And I would. Nothing would hurt her. Not if I had any say about it. I would run. Hide. Fight. Give up my life if that’s what it took to keep her safe. I just prayed bringing her here would be enough.
“Goodnight, Kallie-Bug,” I murmured again, leaving her door open a crack. Standing outside, I pressed my palm to the wall and blew out a weighted breath, fighting off the nagging sadness that had followed me around all day. I stepped back into the large, open area at the top of the stairs that looked out over the living area below. Downstairs, April was on the couch, her laptop braced on her knees as she typed away.
Even though it was still early, I retreated to my room that was across the landing. I climbed onto my huge, plush bed that I’d never shared with a man, hugged my pillow, and pretended as if the psychological thriller I pulled from my nightstand and squinted at through the muted light from the small lamp could hold my wandering attention.
Ten minutes later, there was a light tapping on the outside of my door. April pushed it partly open and peeked inside. I smiled across at her, a smile that my best friend could see right through.
She pushed it open the rest of the way and propped her shoulder on the doorjamb, head cocked as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Care to tell me what’s been going on with you all day?”
I tossed my book aside. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes as I sat up against the headboard.
“You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”
“I’m not sure there’s really a whole lot to tell you. It’s just…” I looked toward the ceiling as if it held an answer before I turned back to her with a shrug. “Men are all the same, exactly the way I expected them to be.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess this has something to do with the guy you snuck off with the other night? You know, the one you promised to fill me in on and then dodged my questions like they were the plague?”
Her brows lifted so high that they disappeared under her blunted dark brown bangs.
I groaned, a sound that was meant to sound bored and uninterested, but it only reflected my pain. April took that as her cue and came to sit at the foot of my bed, her legs criss-crossed.
All in.
The way she always was.
“His name’s Sebastian, but everyone calls him Baz.”
A dubious frown cut a path across her forehead. “Baz? You went out with a guy named Baz? That was your first mistake,” she teased, leering at me. “Just the name Baz has player written all over it.”
I threw a pillow at her. “Shut up.”
Catching it, she laughed and hugged it to her chest. “But seriously…you never go out and then you text me in the middle of the night that you’re going out with someone I don’t even know…which means you don’t really even know him. I was worried about you.”
I shook my head. “I know. It was stupid. Careless.” Still, I knew if I had the choice to go back and erase that night, I wouldn’t. I’d willingly do it all over again. “He’s been coming into the bar for the last couple of weeks. He’s just…”
How did I explain it? The way he made me feel? The desire that seemed impossible to escape. He was both the sun and the darkest night. A promise of heaven and the curse of hell.
Funny how we always want what we shouldn’t have.
“The first time he came in, I noticed him, and by the second time he came in, I didn’t want him to leave.”
“So he’s good-looking?”
I rolled my eyes at her.
Good-looking.
“He’s…he’s…” I struggled for a description sufficient for Sebastian Stone. I looked at her seriously. “He’s breathtaking. And I don’t mean that in a cliché way. I mean that when I look at him?” I gathered the fingers of my right hand into a tight point, jabbed at the spot at the center of my chest that had been aching for him for the last two weeks, although today it was aching in an entirely different way. “I feel it right here, April. And it hurts and feels amazing all at the same time.”