Page 56 of Second Sin

“You don’t have to earn it or justify it,” she says. “It just is.”

Those words hit something raw and old in me—something I thought I buried years ago under adrenaline and grit and games where pain is currency.

I don’t know what to say to that.

So I don’t.

Just nod once and look away, because if I keep looking, I’ll forget every reason I’m supposed to keep my distance.

And fuck, I need the distance.

Need the rules. The lines. The fucking boundaries we both pretend still exist.

Because I’m falling for her.

Not the easy kind of falling. Not the soft kind you can laugh off or shake free from.

The kind that happens despite you. The kind that wraps its hand around your heart and squeezes.

The harder I try not to, the harder I fall.

It’s in the way she listens. The way she sees through people without cutting them open. The way she holds all that grief and grace in the same goddamn breath and still manages to sit here, whole.

And it terrifies me.

Because I’d do anything to protect her.

Even if it means protecting her from me.

CHAPTER 20

OLIVIA

Ishould go upstairs.

Sleep.

But I’m still here.

Still watching him.

Like my body doesn’t care what the rules are. Like my heart already decided. And my head’s still pretending there’s a choice left to make.

Sebastian hasn’t moved.

He’s slouched low in his chair, one arm hanging over the side, legs stretched out, jaw shadowed and tight.

He’s been all steel since the day we met. The kind of man who builds walls thick enough to fool the world—but never quite himself. Guarded. Quiet. Shut down in the way men get when grief’s been sitting on their chest for too long and no one ever taught them how to let go.

But tonight, he let me see it.

Just a crack. Just enough to let some of the light bleed through.

And I don’t think he knows what that did to me.

I want to reach across this table and press my hand to his chest.Feel the warmth of his skin. The rhythm beneath it. Something real and steady. Somethinghis.

God, I want him.

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