‘You don’t have to explain, Sebastio.’
When she got back to her room she let the dress fall to the floor and stripped off her bra and panties. After a steaming hot shower she crawled into bed and willed sleep to come and obliterate everything. Especially how she could have done this to herself again. With the same man.
* * *
When Edie was up and dressed the next morning she packed her small suitcase for the weekend with every intention of going back to her flat.
When she got to the main hall, though, she heard a familiar voice say, ‘Where are you going?’
Hoping that nothing of the previous evening’s humiliation would show on her face, Edie turned around—and nearly fell over. Sebastio was standing at the bottom of the stairs in faded jeans and a long-sleeved woollen jumper. His hair was dark and messy. Jaw stubbled. He looked thoroughly disreputable and more gorgeous than ever.
Edie’s insides twisted. She was doing the right thing. Going home. There was only one more event and then she would be free to get on with her life and forget about Sebastio Rivas for ever.
‘I’m going home for the weekend.’
He shook his head as he came towards her. ‘No, you’re not.’
Indignation and panic raced up Edie’s spine. ‘You can’t force me to stay here.’
He looked grim as he walked past her to the main door. ‘It’s not me stopping you from leaving—it’s the weather.’
He opened the wide front door and Edie felt an icy blast of air as she looked out in shock to see that overnight the world had turned completely white. She approached the door after putting her suitcase down. There were drifts of snow almost as high as the steps leading up to the house. The weather warning he’d told her about.
‘Even if you could get out of the estate, there’s no public transport running.’
‘So what does this mean?’ she asked redundantly.
‘It means that we’re snowed in for the forseeable future.’
* * *
By that evening Sebastio’s whole body was on edge with a mixture of sexual frustration and something that felt bizarrely like...concern. He hadn’t seen Edie all day. She’d done a good job of avoiding him. And could he blame her?
Since she’d told him about their meeting in the nightclub he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. That night had always been so clear in his mind.
It had been a week before the tragic car crash. Victor hadn’t come out to the nightclub with them after the match, preferring to stay in the hotel to video call Maya. Sebastio could remember an awful feeling of envy mixed with resentment that his friend’s life had changed so much.
Since Victor had fallen in love and married, Sebastio had felt increasingly dissatisfied. As if just the existence of Victor and Maya’s relationship had thrown all that was lacking in his own life into sharp relief. Which was crazy, because he’d never been under any illusion about wanting to settle down and have babies. And yet, if the complex feelings his friends’ relationship had evoked within him were any indication, apparently his true desires lay in another direction entirely. One which could not exist for someone as cynical and jaded as Sebastio.
He remembered how on edge he’d felt that night in the club. When Edie had approached him, with her big eyes and her naked expression of hope, it had jarred too painfully. Reminding him of the fact that he envied his friend while at the same time rejecting every possibility that he could want the same thing. Because if he admitted that then he’d be admitting he was weak. Not strong.
He’d taken a woman into his bed that night in a bid to try and restore some sense of equilibrium, but he hadn’t been able to get Edie’s huge dark blue eyes out of his head. She’d haunted him.
Sebastio saw his reflection in the window of his study now, highlighted against the blackness outside. Not for the first time he wished that his face was criss-crossed with scars. Wished for some kind of physical proof that he had destroyed lives. If he was physically scarred then it would be like a warning to people—to Edie—to stay away. A physical reminder that his cynicism had destroyed something very pure and that he could not be trusted not to cause hurt.
He couldn’t even feel much satisfaction that he’d done the noble thing by telling her he wouldn’t take her innocence. He couldn’t feel noble when his body still burned, and when he knew he’d done it as much to protect himself as to protect her. She came too close to that place inside him that was still raw with regret, guilt and grief.
* * *
Edie was sweating, and her lungs felt as if they were about to explode, but she launched another high kick at the punching bag and welcomed the burn. Anything to try and eclipse that other burn inside her. The one she felt for Sebastio. The one she feared she’d never un-feel again.
As the day had worn on, Edie’s sense of humiliation had faded to be replaced with anger. At herself. And at Sebastio. How dared he decide on her behalf not to seduce her? As if he was doing her a favour?
His words had reverberated in her head all day.
‘I won’t be the one to take your innocence from you. I won’t have that on my conscience too.’
What had he meant by that? It sounded as if he was referring to a sense of guilt. Guilt about the accident? She remembered the video clip—Sebastio saying that he was responsible for the accident...