Page 184 of All The Happily Ever Afters

“What does he do?” I ask, and Bastian reaches for his beer. I turn around to thank Seth, seeing my drink right next to my hand for the first time. I hadn’t realized he set it there, but he’s already moved on to someone else.

“He does a lot of things. Whatever needs to be done. Fixes situations that get out of hand.”

“You like him?” I ask, letting my finger sit on the rim of the glass. It slides along the edge and I wonder if it makes a sound given that the edge is wet, but it doesn’t matter. The club is so loud, the soft sound would drown in it. Bastian nods, not showing me any emotion on his face, but steadfastly observing my reaction.

“Is that what you do too?” I ask him, not sure if I really want to know, but I damn well know that I want him to know I’ll still love him regardless.

“No.” Bastian takes a drink and then tells me, “I’ll be staying with Carter, going places with him to make sure things go down the way they’re supposed to.”

“Situations?” I ask and before he can even say “yeah” again, I ask, “Like what you used to do?” His tax returns said he was a butcher for Romano, but the scars on his knuckles say otherwise.

This time he only nods, his lips pressed in a tight line. “If it needs to be handled. Yes. I handle it.”

“So you’re the muscle,” I comment and take a sip of the bittersweet drink. I appreciate having to be sober for this. It’s surprising how it doesn’t bother me. How it even excites me. That’s what surprises me the most.

“I know it’s not what you thought I’d be doing when we settled down.” He starts to talk, and I don’t bother to let his mind wander down that path.

“I never thought I could tame you, Sebastian Black. I never wanted to either.”

“Tame?” he says and huffs a humorless laugh. He swallows thickly, staring at the ring of bubbles on the edge of his glass as he adds, “I just want you to know … who I am.”

“I’ve always known who you are.”

Shaking his head slightly, he stares blankly ahead. “I’ve hurt a lot of people,” he tells me in a voice so cold and low, as if I still don’t get it.

“You killed them. You didn’t just hurt them; you killed them.”

The club life seems to get louder, but it bleeds together when he looks at me with that intense icy gaze.

“I know what you did,” I choke out, needing to finally tell him the truth. “When we left, I know what you had to do before we could leave. I heard you talking about it on the phone.”

“What?” Disbelief lays in the breathy syllable. His stern gaze hardens; the depths of the man he is showing. And I love it. I love this side of him. Dare I say, I may even love this side of him more. Not because I love what he does, or the actions. But because he’s willing to risk everything to fight for what hebelieves in. I don’t know what Carter’s gotten himself into, but back when we were only kids, Sebastian did something I know I never could. He made an injustice just.

“We hadn’t been gone long, maybe a few weeks?” The words race from me, so willing and eager to finally be heard. “Something happened with Carter and you wanted to go back. I thought we were coming back here, but we didn’t. They told you not to. You were talking to someone about the people who were murdered, about the list … about Marcus.”

“Chlo.” Bastian says my name like he’s daring me to tell him it’s a lie, but the words keep running from me, running away like we did all those years ago.

“And when you came back to the bedroom, I waited for you to tell me what had happened. I wanted to know if Carter was all right. And you didn’t say a word.” Tears blur my vision, but I don’t cry. “You never told me anything, even though I knew you were hurting.”

“All I needed was you and you didn’t need to know,” he tells me in a single breath, the impact of my confession hitting him and turning his jaw hard.

“Did you think I wouldn’t love you anymore for it, Bastian? Did you think I would leave you?”

“Chloe,” he says, my name strained like it hurts him to say it.

“You would have never told me, and I get why. I get it.”

I don’t wait for him to respond before I continue on.

“And what you did after. When someone came for us.” I barely get the words out, because I know that night changed him. It was right after he got the call about Carter, so we’d been gone maybe three weeks, constantly moving from place to place, not stopping anywhere. “The night after you got that call, there was a knock on the door.”

“Chloe, don’t.” Bastian’s words are only a breath of a wish. A wish to not just keep me safe, but to make it so I don’t even knowabout the danger. It’s an impossible task and he needs to know that, even if that means he thinks he failed me.

“I was awake when you grabbed the gun. And I hate that I pretended to be asleep. I know that’s what you wanted, you didn’t want me to know.”

“It was Romano. I knew he’d send someone.”

“And I heard everything.” I whisper the confession that tears down the wall of pretenses between us. “I heard you nearly beat him to death, I heard the message you told that prick to give to Romano…” I swallow my words about how I heard him in the bathroom, cleaning up the mess and trying to hold back his own emotions. There’s more than anger and rage inside of him. The fear that he couldn’t protect me was almost palpable. “I was there behind the door with your other gun, Bastian. I was ready to fight with you, but you’ve never wanted that.”

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