Sebastian was a much better actor than I could ever dream of being.
He shot the audacious reporter a smile that was inherently charming, veiling his wrath with the pretty costume of his smile. “You’ve clearly watched too many episodes of Game of Thrones. I’d suggest finding something more worthwhile to occupy your time. Perhaps genuine journalistic research?”
His cutting remark delivered, Seb tugged me forward to the X marked out on the carpet where we were meant to pose for a series of photographs.
He tucked me into his side and stared down at me with a stock issue smile as the click and clack of cameras rattled around us.
“Ignore them,” he told me sternly.
I looked up into his golden eyes, counting the striations in his irises the way I’d done my entire life. His eyes differed from mine only in that minute way, spikes of sunlight instead of my pinpricks of burnished bronze.
“I don’t care,” I said softly, beaming at him so that the catcalls that followed would drown out my words. “It’s them who are sick, not us.”
Sebastian’s smile thinned, his own demons daring him to accept that for the truth.
In some ways, I believed my words.
I certainly wasn’t in a relationship with my brother, nor engaged to Mason Matlock, or a closeted lesbian with my best friend and fellow model Erika Van Bellegham. None of the rumors were true, no matter how fucked up they created them to be.
But I was sick.
Only my disease was terminal. It ate away the marrow of my bones until I was hollow, fragile as a small bird perched on a branch in a gale, but unable to fly.
It infiltrated the chambers of my heart, corroding and calcifying the arteries. The organ still worked, still pumped hot blood through my limbs, but it didn’t feel.
Joy was a glass half empty no matter how marvellous the news or accomplishment because I was a woman half alive.
The other portion of my heart, of my soul, was still buried deep within the underworld, cradled in the cruel hands of a man who had stolen me away years ago but never really let me go. It echoed in the antique rooms of a home on the other side of the Atlantic and ghosted across the landscape of a place called Pearl Hall.
Alexander Davenport had held me prisoner in his dark kingdom and coaxed me to eat of the forbidden fruit so that now, so many years later across so many miles, I was still intrinsically shackled to his domain.
Even after the cruel goodbye in Milan.
Even after extensive hours of therapy with one of the best woman’s trauma psychiatrists in Manhattan.
Years later, an ocean of time between me and the island of my servitude, and I was still empty and indentured to the past.
“I suppose whatever helps us sleep at night,” Seb murmured, pulling me from my thoughts as he turned us into a new pose for the shouting cameramen.
“You help me,” I told him before we shot twin gleaming smiles to our captive audience. “Always.”
Our progress along the carpet was slow and mind-numbing, but I didn’t mind being Sebastian’s arm candy. After years of hard work, my brother had finally established the kind of success usually found in a Hallmark movie. His first film, written and starred in by his truly, had been an international success, first at Cannes Film Festival, and then in America where it was optioned by Sony.
Now, he was one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood.
I smiled blankly at the third woman to interview us about Sebastian’s feelings on his first BAFTA nomination and second Oscar nomination in as many years. I tried to ease the strain from my smile and knew I’d succeeded when the cameraman blinked owlishly at my expression.
“No one special?” the seasoned reporter asked, a gleam in her heavily made-up eyes.
Sebastian flashed her one of his megawatt smiles, the shine making the reporter blink dazedly. “Anyone can be special for a night.”
“A little birdy told me you refused to be tied to Tate and Savannah Richardson’s latest project despite their best attempts to seduce you into taking the lead role.” I watched her swallow hard, her resolve to mine a potential trove of gossip deeper than her desire to bed my handsome brother.
Seb tensed just slightly under my arm. He didn’t like any mention of Savannah Richardson. She’d had many names in her storied life, but despite Sebastian’s superlative charms, she had never worn the name of Lombardi, and now he couldn’t stand the sound of her in his ear.
Before he could respond, the entertainment reporter swung to me with a wide, faux-innocent smile, and said, “Mason Matlock was seen walking out of Tiffany’s with their signature Robin’s egg blue bag just yesterday. Do you approve of your sister’s future husband?”