Page 47 of Just a Heartbeat Away

“HOLYGUA-CA-MO-LE,” MARYSQUEALEDas she danced across the room and grabbed Seb into her arms. “She is SO cute, you lucky dog! Seb, I’m so excited for you!”

“Oh. Yeah. Totally. Although I wouldn’t really describe her as cute.” Seb thought of Fin’s fall of long, black hair, her spooky eyes and her loads of intricate jewelry.

“Are you kidding? She’s cute as a button. I just wanted to put her in my pocket. When she read Matty that story, I almost died.”

“Wait.” Seb was putting the pieces together. “Are you talking about Via?”

Tyler stopped typing on his phone across the room.

“Of course.” Mary looked confused. “The one you were supposed to go on a date with.”

“No, Mary, I was supposed to be on a date with Serafine this morning.”

Mary’s face scrunched down in even more confusion. Her eyes flicked to Tyler for a second. “Hold on. The one who you obviously have a major crush on was NOT the woman who you had a date with? And the woman whose mere presence gave Tyler a lust-induced brain aneurysm—”

“Hey now!”

“—was the one you wereactuallysupposed to be feeling things out with?”

Neither Seb nor Tyler said anything.

It wasn’t uncommon for Mary to be this honest. But damn.

“I didn’t have a lust-induced brain aneurysm,” Tyler insisted sulkily.

“Then what the hell would you call it, Ty?” Mary asked, completely comfortable holding her friend’s feet to the fire. She and Tyler had become close after Cora died. There was nothing like dragging a friend out of the wreckage of his life to bond two people. And they’d been equally present in Matty and Seb’s life ever since.

“I was just surprised was all. She’s really hot.”

“She’s too young for you,” Seb snapped, falling back onto the couch and scraping his hand over his face. Mary and Ty looked at one another in surprise. Seb’s temper rarely reared its head. Even in his darkest place, after Cora had died, he never snapped. “They both are. They’re too young for us.”

Seb lifted his head and stared Tyler in the eye as if challenging him to say different.

Tyler didn’t disappoint. He tossed his phone on the coffee table and crossed one ankle over the other. Mary settled in on the far side of the couch, looking like she was wishing for popcorn.

“Maybe they’re too young for you, old man. But not for me.”

“We’re the same fucking age.”

“Apparently not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that just because you have a kid you act like you’re over the fucking hill. You’re forty-two years old, Seb, not exactly about to join the AARP, okay?”

Mary snorted, her laugh bubbling out of her, and Sebastian fought to keep a good grip on his temper. He wanted to fight, goddammit, he didn’t want to laugh right now. But Mary just had one of those laughs. Once she got started, you had no choice but to join in.

“You don’t understand, Ty. Whatever, sure, forty-two isn’t geriatric. And maybe if I’d met her at a bar somewhere, we could’ve left together.” He didn’t explain whichherhe was thinking of and neither of his friends asked him to. It was already written all over his face. “But the fact of the matter is, we’re in completely different stages of life. THAT’S what the age difference means. I’m a father. Of a kid who is old enough to ask questions. A kid who deserves stability. I wasmarried. I’ve buried a wife, for fuck’s sake. I can’t be running around with a woman who has to Google ‘how to pay my taxes.’ A woman who is young enough to—” He cut himself off and grabbed at a hank of his hair. “She’s going to have a dozen more boyfriends before she finds the person she’s supposed to settle down with. And I’m not up for that kind of carnival ride, you know?” The air was leaving his balloon, and in its place, was nothing but deflation. He wasn’t mad. He was just bummed. Really fucking bummed. “I can’t be. I’m too old, and I have way too much at stake.”

Sebastian sat back and finally looked up at his two closest friends. He thought he’d see sympathy there, pursed lips and sad eyes. Instead he saw annoyance in one of them and frustration in the other; both of them had a fire burning. Mary leaned forward, Tyler opened his mouth—

“Daddy!”

A bell rang furiously down the hall and whatever his two friends were going to say to him had to wait. On perfect cue, his life interrupted.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHEWASN’TPARTICULARLYpaying attention or anything, but it didn’t escape Via’s notice that neither Sebastian nor Matty came to school on Monday or Tuesday. She wasn’t surprised, figuring that Matty was still under the weather and Sebastian would obviously choose to stay at home with him. But Wednesday rolled around, and it was Tyler who brought Matty to school.

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