“You don’t understand.” Sebastian got to his feet, moving restlessly toward the window. Outside, the city looked cold and bright. As if it was filled with chilly light, not all those lives. “It’s not her fault.”
“Yes, yes. Your father was cruel.” I rolled my eyes. “But he died a long time ago. And she’s a grown woman. At what point does a person have to take responsibility for their own happiness?”
He turned back around. And he looked like a stranger, then. Something in me, some kind of panic, coiled tight.
“Why do you continue in the ballet if you don’t love it, Darcy?” he fired back at me. “If it doesn’t make you happy, why do it at all?”
That felt like a kick, as if he’d taken out a knee, and I found I was curling my hands into fists in my lap.
Are you really lecturing me on happiness? I wanted to shout, but I didn’t. I made myself stay calm—or look calm, anyway. “Do you even know what happy is, Sebastian? Your mother’s horrible to you and you let her do it. Your brother stopped talking to you years ago, and you accepted it. You don’t love me, as you make sure to tell me in case I get ideas, but you still want to marry me. Why?”
“What would you have me do? Throw my mother on the street? Force my brother to revisit the most painful time of his life when that’s clearly not what he wants?”
I noticed he didn’t touch the marriage thing. And that made me clench my fists even harder.
“All I’m saying is that if we’re talking about pursuing happiness tonight, you could start with yourself.” There was something wild in that bright blue gaze of his that seemed to match that panicked thing in me. I should have stopped. I told myself to stop. But I didn’t. “Maybe try to practice what you preach, Sebastian.”
“I thought you understood,” he said, and he sounded...different. Something like foreboding prickled down the le
ngth of my spine. “I thought it was clear. Happiness is for other people. I don’t deserve it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sebastian
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND what was happening. But then, when it came to Darcy, I didn’t understand much of anything and wasn’t sure I ever had—a sensation that hadn’t gotten any easier to bear over the last few months.
I hadn’t expected to feel like this. I hadn’t expected to feel.
I’d imagined the initial madness would fade, but it hadn’t. If anything, I hated being away from her even more now. Even in these last weeks, when being with her had meant making sure she was fed and cared for and could sleep. Almost as if the sex was secondary, no matter how fantastic it continued to be.
I didn’t like to use words like joy or happiness, because what did I know of either?
If I viewed her as a particularly prime deal I needed to close, it was easier. Or it all made better sense, anyway. I just needed to get the contracts signed and settled. That was what would make things more palatable and less overwhelming, I was sure of it.
But she still wouldn’t marry me.
“What do you mean, you don’t deserve it?” she asked quietly now.
I already regretted my outburst. And everything that had preceded it, like telling her about my family. About me. Something about this woman made me forget all my own rules.
“I’m not a good man, Darcy,” I said when I could be sure I was under control. And I was absurdly, ridiculously glad that I had moved over to the window, because I wasn’t sure what would become of me if she touched me just now. “I haven’t hidden that from you. But you don’t seem to want to accept it.”
“Maybe you’re really not a good man. But you’ve been nothing but good to me, so I can only take your word for that.”
“I bankrupted my brother. I betrayed my mother.” When she only stared back at me, I upped the ante. “I purchased you. For sex.”
I expected her to look poleaxed. Instead, she looked as if I was making her sad. “I sold myself. To you. For sex. Does that make me dirty and undeserving of happiness, Sebastian?”
“Of course not.”
“It might have been hard for her, and of course you feel badly about that, but you didn’t actually betray your mother by choosing to have a relationship with your brother.” She shook her head when I started to argue the point. “Your father might have betrayed her, and you, but he’s your brother. It makes sense that you wanted a relationship with him. It makes sense that she doesn’t. But you’re not actually required to hate him just because his existence reminds her of a dead man’s sins.”
When she said it like that, it landed differently. It even felt different. It was almost as if—
But I knew better.
“I’ve been paying penance as long as I can remember,” I told her, my voice low and full of all the ways I’d let down the people closest to me. And all the ways I’d earned their enduring dislike and disdain. It was the axis that kept my world spinning. “But I welcome it. I can’t change the past. I can’t make my father faithful. I can’t restore Ash’s trust in me. Most of all, I can’t be the man you want me to be.”