"Yeah? Like which ones?"
"The one that told me that I couldn't hit a target with either a gun or my dick hurt a bit," I said after a moment's consideration. "And telling me that Tori faked every orgasm. I mean, I know it's wrong, but it still hurts."
"How about the one about how I've got a dozen guys lined up for her after the baby comes, all of them better-endowed than you?"
"I mean, I'm not sure I believe it, but it still stings a bit."
"Yeah?" Her voice grew more taunting. "Can you just imagine Tori with a better guy, scared and unsure at first, but loosening and opening up to him as he brings her more pleasure than you ever could, screaming out his name as he makes her come, him filling the space where you used to be in her heart..."
I heard a crunching sound, as something stabbed at my left hand. I looked down to see that I'd crushed the can of soda in my other hand into a crushed lump of metal, and a shard of aluminum stabbed into my palm. "Yeah, that one's pretty bad," I said through gritted teeth, fighting my temper. "Are you done?"
She laughed. "Not even close. But I'll let you speak for a second as I get the next round of insults ready."
Okay. Talk fast, I reminded myself. "Look, Ellen, I know that I screwed up with Tori. But it was the biggest mistake of my life, and I regret it now. I panicked, and I wish more than anything that I could take it back, could get her back."
"Well, it's too late for that," she snapped, any warmth in her voice vanishing. "Do you even know how badly you hurt her? How many nights she cried herself to sleep because of what you did?"
That, more than any of the insults she'd levied at me, cut straight to my heart. "I'm sorry," I said lamely, knowing that it wasn't enough. "But I love her, Ellen. I do, really."
She paused for several seconds, to the point where I moved the phone away from my ear so that I could check if she'd hung up on me. She hadn't; she was just silent. Thinking, I guessed.
"Normally, I'd hang up on you right now, maybe after telling you to go to hell," she said softly, and I nearly gave up at the malice in her voice. "But there's one thing stopping me."
"What's that?" I could barely breathe.
She took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh that made rattling feedback on the phone's speaker. "I think that she might still love you, too."
My breath caught in my throat, and I grappled in vain for words for a second. "What? Really? Are you serious?"
"I don't know. Maybe. She's not willing to go out with anyone else, even really think about it. She keeps talking about how, once the baby comes, she's going to move away, but she's dragging her feet on making any real decisions now. Something is still holding her here, making it tough for her to leave."
"And you think that might be me?" I asked, desperately hoping that Ellen's guess would prove to be true.
"There's a chance."
A part of me wanted to drop the phone right then, jump up in the air and do a dance around my empty, bleak apartment, jumping up and down like a crazy person in joyous celebration. I wanted to run up to the roof, or out onto my balcony, and shout out to the world that I might still have one last chance to make things work out.
Just barely, I kept myself under control. Time for celebration later, I assured myself. "Thank you," I said to Ellen for the umpteenth time. "Thank you. That's better than what I feared, and I hope you're right."
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" she challenged me.
"What do you mean?"
She sighed, a short, sharp sigh of annoyance and irritation. "I mean, you can't just show up here and ask her to take you back. Do you know how stupid that will seem, how half-assed it will come off? You need to come up with a plan, Sebastian!"
She was right, I realized belatedly. I couldn't just show up and ask Tori to take me back. If the tables were turned – if I was in her place – I wouldn't do it to her. If she left me and then tried to come back, I'd need a hell of a good reason to say yes.
"I do need a plan," I acknowledged. "I don't have one yet. But I'll come up with something really good, Ellen. I promise."
"I hope so," she said, a bit of the tartness still in her voice. "Because I swear to God, Sebastian, if you end up hurting her again-"
"I'm not going to, I promise-"
"If you end up hurting her again," Ellen went on, raising her voice to talk over my protests, "I swear on every single deity in the world that I'll come find you. And when I do, I'm going to hack off your balls with a pair of rusty hedge clippers, and force you to eat them. I'm not even kidding here. Even if I go to jail, it's worth it. Do you understand?"
I didn't try to lighten the mood with a joke or a wisecrack. That's what the old Sebastian would have done, of course; nothing could be totally serious, not for him. But I saw now that those jokes, those little taunting cracks, were just a way for me to distance myself from the situation. It was just a way for me to keep myself from ever opening up, from ever exposing my true self.
"I understand," I said to her.
"Good." She fell silent, the emptiness of the line stretching out between us. "Anything else? Asswipe?"
"No. Thank you," I repeated one last time, aware that I sounded like a broken record.
She hung up, and I tossed the phone aside onto the couch beside me. I leaned back, resting my head against the upright part. I looked up at the high ceiling of the apartment, not seeing the dangling chandelier, the sophisticated and upscale lines of my surroundings.
She still loved me. It might be almost totally extinguished, only the dregs of love, but something still kept her here. For a little while longer, at least, I had a chance.
I had to do it right. I had to show her that I'd become more mature, ready for a true commitment. How could I do it?
I thought about calling someone else for advice – maybe Richard and Linda, or perhaps even Tanner McCallister. The guy had suggested that I get a house with her, and that worked out well, didn't it? Up until I went stir-crazy and ran out. But maybe he'd have more advice for me now.
But no. I changed my mind after a minute. I couldn't go to anyone else for help. Not for something like this. If I was going to make some grand gesture, I needed to decide on it all by myself; at least that way, if it didn't work, I'd have no one but myself to blame.
I'd need a full plan. I suspected that, if I just showed up at this ridiculous café of Ellen's, Tori would send me away without even listening to anything that I had to say. I needed to find the right way to approach her, so that she'd be willing to listen.
And I needed to find something else to do, something grand enough to show her that I meant what I said, that I was serious about wanting her back in my life forever.
Forever. Normally, that word scared me. I couldn't remember wanting anything to last forever, not even my own life. Live fast, die young, sleep with as many people and buy as many things as possible along the way, that had been the motto of the old Sebastian.
But now, the thought of spending forever with Tori didn't scare me as much. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it didn't scare me at all. It didn't seem like it would be bad at all.
Waking up next to Tori, kissing her to bring her up from slumber. Seeing her smile at me, or even give me that eye roll and little shake of her head that told me she was trying her hardest to keep her laughter confined inside her head. I wanted to taste the food that she cooked, even do the dishes after her as apology for my own lack of cooking ability. I wanted to help her with this baby – our baby – and watch it grow up with us both. I wanted to find Tori asleep with the baby, both of them exhausted, after a long day, and gently lift our child out of her arms so that I could cover her up with a blanket.
All my life, that imagined future had seemed like hell to me. I didn't think that anything really changed; there'd been nothing abrupt, no flipping of some switch inside my brain.
But now, what had previously seemed like hell suddenly sounded... not so bad.
Quite nice
, in fact.
I shook my head, turned my attention back to this plan. It would have to be foolproof. For a guy like me, who preferred to normally act before thinking, this might be one of the hardest things I ever did.
But the end results, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, would be worth it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
TORI
*
I was half-asleep, gazing through heavy eyelids at the dappled spots of sunlight moving across the wall and ceiling of my bedroom, when my cell phone started to ring.
For a few moments, I considered ignoring it and letting it go to voicemail. "Too pregnant, call back later." But the incessant buzzing moved the phone inch by inch across my bedside table, to the point where it threatened to drop over the edge and onto the floor.
I reached over and grabbed it, wiping the back of one hand across my sleep-fogged eyes. Ellen was calling me, strangely enough. Wasn't she just downstairs in the café, working? Was she just calling to check up on me and make sure my water hadn't broken yet?
Still holding the ringing cell phone, I grunted as I labored myself up into something approximating a sitting position. I had passed the nine-month mark, and although Dr. Rick Daniels assured me that it could easily be a few more days, that there was no reason to consider inducing labor prematurely, I almost felt like grabbing him and shaking him until he saw things from my point of view.
Easy for him to say, I'd growled to myself. He wasn't the one with a freaking beach ball sized belly hidden under his shirt, one that kept on pushing simultaneously at both my lungs and my bladder! I still didn't feel at all ready for this baby to be born, but at this point, I just wanted it to hurry up and vacate my uterus!
Finally managing to prop myself up in a semi-sitting position on the bed with the help of a couple of pillows, I swiped my finger across the still-ringing phone. "Don't worry, Ellen, I'm still alive," I said. "Still stuffed fuller than a turkey, too. Have I mentioned to you that you should avoid ever getting pregnant?"
My best friend didn't laugh at the lame joke. "Tori, you need to get down here," she said instead, her voice hushed.
"What?" This wasn't like her. "What's going on?"
"It's Sebastian," she replied, and I felt myself shoot to full wakefulness as adrenaline flooded my veins. "He's here, right now! Downstairs!"
"What? Why?" Had he come in here to get a bite to eat? Maybe this was just a casual encounter, and he wasn't here because he wanted to talk to me...
No, I couldn't even convince myself of that, much less the voice of my own mental projection of Seb inside my head. He's here for you, that mental version of Seb said, and then paused. Or rather, I'm here for you. This whole pronoun thing is confusing, especially when I'm just a figment of your imagination.
Ellen's voice dropped even lower, so husky that I had difficulty picking out the words. "He's talking to my mom, out in the front area. I ducked back to the kitchen to call you. I only caught a few words of it, but I think that he's here because he wants to invest in the café!"
"What?" Of all the possibilities I might have guessed, that wasn't anywhere on the list. Sebastian Stone, the playboy who spent his money like water, was interested in investing? And in this café, a little family-run small business? What was he thinking?
"Yeah. Can you get down here?"
"I'm on my way." I hung up, dropped the phone on my bed, and struggled the rest of the way over to the edge to get my feet down onto the floor. My mind raced as I tried to think what in the world Seb was doing here. He wanted to invest? It had to just be an excuse to come here and see me, a way to get his foot in the door.
But why? Did he want to humiliate me further, or try to apologize for running out on me? Either way, I didn't want to hear it – but I also didn't want Ellen and her mom, Vicky, to get caught up in this drama between the two of us. Seb had his problem with me, and me alone. There was no need for him to drag anyone else into this mess.
Once up, I paused for a moment, looking from my clothing to my closet. I didn't really have any clothes that fit me at this point – even the maternity outfits, supposedly designed for this situation, stretched pretty tightly across my ready-to-pop stomach. But right now, I wore a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt that said "Federal Booty Inspectors, Class of '88" across the front. No bra underneath. Not the perfect outfit for confronting Seb.
Still, I'd have to go with it, and muster up enough anger to shut down any comments from him about my appearance. No time to change. I shoved my phone into one of my pockets and, moving at the slow wobble that sadly was the fastest I could move, I made my way to the stairs leading down to the main area of the River's Edge Café.
The stairs descending from the apartment above the café came out in a hallway right off to the front side of the restaurant; when I came in from outside, I didn't need to troop through the entire restaurant, but just turn to the right and head over to the stairs. A door at the bottom kept patrons from accidentally wandering upstairs while searching for the bathroom. That door was now closed, and I reached the bottom of the stairs with a thump before twisting it angrily open.
I came bursting out into the main area of the restaurant, still fuming and angry. I expected to see Seb sitting off in the corner with Vicky, probably gloating about how much money he had and telling her how he wanted to invest. I turned around, running my eyes around the café's interior, searching for the man.
Strangely, I didn't see him. In fact, the entire café was empty; there wasn't a single customer sitting at any of the tables inside. What was going on?
"Hi, Tori."
I spun at the sound of his voice, saw him emerge from the kitchen. He looked a little different, but I couldn't put my finger on why – and right now, I was almost too angry to even see straight.
"You," I snarled, but then ran out of words. What In the world was he doing here? Why couldn't he just leave me alone, let me try and finally get past him?
"Me," he said, and for just a second, his lips quirked up in a hint of that old, familiar Sebastian Stone smile. But then it vanished, as quickly and briefly as it had appeared, and he stepped forward towards me. "Tori, I'm not here to torment you, or make things worse for you."
"Really? Well, I've got bad news – by showing up here, you've already made things worse," I snapped, wobbling a little on my legs. Stupid feet, not holding me up, just because I had to lug around an extra fifty pounds or so of baby. I grabbed a chair, tugged it out and sat down, never once taking my glaring gaze off Seb.
He moved forward, and I felt absurdly envious for a second of how lightly he moved on his feet. He looked a little thinner than I remembered, although that didn't make him any less attractive. It only further highlighted his strong cheekbones, the angular sturdiness of his frame. He still stood as tall as I recalled, still had those broad shoulders that had tempted me since the first night I saw them.
"Then let me say what I need," he said, pulling out the chair across from me, dropping down lightly into it. "If you don't want to hear anything more after that, I'll leave – and I'll never come back."
"Not good enough." I crossed my arms, now able to rest them on my swollen belly. "Give me something more."
One of his eyebrows climbed a bit higher on his forehead. "A hundred thousand dollars."
"What?" Had I heard him correctly?
He reached down under the table, pulled up a slim briefcase that I hadn't noticed sitting there before. He turned it around to face me as his thumbs popped the latches, and my eyes nearly bulged out of my head at the sight of the stacks of cash sitting inside. "All yours, if you want to send me away after I say my piece," he said, as I gaped at the cash.
"You're crazy, you know that?"
He smiled and just sat back, not making any move to claim the suitcase full of money on the table. I reached out and picked up one of the banded stacks of bills, riffling through it just to prove to myself that it was real.
"Probably more than I realized before," he
agreed. "But at least I know why I'm crazy."
I tore my eyes away from the money, looking at him over the top of the suitcase. In fact... I reached up and pushed the briefcase shut, removing the shield between us. I saw him still smiling a little, looking at me. He was waiting, I knew, for me to ask him why he was crazy.
I didn't bite, not right away. Instead, I pulled the slim case off the table, setting it down on the ground beside my chair. "I'm keeping this, you know," I told him, waiting to see if this would get a rise from him.
Strangely, no. He just shrugged, as if he didn't care about it. Hell, maybe he didn't. As much as Seb loved spending money, it never seemed to occupy much of a spot in his mind. I remembered, more than once, him telling me that he spent it so freely because he didn't want to deal with the hassle of having it.
"Okay, fine," I eventually gave in. "Why are you crazy?"
"Simple." He smiled at me, a smile that, despite all the walls I'd thrown up against him in the last few months, still filled me with warmth. "I'm in love with you."
"Great, great." What had he said? My brain felt fuzzy, like an engine that had just skipped a beat instead of moving along smoothly. "So I went to the doctor, and the baby's doing well."
His smile faded a little. "Did you hear me?" he pressed. "I love you, Victoria Lilly. I have for a long time, but I was too much of an idiot to realize it earlier. I love you, and my heart belongs only to you."
"Okay." It still felt fuzzy, inside my head. I wanted to think more about what he'd said, but it didn't click, like trying to push a square peg into a round hole. "That's nice."
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Maybe it's a little too much for you right now," he said, although he didn't move from his seat across from me. "I can give you a little bit to think it over. How much time do you need?"
"Time?" Really, everything suddenly felt very confusing. The world swam around me for a second, and I was glad that I was sitting down, so I wouldn't get dizzy. Had he said that he loved me? That couldn't be right. Seb didn't have real feelings. He didn't fall in love – others fell in love with him, flitted about him like moths drawn to a flame, flapping closer until they inevitably got burnt.
For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3) Page 18