Page 30 of Please Hate Me

“Someone has a breakfast date today, and I’m making sure she keeps it.”

And just like that, I was no longer interested in being awake. I pushed him away, rolled over, and slammed a pillow over my head. It wasn’t that I didn’twantto see Sophia. I loved havingher close yesterday. But she was part of a life I had given up long ago—for her sake and for Lucian’s.

Seb peeled the pillow out of his hand before resting his face near mine. Our noses were a hair away from touching. I fully closed the gap, craving that little connection between us. His hand slipped under my shirt and rested on my stomach.

“I’m okay with you joining their relationship,” he calmly stated.

He said that yesterday, too, but in my mind, all I heard was, ‘I’m busy, so I’m making you somebody else’s problem.‘

“I just want you.”

“I know, princess, I know.” He sighed, then used his free hand to find my wrist. I knew what he was looking for. As he turned over my palm, we both saw the stack of thin white lines. Most of them were expertly hidden under purple and blue ink, perfectly blended into an image of the cosmos, only visible if you knew what to look for. Sebastian brought my wrist to his lips, kissing the scars as he stared into my eyes.

“I don’t want you to do any more of this,” he pleaded.

For a moment, I wondered if I should be honest with him about my hair tie trick. But if I told him, hedefinitelywouldn’t let me stay here alone. And... I needed the small pain to keep from hurting myself worse.

“I won’t.”

His breath brushed against my wrist as he exhaled.

“Princess, I know you’re polyamorous, and I don’t want you to deny part of yourself to be with me.”

I looked down, suddenly unable to hold his gaze.

“But I just want to be with you.” My voice was barely above a breath.

“I want that too, but I also love you for the person you are. That includes the way you love. As long as you always come back to me, I want you to have that part of yourself back. Your dadforced you to be monogamous foryearswith your fiancé. Now, you deserve to be free.”

My brow pinched as I studied him, trying to scan his icy eyes for truth. I was god-awful at reading between the lines, so I never knew when someone was lying unless they just told me. But I read a book once that said people look away when they lie, and Sebastian was doing nothing of the sort.

Still, part of me wondered if this was some kind of ploy to see some girl-on-girl action. That was something I had learned about men: they loved lesbian sex. I never thought I’d see the day when my bisexuality was used as a marketing tactic, but I still wondered if that was why my dad pushed so hard for me to get engaged to Anya. She didn’t have any status as a celebrity, and she certainly didn’t make me happy. But I sure did get a lot of attention when the announcement hit the press.

“What if you get jealous?” I asked, trailing a finger under the rim of his glasses.

He shrugged. “Then I’ll tell you, and you’ll have my permission to dump them. But I don’t want you to spend your life swallowing bits and pieces of your personality just to make yourself more palatable.”

I tried to hide my shock at his words. That was all I had been doing for years. I was loud, obnoxious, and over-emotional, and that only scratched the surface of the disgusting amalgamation that unfortunately happened to be Mason Albright.

“What if I’m too much?”

“Sweet girl, you’ll never be too much for me.” He smirked. “And if you’re too much for anyone else to swallow? I say let themchoke.”

I let his words wash over me, trying to internalize them. I didn’t want my inner monologue to echo my parents’ hatred. I wanted to be confident and sure of myself, instead of being agiant anxious mess all the time. But it wouldn’t be that easy to change.

“If I do this, can I have a reward?” Deep down, I knew it was childish to ask. But I needed the pressure of an impending ‘job well done’ to motivate myself.

“Anything you want, name it, and it’ll be yours… as soon as I get back from Massachusetts.”

My heart sank a little.

“You’re going away? Already?”But I just got here.

He rolled his lips in as he nodded, sucking a breath through his nose. “I tried to push it back, but my work is very… time sensitive.”

“You’re a detective. How is that time-sensitive?” My words came out angrier than I meant. I blamed it on the hormones—they were driving me fucking crazy.

Still, I meant what I said. Sebastian worked on homicide cases—specifically, serial killer cold cases that were deemed unsolvable. If these murders had gone unsolved for years, why couldn’t they wait another two days?

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