Page 68 of BounBound By Scars

When we parted, I caught his gaze locked onto something over my shoulder. He was frozen.

I turned and saw Inez.

Her shoulders were stiff, lips parted. Her expression caught somewhere between disbelief and cold calculation.

My stomach dropped.

I looked back at Sebastian. “Did you just—?”

“No!” he said quickly as if coming out of a daze. “Absolutely not.”

My voice dropped, sharp and low. “You used me. How drunk are you?”

“I didn’t—”

“You’re talking to an ex-FBI drone expert who started her career as a profiler first. Don’t fucking lie to me, Sebastian.”

His groan was loud enough to draw eyes.

“She’s a fucking menace!” he hissed. Inez and Mateo were already disappearing into the crowd.

“What is it about her?” I demanded. “She did jack shit just now. Why are you so bent—”

He lifted his hands in surrender, exhaled hard, then stepped toward me with cautious eyes. “I’mnotbent about her,” he said slowly. “And I didn’t use you.”

A pause. Then, quieter—

“Not intentionally.”

I rolled my eyes, and he visibly winced.

“Go chase your devil, Ranger.”

And before Sebastian could make a scene at the wedding, I walked away—praying I could explain this to Kabir.

Kabir

He justhadto swoop in, didn’t he?

She danced with him.

After giving the whole speech—basically confessing—she went and danced with him.

And before I could make it to the dance floor, before I could even think of cutting in, the bastard kissed her.

What made it worse? I saw the look on her face. The shock. The way her body froze when she realized he had used her.

I saw him—Sebastian—watching that curly-haired woman earlier. That kiss wasn’t about Amelia. It was a move. Tactical. Intentional.

But my brain couldn’t keep up with logic.

All I could see was him kissing her. Kissing the lips I had dreamed of. The lips I’d barely gotten a taste of when she kissed me weeks ago.

Fuck.

Hope was a fragile fucking thing. And it shattered in the space between them.

Which was why I was now staring into the bottom of my whiskey glass—wishing it could erase what I’d just seen.

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