Page 79 of Dangerous Men

Sebastian gives me a sideways glance. “Go there yourself if you want to know.”

Yeah, okay, I should have figured he’d be a dick about it. When is he ever not?

“Yeah, I would if I had the time, believe me.” I run a hand through my hair. “I don’t know how Alec handles all of this stuff, you know? It’s meeting after meeting after meeting, and that’s just the Sterling Enterprise stuff. I had to go to two different clubs tonight, you know that? Anthony is making a fuss again, and?—”

“What are your plans with her?”

I blink hard, a little surprised at the ice in his tone as Sebastian leans against the fridge and narrows his eyes at me.

“With Sydney?” I ask, trying to recalibrate to the suddenturn in the conversation. “I mean… there’s a carnival coming in a few weeks, I thought I could?—”

“What are yourlong-term planswith her?” Sebastian interrupts. He threads the cap back onto his bottle of water, squeezing it a little too hard as he does so, the crinkle of plastic loud in the quiet of the kitchen. “What the fuck are we doing here, Ash? Why ask me to watch her?”

I let out an exasperated breath. “Look, I told you, I would do it if I had the time! But when Alec’s gone,someonehas to go to these stupid meetings. They don’t even want me to say anything. Do you know how boring that is? I just have to sit there while they talk and talk and fucking talk!”

Sebastian glares at me.

“Once Alec is back, you can back off. And I can?—”

“It’s not going to work,” Sebastian says. “What you’re planning.”

I hate this. Every fucking conversation with him is like having two different conversations at once. I run my hands over my face and let out a frustrated grunt.

“I’m not planning anything,” I say through gritted teeth.

“When are you going to tell her about all of this?” he gestures around at the compound with his bottle of water when he says it. “When are you planning to tell her what wedo? What we really do?”

“I haven’t thought that far,” I admit.

A muscle in his eye twitches. “Of course you haven’t. You’re lying to her. You get that, don’t you? Maybe Sterling more than you.” He pins me with a glare when he says it. “But you’re both lying to her. And she will find out.”

“I’mnot lying to her!” I insist.

“You two can be so fucking stupid, you know that?” Sebastian shakes his head. “You think this is what she wants out ofher life? You think this is what she’s spent her life dreaming of?”

“We can ease her in slowly,” I say, already forming the plan in my mind. “You know, bit by bit. And she doesn’t have to know about all of it, right? She doesn’t have?—”

Sebastian stalks toward me and slams his water bottle down on the table, leaning over it to stare at me.

“We’re not her happy ending, Ashton.” He hesitates then, something flickering in his eyes, before he corrects himself. “You’renot her happy ending. You think you can give her the things she really wants? What if she wants to get married?”

Oh Christ, that shouldn’t get me hard, should it? But fuck it does.

“I could get married,” I say, the words tumbling out of my mouth too quickly. I have to reach under the table to adjust myself, imagining it. Sydney in a white dress, Sydney with a ring around her finger, marking her as ours. Ohfuck. “You… you think she wants that?”

The look in my little brother’s eyes could be pity. Or it could be disgust. It’s hard to tell.

“This life? This would break her.” He stares at me for a beat. “You get that, don’t you? You get that she’s too fragile for this?”

I shake my head quickly. “No.No.”

“What are you going to do when Viper finds her?”

“Isn’t that your job?” I ask, raising my voice. “Keeping him on a leash?”

There’s no mistaking the pity in his eyes this time. “No one can hold his leash forever, brother. Not even me.”

“You can be…” I stutter, stumbling over the fear and anger and just… generalshittinesshe’s making me feel. “You can be such adicksometimes, you know that?”