I nodded.
Anthony helped us take our things into the house. On the outskirts of my mind I recognized it was incredibly beautiful, so different than the sleek, modern lines I’d anticipated. Instead it was a stunning structure of warm stucco, sweeping windows, and dark, homey woods, a Tuscan haven hidden away by lush vegetation in the Hills.
No place inside me had the capacity to appreciate it. All those places had been struck down, chained in a fear and a loss that spun firm and fast and ferocious, all muddled with a hope I refused to relinquish.
I held tight.
The only way I knew how to keep myself together.
Inside, all the guys were there to welcome us, but the mood was decidedly somber.
Zee hugged me for a long, long time, his hold so full of sympathy it made me want to give in and weep. Like he sensed it, he pulled back and took Kallie’s hand, asking if she wanted to go for a walk around the pool and gardens, luring her with the many different types of butterflies she would find.
Supportive eyes flashed to me, a look that promised he would take care of my baby. That he was offering me a second’s reprieve in the midst of tumult. A moment to catch up to the pieces that were still falling apart.
With a stoic jerk of his chin, Lyrik looked on with sorrow and understanding as he leaned back against the wall with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Beneath that rigid calm I saw it. A gleam of malice and mayhem, the glint in his eyes dark and foreboding and fueled by anger. No doubt he was itching to break out, to go track Martin down the same way Sebastian had done and seek his own revenge.
“Come on, Beautiful Shea,” Ash said, with none of the flirt and tease he normally injected into his words as he gathered my bags. “Let’s get you settled. You have to be exhausted.”
I was.
Absolutely exhausted.
Emotionally.
Mentally.
But I knew well enough there would be no sleep.
This is going to be a battle I’m not sure we can win.
I followed him upstairs. At the top of the landing were two hallways. We took the one to the right. Ash led me to the room at the very end on the left, shut off by high double-doors. He turned the knob and let the door swing open wide.
Sebastian.
His presence hit me like a rogue wave.
Completely unanticipated and knocking the breath from my lungs—all spice and man and dark seduction.
Greedily, my eyes sucked in his space. Natural light glimmered in from the balcony doors that overlooked the pool, and heavy, dark drapes framed them at the sides.
The guitar we’d played together on our wedding night was propped against the wall next to his bed, as if he’d lain there against the leather headboard and his fingers had played the strings.
Thinking of me.
I could almost hear that beautiful, beautiful voice filling the air, deep and rough and brushing across my skin, like the pleasured scrape of nails as we lost ourselves in the other’s body.
I pressed my hand to the wall to keep myself upright, overcome with the staggering weight of it all.
Ash eyed me warily. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “No.”
There was no use in lying because I was not okay.
Not in any shape or fashion.
He nodded, his discomfort clear. And part of me wanted to laugh, because I thought if I shed a single tear, this rocker just might bolt. Boys like him didn’t do well when women cried. But there he stood, his expression so blatantly clear.
He wished there was something he could do. A way to fix the mess Sebastian had gotten himself in.
With none of that flare or grandeur or cockiness, he gestured around the room. “Baz’s pad, obviously.”
It seemed stupid that I missed his arrogance, but it only amplified everything lacking. Everything missing.
Sebastian.
Sebastian.
Sebastian.
His name turned dizzying cartwheels through my mind.