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“Nice to meet you.” Sebastian shakes his hand, his grip visibly tightening until Tyler winces.

“Yeah, sure.” Tyler snatches his hand back, flexing his fingers as Sebastian releases his hand. “I’m, uh—gonna go get another beer. Anyone else need anything?”

“Grab me one?” Cora’s boyfriend asks, and the tension dissipates as another round is ordered. Marilee grimaces as Tyler retreats, taking Rachel’s boyfriend with him.

“Sorry,” she mutters, glancing after him as he goes. “I didn’t even want him to come tonight, but he’s friends with Nick, and I didn’t want to say no. He’s a little much when he’s drinking.”

“It’s fine,” I assure her, although the dark look in Sebastian’s eyes suggests that he doesn’t think it’s fine at all.

The night passes far too quickly. Tyler keeps to himself after the handshake, and I sip at the beer, getting a slight buzz as we bowl round after round, and I watch Sebastian crack jokes and chat with my friends and their boyfriends. It’s so much fun that it hurts, because I know I’m never going to have fun like thisagain. After tonight, I’m going to be shut back up in my gilded cage until my father gives someone else the key.

This isn’t real life for me, but I suddenly, desperately wish that it was.

It’s just before one in the morning when Sebastian taps me on the shoulder. “We need to go,” he says regretfully. “We’ve got to get back before Brick changes shifts, don’t forget.”

I bite my lip, but I nod. “Okay,” I whisper, going to say goodbye to Marilee and the others and wish her a happy birthday again. Reality comes crashing back in, and when Marilee makes me promise that we’ll do this again soon, I say yes—but I know that’s never going to happen.Soon,I’m going to be engaged to someone I hardly know.Soon, I’m going to become a mob wife, someone else’s key to the Gallo fortune.

There’s a hush to the air as Sebastian and I walk back out to the parking lot. We pause at the motorcycle as he hands me the helmet, and I pause as I reach out to take it from him, my fingers brushing his.

It feels like now or never. Like when I go back home, back to the mansion, the doors will close behind me and I’ll never get out again.

It feels like this might be the last time I could ask Sebastian a question like this, even though I know it isn’t true.

“If things were different—” I whisper, the words hanging between us in the warm night air as I speak, my gaze locked on his. “If I wasn’t who I am—if I were someone else, if you—” I swallow hard. “Would you?—”

“Don’t, Estella.” His voice is rough, sharp, cutting me off as he says my name with a sudden harshness that I’ve never heard before. “Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer.”

A tingling awareness rushes through me as I see the look in his eyes—possessiveness and pain and desire all wrapped uptogether, and I know the truth, the answer to the question I’ve been wondering for longer than I’ve wanted to admit.

Sebastian wants me, too. He cares for me, more than he should.

But it doesn’t matter, because nothing can ever come of it. And he won’t step over the line, any more than I should let him.

“Can’t, or won’t?” I ask softly, and he shakes his head.

“Does it matter?” he murmurs, and I swallow hard, looking away.

“I guess not.” There’s a trace of bitterness in my voice, and I know he hears it. He reaches out, touching my shoulder where Tyler touched me earlier, as if to wipe it away, to brand the spot with his touch instead. I feel it, hot and searing against my skin, and I want to keep his hand there forever.

“I hated seeing him touch you,” Sebastian murmurs, a raw admission that I hadn’t expected. I look sharply up at him, feeling a crack run through my heart at the look on his face.

“You’re going to have to see it again,” I whisper. “Not him, but…someone else.”

He presses his lips together tightly. “I know, princess,” he says finally.

The silence hangs in the air between us for a long moment. Sebastian holds out the helmet, and I can feel the warm night pressing in around us, the remainder of it slipping away faster than I can grasp at it to stop.

“We have to go,” he says quietly, and I nod, taking the helmet from him with fingers that feel as if they’ve gone numb.

I feel cold on the ride home, even the memory of what happened on the ride to the bowling alley is not enough to warm me. Brick lets us back in, and we go in through the back, slipping easily through the quiet, silent house and back up to my bedroom. Sebastian walks side by side with me, not touching, but still close enough that I can feel the warmth of his body. Wepause outside my bedroom door when we reach it, and Sebastian looks down at me, shadowed in the darkness of the hallway.

“Good night,” I say softly. “And—thank you. For helping me. It was fun, and…you were right. I needed it.”

“Of course.” Sebastian sounds oddly formal as he says it, and I see him swallow hard, his throat working as he shoves his hands into his pockets—almost as if he’s trying not to touch me. The thought makes my heart leap a little, and I bite my lip, looking up at him.

Slowly, as if in a dream, I see his hand slide out of his pocket, lifting toward my face. His thumb brushes against my lower lip, ever so slightly, tugging it free of my teeth. Even in the shadowed hall, I can see the pain in his eyes, the longing, and my chest squeezes as an aching warmth floods me.

“Estella…” His voice is a low, hushed rasp in the darkness. “Whatever happens, I promise you—I’ll protect you. No matter what.”