Sebastian swallowed. What the hell was Vlad playing at?
“I’m sorry, Tony, but I likely won’t be staying at my place next week,” he said. It was true. He wasn’t saying no because of Vlad or anything.
“Oh, well,” Antonio said. “We can still hang out, yeah? I’ve missed your beautiful face.”
“Sure,” Sebastian said, ignoring the painful grip on his shoulder. Fuck Vlad. “Text me anytime.”
“Okay, babe, I will. Ciao!”
The line disconnected.
Vlad let go of his shoulder and leaned back in the seat.
“What the fuck was that?” Sebastian hissed.
“It’s pretty reckless to be seen with another gay model when all of the members of the cult haven’t been caught yet.”
Vlad sounded so calm and reasonable, as if Sebastian was the one being unreasonable.
Sebastian pursed his lips. “But Antonio and I don’t have to go out to have fun,” he said with a smile. “He has a nice cock.”
He frowned as soon as he said that. The latter part had been completely unnecessary. Was he really trying to provoke Vlad? What was he hoping to achieve? To make Vlad jealous?
Shit, maybe Vlad was right: he really was behaving like a little boy with a crush. Christ, Sebastian couldn’t remember the last time he’d acted so ridiculously because of a man. No, he did remember: he’d been as stupid with Mike.
The realization made his stomach clench with anxiety. Maybe he really should call Antonio and hook up with him. He needed to fuck all this stupidity out of his system.
“You call yourself bi, but all you talk about is cock,” Vlad said, looking out the side window. “I’m surprised you managed to get it up for Nina.”
“I am bi,” Sebastian said, a little bemused that Vlad was talking so casually about his ex-girlfriend. “Like, I know a bloke who is just like me—mostly into men and only sometimes into women—but he identifies as gay while I identify as bi. Neither of us is wrong.” Sebastian sighed. “Sure, some people would say that I’m just not brave enough to call myself gay, but that’s bollocks. Yeah, I do prefer men, like, eighty percent of the time, but sometimes I can be genuinely attracted to a woman too, so…” He shrugged. “Bisexuality is far too complex to be a fifty-fifty split. It’s actually pretty rare when a bisexual likes men and women exactly the same. Anyway, it’s not anyone’s business how people choose to identify themselves. The important thing is to be honest with oneself.”
“Was that a dig at me?” Vlad said.
“If the shoe fits,” Sebastian murmured.
Silence fell between them for a long while.
“Don’t fuck the Italian,” Vlad said suddenly.
Sebastian glanced at him in the mirror. Vlad was still looking out the window, his body fraught with so much tension it was almost tangible.
Could he really be jealous?
It was concerning how much the mere thought pleased him.
“Why not?” Sebastian said.
Vlad pressed his lips together.
A car horn broke the tension and Sebastian snapped his gaze back to the road, narrowly avoiding a crash. “Thanks for your honest answer,” Sebastian said sarcastically, starting to get pissed off by Vlad’s strange attitude.
Vlad remained silent.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. Sebastian wasn’t touching that. If Vlad was trying to convince himself that he was straight, Sebastian wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. He was done getting involved with men who were so deep in denial they were practically drowning in it. Soon he would move out of Luke’s flat and would likely never see Vlad again, which was…good. It was good.
He couldn’t wait.
Chapter 16
The pretentious little shit was ignoring him, had been ignoring him since they returned to London.
It was perfect, actually, since Vlad had decided to ignore Sebastian, too. The less he talked to the guy, the better. Well, at least that was the theory.
In practice, he didn’t fucking like being ignored by Sebastian.
He was going mad. That was the only explanation.
Vlad bored his eyes at the source of all his frustration.
Sebastian was stretched out on the couch with a thick book in his hands. Unlike Vlad, he seemed completely relaxed and engrossed in his book. He hadn’t looked at Vlad once, hadn’t spoken a word to him since their return. It pissed Vlad off, because—because he was supposed to be the one doing the ignoring. Sebastian was supposed to be the frustrated one, not him.
Vlad grimaced, catching himself on that childish, irrational train of thought.
Annoyed with himself, Vlad averted his gaze, fixing it on the TV.
Thirty seconds later, he found himself staring at Sebastian again.
There was a tiny mole on Sebastian’s pale neck, next to the faint reddish mark. The mark his teeth and lips had left.
Vlad looked away.
Maybe the reason for his frustration was the lack of open confrontation. Since Sebastian had decided to pretend their little trip hadn’t happened, Vlad hadn’t been given an opportunity to tell Sebastian that the sex meant nothing. He wished Sebastian would just confront him and call him gay so he could deny it.