Page 534 of Filthy Elites

He orchestrated the destruction of my relationship with my mom, but if I’m honest with myself, wasn’t it fractured before he came into my life? Before Sebastian I was more of the parent than she was. I worried about and paid the bills, I did the grocery shopping and cooked our meals. I was the adult, while she hid from the world behind her keyboard and the worlds within her books. Sebastian might have hammered the final nail in the coffin, but I can finally admit that what happened between me and her wasn’t solely his fault.

I was numb until he brought me here and jump-started me again. Now I’m living, with a new friend and possibilities. His love is a hurricane that hurts and destroys but when you’re in the eye of the storm with him, it’s calming, peaceful and beautiful.

For the very first time, I allow myself to be honest about how I feel about him. I don’t disguise my feelings with hurt or anger, I just let them flow out and think about how I’d feel if he was gone.

“I love you too,” I blurt.

“What?” he gasps, leaning into me, crowding me, before he inhales sharply and leans back, putting space between us again.

“I’m in love with you,” I say, trying the words out on my tongue and liking the way they feel.

“No you’re not. You hate me, you should hate me.”

“I do, and you’re right I should hate you. I don’t really understand why, but I love you too, no matter how fucked up it is.”

With the words out there, I exhale and relax. Saying it out loud is like taking a weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying around off my shoulders. “I love you,” I say it again.

“You can’t love me,” he says, shrugging with that austere look he gets that makes me want to slap him.

“I can’t?” I question.

“No, you can’t. I’m an asshole, I’ve done terrible things to you, ruined your life, ruined you. You hate me, you don’t love me.”

Scoffing, I crawl across the bed and into his lap, straddling his legs until my butt is sitting on his thighs. “Sebastian,” I whisper against his lips.

“Yeah,” he gasps, his hands curled into fists at his sides as he tries to stop himself from touching me.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

The end

Epilogue

ONE MONTH LATER

Since the attackand me confessing my feelings for him, everything and nothing has changed between us. He insisted that I hated him and couldn’t possibly love him after everything he’d done and I agreed, then I stripped naked and convinced him that I could both love and hate him in equal measures. After that I think he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and just accept that I want him in spite of our tumultuous past.

For the first two weeks he was on his best behavior, not demanding anything from me and waiting for me to offer whatever I decided to give him, but after two weeks of taunting and torturing him, it got old and I found I actually missed his over-the-top, crazy, jealous, obsessed, stalkerish ways.

When I confessed this to him, he refused to believe it. He was absolutely convinced that I was playing with him, getting revenge for all the mind-fucking he’s done to me over the years. I can kind of understand why he felt like it could all be a cruel joke, and I’ll admit seeing him insecure and unsure of himself was an incredibly gratifying experience, but as much as I might be tempted to, I’ve never played those kind of mind games with him.

It wasn’t until I went deliberately AWOL that he lost his shit and the real Sebastian finally came out to play. After he tracked me down and fucked me so hard I screamed loud enough to make my voice hoarse, we sat down and talked about which of his stalker behaviors I could tolerate and which were hard limits for me. Then he spent the whole night forcing orgasm after orgasm on me, to try and get me to agree to things I told him were deal breakers.

No matter how normal Sebastian pretends to be, I know that his obsession with me is as potent and out of control now as it was the day he decided I was his. And a month down the line I’ve discovered I enjoy pushing his buttons until he loses control and turns into the snarling, angry, threatening man he was the day he revealed he was my cage and that he’d never let me go.

I know I still have a full-time security team following me around, but I’ve never seen them and most of the time I forget they’re even there. As much as Sebastian likes to pretend he doesn’t want to keep me locked up, he confessed that he would struggle to not know where I was at all times and I came to the conclusion I could tolerate being followed as long as I didn’t have to see it, or feel the eyes on me.

The tracking device is still beneath the skin in my neck, but he promised he’s never activated it unless I was actually in danger. He did activate his though and from the app he installed on my phone, I can know exactly where he is at all times, not that I’ve ever thought to look.

The messed-up history we share hasn’t just disappeared since we admitted our feelings for each other, and it’ll be a long time before my dad will ever accept that Sebastian and I are together. He doesn’t understand how I could possibly forgive him for everything he’s done to me, and I get it, some days I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to totally forgive him completely either. But what my dad is starting to understand is that even with all the awful things that have happened between us, we love each other, and sometimes love doesn’t make sense and it isn’t always kind. I’m hoping at some point in the future they can become tolerantly cordial toward each other, and possibly, eventually Dad could maybe learn to like him. My mom is over the moon that Sebastian and I are trying to work things out, she even turned up at Kingsacre thinking that mine and her relationship would be instantly fixed too. Just like my dad isn’t willing to forget Sebastian’s sins, I’m not ready to pretend that my mom didn’t abandon me when I needed her the most. Perhaps we can reclaim some semblance of a friendship in the future, but for right now I’m still keeping her at a distance.

Mine and Sebastian’s relationship is our own special brand of fucked up and even though it shouldn’t, it works for us. I do whatever I want and he fights me on it, trying to get his own way. Sometimes I win, other times he manipulates me until I give in and give him what he wants. It’s probably not healthy and it’s definitely not normal, but it is us. It’s love and hate and complete, out of control, beautiful obsession.

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