I'm Not Your Enemy (Enemies 2)

“It was Mom’s attempt to make Soph less raised-on-a-ranch-outside-Macon and more sittin’-pretty-in-Savannah.”

“Either way, you took her,” Sebastian went on. “She was stood up by her date or something, and you took her instead.”

“Her escort canceled last minute.” I nodded slowly. The memories were a bit fuzzy, to be honest. “Don’t give me too much credit, though. Dad presented her or whatever, and he handed her over to me. All I had to do was dance with her once, and then I gorged on shrimp cocktail and champagne.”

Sebastian offered a half-frustrated expression. “You always gotta downplay what you do. Quit it. And quit interrupting me. What you did, how you swooped in, meant a lot to your sister if she retells the story ten years later when her neighbor sees a photo of a young cowboy and asks about her family.”

Okay, I could smile now.

After pouring shampoo into my hand, I started Percy’s highly macho spa treatment. He stretched out his neck and his legs and wherever I worked up some suds, making sure Daddy got him everywhere.

Sebastian watched Percy too, though I could tell his mind was far away. “In the fifteen years I’ve known Soph, maybe she’s given me an equal blend of nice stories, worries, and laments. But only the bad anecdotes stuck with me. Or I clung to them, even before I knew I was gonna meet you. Long before.” He swallowed and scratched his jaw. “In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it’s been about Teddy. Once I grew closer to Soph and Teddy, I’ve been protective, not only of them, but of my own part in their family. You didn’t wanna be in my head when she met Dylan.”

I’d heard about that, actually. I just hadn’t made the connection between Sebastian, Soph’s best friend, and Bastian, the guy Teddy raved about. Mainly because Soph and I had never made it a habit to refer to our friends by name—not since she’d left Georgia. It was usually “My friend and I” or “A buddy of mine.”

But I did remember Soph telling me about her protective friend who was skeptical of Dylan. It’d taken Sebastian a long time to warm up to him.

“I think I made you the enemy way back, when Teddy started telling me about his chats with Uncle Blake,” he murmured. “Apparently, you were the coolest guy ever. And something switched off in my brain. I stopped listening to him, and you disappeared. You existed on the fringes of our life—on the other side of the country.”

An old defense mechanism urged me to get annoyed, but I couldn’t. I felt bad for him, ’cause that was no way to live, to feel so threatened by others. At the same time, I knew why. I knew about his scatterbrained folks, who’d never been the parents he and his sister had deserved.

Abandonment issues could sink their claws deep into someone. I’d lived with the fear of abandonment for over twenty-five years.

The fear had been valid.

“Since you came back, I’ve reevaluated everything.” Sebastian glanced at me briefly before dropping his gaze to Percy again. “I watched you at Teddy’s birthday breakfast—and the relationship you have. It’s…it’s very different from my relationship with him.”

My question about what he meant by that must’ve been written on my forehead because he continued.

“I try to be the fun friend who lets him get away with shit Soph and Dylan wouldn’t, but I still end up being a bonus uncle with a parental point of view,” he clarified. “Regardless of what Teddy and I do together, I always have his future in mind. Every activity has to benefit his tomorrow—like exercise and going to bed on time and the gifts I get for his birthday. I thought, well, books, those are good. He has to study more than most. Skates—same story. Great for exercise and staying active.” He smirked slightly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Then you come along and give him RC monster trucks that literally spew out fire, and you go, ‘Sometimes you just wanna watch shit blow up.’”

I grinned and shifted Percy under the running water, washing away all the shampoo.

“You let him be a little reckless while still making sure he’s safe.” Sebastian stopped avoiding eye contact, and the affection in his gaze was reassuring. “He needs that. He deserves it. And Soph, Dylan, and I need to see it. We need the occasional reminder that Teddy’s more than his limitations. He’s a thriving preteen in the middle of growing up, and you’re a tad quicker than us to trust him to handle certain things on his own. That’s how he evolves, when he’s challenged.”

Jesus. How did I respond to that? With those words, I felt more included in their Washington family than I’d ever felt back home.

This is your home now.