Page 42 of The One Decent Thing

I pinched the bridge of my nose and dug in with my fingers, trying to shove the headache back. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll tell Sebastian — in the morning. He doesn’t need that shit freaking him out right now. I mean, how long has it been since he even talked to them? Years?”

Chris nodded. “About two, I think. You know his mom’s like, the mayor of that shitty town you guys grew up in, right?”

“Yeah. I know.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but Iwassure I wasn’t going to like it.

He fidgeted a little. “She could maybe cause you some trouble. I mean, she knows people. Right? Like, she maybe knows cops and judges and stuff.”

My smile was more like baring my teeth. “How the fuck do you think I ended up getting sentenced to four years for giving a guy I went to high school with a sleeping bag to crash in for a night?”

“Fair enough.” He sighed and took his keys out of his pocket. “So watch yourself, okay? And let me know if you need anything.”

Guilt hit me; I’d probably been a little hard on Chris. I smiled at him, a lot more genuinely this time. “You gonna sic your attack-dog Lucas on Sebastian’s parents for us?”

Chris let out a sharp little cackle of laughter, his hazel-green eyes bright, and for a second I could see why he got so many dates. He didn’t hold a candle to Sebastian. But I could see it. “Yeah, Lucas is a real menace. He’s probably terrorizing thirteen-year-olds in League of Legends as we speak.”

Sebastian was waiting for me, but I didn’t know if I’d get another chance like this to say something that had been on my mind for a while. “It was pretty cool of the two of you to show up here to help Sebastian. You know, when you thought I was the bad guy. It pissed me off, but also…I wish I’d had friends like you guys when I needed them.”

His smile was wide, sunny, and blinding, and he put a hand on my arm and gave me a little shake. “Maybe you do now, okay? If you make Sebastian happy. Call us. If you need anything.”

“I will.” There weren’t words for how much that warmed me, so I patted him on the shoulder as he passed by and stood in the doorway watching until he’d gotten in his car and backed out of the driveway. With a wave, he turned up the street and disappeared.

Frowning, I shut the door, took a second to finally kick off my shoes, and headed back to my room. I didn’t want to worry about Brody, or Sebastian’s string-pulling psycho of a mom, but Chris had given me a whole lot to think about. Although what could she do, really? I’d served my time. Carterville was thirty miles away, with a couple of other little towns in between. And it wasn’t exactly an important place. Santa Rafaela was way higher-profile and twice the size. Would the authorities here really give a shit about even the mayor of a Podunk town like Carterville calling to freak out over her adult, college-student son having a roommate she didn’t like?

She could tell the cops I was a felon, dangerous, with a grudge against her son. She could trot out the undue influence crap they’d used at the trial. Would anyone care? I had no fucking clue. For a product of the criminal justice system, I had frighteningly little idea how it all worked. Maybe that was the kind of stuff you were supposed to learn if you had a chance to become an adult living in the real world.

Maybe not. Maybe I was just as ignorant as everyone else, which was a comforting but also seriously scary thought.

Whatever. It could wait. Sebastian was in my bed, and I’d been away more than long enough.

When I stepped quietly into the room, he didn’t seem to have moved at all. He was still curled up with his hands folded against his chest, his skinny ribs rising and falling evenly as he breathed, and his eyes closed, long lashes like feathers against his pale cheeks.

I undressed first so I wouldn’t have to move away from him again once I got my hands on him. Stripped down to my boxers, I gently rolled him onto his back and got to work on his jeans. His eyelids fluttered open and he made a sleepy little sound, covering my hands with his.

“Hey,” I whispered. “How’re you doing?”

“Are you okay? I mean, nothing bad happened? With Brody?” There was a little shudder as Sebastian said his name, and I didn’t blame him. That asshole was such a fucking piece of work.

“Fine. Rick tossed him out on his ass and eighty-sixed him for life. No big deal.” I gave Sebastian’s fingers a squeeze and then pushed them out of the way so I could get his zipper down. He lifted his hips as I tugged on the waistband, and I peeled them down and off.

It was kind of weird, having sex and sleeping with someone with hairy legs. Not that Sebastian was hairy, for a man, but all the girls I’d dated had waxed, or shaved all the time, or something. Honestly, it seemed like more work than it was worth. I’d hung out just as friends with a Danish chick for a while — she was in Carterville spending the spring before I got arrested with her aunt, and we’d met at a party and clicked — and she showed me her legs, which had had more hair than Sebastian’s. Most European girls, she told me, didn’t give a shit about it, and the guys didn’t either.

Fair enough. I’d thought it was a little gross at the time, not that I told Kirsten that. Now I got it. Who gave a fuck? Bodies had hair. If you liked a person, and they had a body with hair, what was the big deal? Legs with hair could still be long, and slender, and shapely, and fucking amazing to have tangled up with yours.

I tugged the blankets out from under Sebastian and crawled in next to him, shoving pillows and arranging things until I had him where I wanted him: his head under my chin, my arms all the way around his body, and one of my legs thrown over both of his, so that I had him surrounded.

Sebastian nuzzled my chest and made a soft humming sound, and then sighed and went completely limp against me. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. I might’ve had him surrounded, but he had me outnumbered and outgunned. I kissed the top of his head and hugged him even closer.

It was probably still before midnight, which seemed fucking impossible, and I was usually up until three or four in the morning. But I was tired. A whole week’s worth of bullshit had gone down in the past couple of hours. I managed to extricate one arm long enough to adjust the dimmer switch on the lamp down to the minimum, leaving enough of a glow that I could check on Sebastian easily and he wouldn’t trip if he got up, and then I resettled and let my eyes drift shut. Sebastian was already asleep, the doors were locked, and the rest of the world could fuck right off until tomorrow.

I had everything I’d never known I needed right there in bed with me.

Chapter Twenty-One

Aidan

Sebastian stirring around woke me up what could’ve been minutes or hours later. I blinked a few times, trying to get my bearings. With the lamp on it was hard to tell, but I thought that was a little bit of gray light seeping in through the blinds, meaning it could’ve been anywhere between five-thirty and eight, or even later if it was a super foggy morning.

I loosened my arms enough for Sebastian to stretch, which he did like a cat, all arched back and pointed toes and a big toothy yawn. My morning wood caught the brunt of his wriggling.Down, boy. Fuck, but he was hard to resist. He tipped his head back on my arm and smiled up at me, still sleepy but bright-eyed and calm.

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