Page 56 of The One Decent Thing

“Yeah. He was laughing so hard he could barely talk. Also, he confirmed that he does have better lawyers and that he’ll support me for the rest of my life even if she gets my trust broken, if only because it’ll piss her off so bad. Also, he said he’d make a donation to the physics department and attach a note to ignore my mom if she calls.” Sebastian smirked. “I should want to do it on my own merits, but…screw it. At least they’ll accept my application to grad school next year. I’ll take it.”

Jesus Christ, he wassucha rich kid. In anyone else, it might have made me gag, or say something cutting — but after that call with his mom that morning? Yeah, being rich didn’t make everything easy. Fuck it.

But there was something else about his uncle that’d been niggling at me for a while, and when we sat down on the couch and Sebastian started booting up his laptop, I finally got up the courage to ask.

“Look, I don’t mean to sound…I don’t know. Like I’m criticizing, because I’m not. I’m just curious. Why didn’t you call Peter and his lawyers four years ago?”

Sebastian flinched, and he stared down at his lap. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I really messed that up.”

“No,” I said firmly. “No. You were seventeen, how the fuck were you supposed to get everything right about dealing with that shit? I meant for yourself as much as me, anyway. Couldn’t he have done something about the way your parents treated you, too?”

Because yeah, it would’ve been nice if a crazy rich guy had shown up at the eleventh hour and gotten me off of the charges, like something from a movie. But really, what nagged at me the most was: where the fuck was this asshole when his nephew was being drugged and browbeaten and treated like shit?

“I hadn’t seen him since I was a little kid,” Sebastian said finally, still not looking at me. “I didn’t — I swear, I had no idea calling him was even an option. When I turned eighteen I went to my grandfather’s lawyers, you know, my mom and Peter’s father. I wanted to see if I could get my trust fund early, since my parents weren’t going to help me unless I did what they told me. The lawyer said no, but he called my uncle, too, since Peter was one of the trustees.” Sebastian shrugged. “The rest is history. He was happy to hear from me, said if I was ‘getting out from under the thumb of the wicked witch’ he’d be glad to get me through college. He told me to apply here, since he had this house, and then he started sending me money every month.”

“That’s great and all.” I was still so pissed, more than pissed, nearly fucking incandescent, over the thought of what Sebastian had gone through after my arrest. And reading between the lines, what he’d gone through for the seventeen years before that. Why did people even have kids, if they weren’t going to love them? I guess I could’ve asked my own parents that, if they were still talking to me. Still, pissed as I was at all the adults involved, a little tact might be my friend, especially since I was living in Peter’s house and was digesting breakfast he’d paid for. I couldn’t have it both ways. “Why didn’t he ever check on you when you were younger, though? If he knew what your parents were like?”

Sebastian sighed and leaned back on the couch. “Because he cares, but not that much, I guess.”

I hadn’t known Sebastian as a little boy, but I could imagine him: he would’ve been so fucking cute, with a mess of blond hair and huge blue eyes, not to mention smart and awesome. For a second I let myself picture an alternate timeline: we’d met on the elementary school playground, I’d beaten up some kid who was hassling him, and we’d been friends ever since. No prison, no years in high school where I was a dick, no years in high school where he was picked on. Because I would’ve been there, punching anyone who tried, and too busy watching stupid sci-fi movies with Sebastian to fuck with anyone for no reason.

Okay, in that scenario I might have spent at least a little time in jail for all the fights, to be fair.

Far, far too late for that. But it wasn’t too late for the next twenty years, or the twenty years after that. Holy shit, or even after that. If Sebastian and I stayed together, we could be that way for the next seventy fucking years.

“Hey, Sebastian? Look at me, babe.”

He glanced up through his lashes in a way that always got me. Shy, and sexy, and cute all at once. “Yeah?”

I leaned in and kissed him, a slow, lingering kiss like the kind you got in a close-up in a movie. The kind of kiss he deserved. “Your parents fucked you over. Your uncle’s cool, I guess, but he’s got his faults.” Sebastian nodded, looking confused. “Chris loves you, but he’s gonna find his own guy at some point, right? Unless he and Lucas end up together forever, watching different porn on the same bed.” They did that, Chris had told me when he was drunk the other night. It was so fucking weird and codependent. Sebastian chuckled, and he nodded again. “Okay. But me? I care enough, and you’remyperson. I’m not going anywhere. You never need to feel like that again.”

Sebastian set his laptop carefully on the coffee table and pushed me back, landing on top and straddling my thighs. He braced himself with one hand on my shoulder, and he raised the other, trailing his fingers down my stubbled cheek and jaw, feather-light. His eyes were as blue as the sky the day I walked out of prison, and almost as blinding.

I was so lost, falling down and down, and it felt like flying. “I already don’t,” he said softly. “And Aidan? You don’t have to feel like that either.”

When he kissed me, I believed him.

Epilogue

One Year Later

“It still fucking cracks me up that your birthday’s on Saint Patrick’s Day. What a goofy holiday to be born on.”

Aidan leaned over and kissed me, a quick peck that turned into a full minute of tangled tongues, and then dropped into the chair across from me at the kitchen table, hiding whatever he was holding in his lap. He was so not subtle. And his constant fidgeting with it wasn’t helping. He’d already wished me a happy birthday when we woke up an hour before, but it looked like the mysterious present he’d been so cagey about was going to make an appearance. Last year he’d gotten me a t-shirt that said Bottom Quark on it in tacky script, that I’d already worn holes in. Also, a blow job — a real one, no hand job at the end. He’d only gotten better at it since.

“Says the guy born on Lost Sock Memorial Day.” I took a prim sip of my coffee. He’d made fun of me for being born on Saint Patrick’s Day the year before, and I’d retaliated by finding the stupidest made-up holiday I could that fell on his birthday in May. I’d also given him a whole pack of unmatched socks as his present.

Yes, I’d given him the other half of the pairs later on, and also his real present — a nice watch, and because I wasn’t very creative, also a blow job. I did it naked on my knees, though, which he said was going in his personal mental porn stash forever. That was amazing, but the look on his face when he opened the half-pairs of socks had been the absolute best.

He raised his eyebrows. “At least whole cities full of people don’t act like fucking idiots on Lost Sock Memorial Day. Takethat, dude.” God, what was with him? He was being so weird.

“Dude? Really?” Aidan was a true product of southern California. He called me dude, he called his jacket dude, he called Rick dude — though only when Rick wasn’t in earshot. One time he’d called me ‘Dude, baby’ when he was drunk. Like, really? I was his boyfriend. I should be exempt. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Cheap shot, dude-baby,” he said with a grin. God, he was so gorgeous when he smiled like that. It was so unfair. “I love you more than anything.”

And that was unfair too, because every trace of humor was gone when he said it, and what was I supposed to snark back to that? Checkmate. “I love you too.”

“Yeah?” Aidan’s voice had gone a little hoarse. “Glad to hear it.”

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