A Million Different Ways to Lose You (Horn Duet 2)

“Bear said he saw you talking to Paisley outside the doctor’s office.”

“Yes. She knew…” I braced myself for the next words, the heavy pounding of my heart threatening to split my chest in two. “That I was pregnant. She told me that Isabelle had overheard my phone conversation with the doctor.”

The more I spoke the more static his face became, cementing into an emotionless mask. I debated for only an instant whether to tell him the most damning piece of the story. “Isabelle told your mother.”

I couldn’t hold the eye contact. My eyes descended to the corded side of his neck, the tendons taut with anger; the only outward display of what was going on in his mind. He placed his index finger under my chin and gently lifted it. “What else did she say?”

“She said that if I didn’t leave without a word to you, she would go to the newspapers, the tabloids. She would tell them I trapped you––that I was after your money. She said she would publicize every detail so that investors would lose confidence in your ability to run the bank.” My voice grew more anxious with every spoken word. “Sebastian, she meant it. I’m scared of what she might do––to you, to the bank.”

A heavy silence followed. His fingertips traced the contours of my face, reading the angles and depressions so delicately I thought I would shatter from the exquisite sensation.

“This is why you left?” he said. It was less a question and more a statement of fact. His expression softened. The information I’d just shared didn’t seem to concern him. “You were trying to protect me?”

I replied with a slight nod, my voice deserting me.

“Do you know what scares the shit out of me?” His brow furrowed, a deep v chiseled in the middle. His chest heaved as he fought to control a tide of emotion. “A life without you.” What I saw in his eyes made me want to shrink away. “I thought you understood that.” The last sentence held a hard edge, a note that hinted at betrayal.

“I do but––”

“No. No but,” he said, cutting me off. “Life without you is…” He shook his head, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he struggled to find the words. “Pointless.”

There was an abyss of despair in his eyes. As I stood on the edge of it, I fully grasped how deep his feelings ran, how necessary I was to his peace of mind. The question was––whether I was strong enough to carry that burden.

Chapter Two

When the body experiences an overwhelming trauma, the brain shuts down, slips into a coma as to conserve energy and direct it at the healing process. Only later would I come to realize that the soul behaves in much the same manner when it needs saving, when it experienced a pain so great it shocks the system. The most vital part of me remained in a coma, while the rest carried on without it.

In the subsequent days, I moved through life completely detached, all my senses disengaged. And the more disinterested I became, the greater the palpable tension surrounding Sebastian grew, its tentacles reaching out to everyone and everything within his radius. With each passing day he grew more overbearing and more remote––apparently this was not incongruous––not to mention, more intolerable.

If I needed to use the bathroom, he was by my side in an instant, lifting me from the bed and carrying me there. If I wanted to stretch my legs down the hall, he was at my side acting as a human crane. He undressed and dressed me as if I were a two year old––he officially crossed the line with that one. By day four of this, I was ready to conk him over the head with the chair I always found him in when I awoke.

“Why aren’t you at the office?” I did nothing to conceal my irritation.

He looked up from scrolling through his cell phone, a scowl hardening his perfect features. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re home––where you’ll be handcuffed to my bed, and barricaded behind a steel wall fifty feet high with a hundred armed men guarding you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest because, lying in bed, I couldn’t very well stamp my foot and scream the way I wanted to. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not joking.” The raised eyebrow he returned was his unequivocal answer. “What about the audit by the DOJ? The bank will suffer if you keep dancing attendance on me.”

“Dancing attendance?” he repeated, smirking. “I’m not dancing attendance on you. I’m making sure you don’t sneak out of here on some fucked up, misguided attempt to help me.”

“Language,” I said with a grimace.

His long fingers raked through his hair. It was getting so long he could’ve pulled it into a ponytail. Reaching over, I sifted my fingers through it.