SNAPPED (The Slate Brothers 1)

“Yes.”

“Yes, I shouldn’t answer?”

“Yes, you should!” I say, but them cram my fingertips into my mouth, worried I’ve said the wrong thing. My mother gives me a wary look, then walks to the door— but I see that even she has to take a deep breath before swinging it open and coming face to face with a Slate.

“Sebastian Slate,” she says warmly— well, almost warmly, but you’d have to know her to hear the crispness in her voice.

“Hello,” Sebastian says gently. He’s standing away from the door, and I can see he has his hands down by his sides, palms open, doing his best to look non-threatening. “You must be Mrs. Sawyer.”

“I am,” my mom says. Still warmly, but clipped— strong. Large as Sebastian is, my mother’s voice blocks him from coming in the house as effectively as any wall might. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like to talk to Ashlynn, if that’s alright with her. And you,” he adds quickly.

“Well. I’ll see if she’d like to see you. Ashlynn—“ she turns around and calls out louder than necessary, making it appear like I’m farther away than just looming at the top of the stairs. “Ashlynn, Sebastian Slate is here. Are you interested in talking to him?”

“Yes, I’ll be right there,” I call back, then blush when I hear Sebastian hide a snort— it’s pretty obvious I’m not tucked away in another room. I roll my eyes at myself, run my fingers through my hair, then hurry down the steps. When Sebastian comes into view, I feel my stomach flip in excitement. In worry. He doesn’t look angry, and he laughed earlier, so that’s got to be a good sign. Right?

“Call me every ten minutes,” my mom says. “I’m serious.”

“We won’t be long,” Sebastian says, and rather than reassuring me, this breaks my heart. We won’t be long? That doesn’t sound promising.

“Ten minutes,” my mom says again, then lets me pass through the doorframe, onto the stair landing. She shuts the door behind me, and Sebastian and I stare at one another for a long moment.

“Hi,” I say shakily.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he says, tilting his head toward the street.

26

Sebastian and I walk in silence for a hundred feet, two hundred, three hundred. I see him move more than once to put his arm around me, as he always did when we walked together— but then he catches himself, and slings his hands into his pockets instead. It stings.

“How did you know I was here?” I ask when the silence has become too much for me to handle.

Sebastian smiles. “I told you— I make it a point of knowing about girls I’m interested in. And also, some friends of yours tagged you on Facebook.”

I shake my head. “Right, of course.”

“The real question,” Sebastian says, stopping to take an uneasy breath. I’m not used to seeing him like this, and it throws me. “Is why I’m here.”

“Okay. Why are you here?” I ask. We’re walking almost comically slowly, feet sliding one after another, like we’re both afraid to hurry through this time together. Despite this, it’s another twenty steps before Sebastian answers me— I know because I count them in order to ease my racing mind.

“I’m here for you,” he says. “I’m here because I don’t like how things ended.”

“Okay,” I say hesitantly. “Did you want…is there something you wanted to say? Or…” I’m suddenly worried that he isn’t here to do me any kindness, but to release a barrage of anger he forgot to mention in our last talk. What if he’s about to calmly tear me down? That’ll probably feel worse than him speeding away from me did.

“I’m angry that you lied to me, Ashlynn,” he says, stopping. We’re at a cul-de-sac at the end of my street, near the ridiculously oversized fountain my see-how-we-got-rich-off-a-fluke-investment neighbors have in their front yard. There are flamingos spouting water up into the air, but even they can’t lighten the weight of my heart when I hear Sebastian’s words.

“I know. You’re right to be,” I say, looking down.

“But I also realize it must have been hard for you, hearing me talk about my father and never saying anything. No matter what happened, you lost someone you love. And we never talked about that. We never talked about how sad that was— how sad it probably still is. I wish I’d known. I wish I could make you less sad about it,” he says, sounding almost angry at himself, now, for his inability to fix the problem.

“It was hard,” I admit. “And it is still sad. I think about it every day. I think about her every day. And then somehow being with you, of all people, helped me forget a little. Instead of this dull ache missing Aunt Tessa became like a roller coaster— I’d go to these highs where I only vaguely thought about her, then these lows where I felt so awful about everything I was doing. To her memory, to you, to our families…”