care. It took all of her available energy just to get out of bed in the morning, take a shower and go to the office. She didn’t have the capacity for anything else. She hurt too much.
“Am I being stupid?” she’d asked Willa one night on the phone. Neither of them could sleep, so it wasn’t unusual for them to talk in the middle of the night.
“No, honey. You’re not being stupid. Give him time. He freaked out over what happened, but once the dust has settled, he’ll come around.”
“I don’t even know if I want him to come around, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sebastian breaking up with me wasn’t just about what happened to us. It was about him punishing himself, about him not feeling worthy. Even if he does come around, how do I know that’s not going to happen again? I can’t make him feel worthy. Only he can make that choice, and what if he never chooses it? Not fully?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s the only one who can really answer that question.”
“And he won’t even answer my texts or
