Page 12 of Forbidden Sins

ESTELLA

I t takes me a long time to fall asleep.

I hear Sebastian moving through the room to the armchair, the sound of his weight settling into it, the soft rustle of fabric against fabric as he covers himself with the blanket.

If it were later in the year, I might still be able to see him a little in the firelight, but it’s summer, and there’s no fire in the fireplace.

Anyway, I’ve always been told never to go to sleep with one burning, even if I have broken that rule a few times for the pleasure of falling asleep listening to it crackling.

I wish there were a fire right now, I think foggily as I squeeze my eyes closed, willing sleep to come.

It would be easier to pretend that I’m in one of my books—that I’m a princess in a high tower of a castle, having gotten the terrible news that the prince was lost. Sebastian would be my faithful knight, sleeping by the fire to make sure that I’m kept safe, close enough to protect me and far enough from me to protect my innocence.

But none of that is true. I feel like I can’t escape reality right now, like it’s a dark, sucking black hole pulling me down, and no amount of pretense or fantasy can get me out of it.

I’m not a princess, not in any real way, and no storybook imagining can soften the blow of hearing that my brother is dead.

Sebastian is my protector, yes, but right now it doesn’t feel like enough that he’s here in the room with me.

I want him next to me, his arms around me, holding me.

I want to feel his warmth, his body, keeping me close.

I want to breathe him in, to be enveloped in him, to lose myself?—

Stop it. The things I’m imagining are impossible. Not just impossible but wrong , overstepping all the boundaries between us that are carefully drawn. Sebastian would lose his job if he did even one of the things I’m imagining.

His breathing is quiet and even, and I wonder if he’s asleep already. If he’s able to quiet his mind so quickly that he could already have fallen asleep.

I’m exhausted, in mind and body, having cried so long and so hard that I feel wrung dry.

But still, it takes a long time for me to fall asleep.

Every time I think I’ve started to slip into it, I see Luis lying on the floor, his skin pale and waxy, blood surrounding him from dozens of wounds.

Knife wounds, bullet holes, his skin bruised from punches…

my mind runs over the possibilities, sending fresh tears cascading down my cheeks every time.

I wish I could see him, just so I could know. It feels like it would be easier to know than to imagine.

When sleep does finally come, it’s choppy and restless, full of nightmares of blood and gunshots and screams. In the middle of it all, I think I hear Sebastian’s voice urging me back to sleep, but I can’t be sure. I can’t escape it.

I wake just as exhausted as I was when I fell asleep, to a sunrise too beautiful and bright to exist in a world where my brother doesn’t any longer.

Sebastian is asleep in the armchair, the throw blanket tossed over him and tucked under his chin where it rests on his chest. I’ve never seen him asleep before, and the sudden intimacy of the moment strikes me, making me go very still as I look at him.

He looks younger like this, gentler, as if some of the years have been rolled back with his face softened and at peace in sleep.

One arm has fallen to the side, draped over the armchair, and the other rests in his lap.

His lips are parted, and when he shifts in the chair, a low groan escaping as he adjusts, the throw blanket falls down to his waist.

I have the urge to get up and fix it, to tuck it back where it was before, and it takes everything in me to resist it.

I curl my fingers against my palms, lips pressed together as I watch him, my chest aching with the weight of the grief that’s settled over me.

How will it ever go away? I wonder as I lie there, the sky slowly lightening outside my window.

How will I ever be anything other than an aching wound?

—

It takes two days for us to bury Luis.

My father returns in the morning. I hear the sound of car wheels on gravel outside and pull myself out of bed long enough to look out of the window.

When one of the doors opens, I get the smallest glimpse of what’s inside—a sheet draped over a shape in the car, a glimpse of rusted red on the pristine white.

Blood.

My brother’s blood.

I clap my hand over my mouth, stifling a wail as my knees give out.

I grab the windowsill to stop myself from falling just as I feel Sebastian’s hands on my waist, one arm going around me as he pulls me back against him.

The contact lasts only a moment before he moves me toward the bed, angling me so that I sit down heavily on the edge, and I’m no longer touching him entirely.

But for one moment, I felt him pressed against my back, against all of me, and it jolted me enough that for just that split second, I forgot everything except him.

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian says, and I see a faint flush on his throat. “I shouldn’t have—I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to keep you from falling.”

I swallow hard, my hands balled into fists on either side of me, pressing into the unmade bed. “How many times are you going to say that?” I ask softly. “That you shouldn’t have. That you’re sorry?”

The question hangs between us. Sebastian’s eyes widen.

“As many times as I do something I shouldn’t,” he says finally, taking another step back and to the side.

He goes to the window, and I see his face tighten, his jaw flexing as his hands grip the windowsill where mine were a moment before.

“Just… stay there, Estella. You don’t need to see any of this. ”

A part of me wants to get up and push him aside, to insist that I have a right to see it, that it’s better if I do. But as much as I want to know, as much as my grief-stricken mind thinks in this moment that it would be better to see the truth of things, I know deep down that it isn’t.

My last memory of Luis should be of him sweeping into the kitchen, sunny and bright as always, swooping down to kiss my cheek and promise that he’d be there for my birthday party. Not of him motionless beneath a blood-stained sheet, being carried somewhere by my father’s men.

Sebastian says nothing. He stands at the window for several long moments, clutching the windowsill until his knuckles turn white, his jaw clenched. And then he moves back to the armchair, sinking into it with an exhausted expression on his face.

I don’t think he slept any better than I did. He sits there for a long moment, rubbing a hand over his face, and then glances over at me with an apologetic expression.

“I’m sorry, princess,” he says softly. “I know you want me to stay. But it’s probably better if I’m outside like I was meant to be when your father gets up here.

He’s not going to be pleased if he guesses I spent the night in your room, even if I was over here and you were over there.

” He gestures toward the bed, and I try not to let the sudden panic that I feel show on my face.

There’s no reason for it—Sebastian will be right outside, and I’ve never needed someone else in my room before.

But at this particular moment, the last thing in the world that I want is to be alone.

“Right outside,” Sebastian repeats, his voice a deep, comforting rumble, but his words are anything but.

I nod, swallowing hard, and watch as he stands, smoothing his rumpled clothing before striding to the door and stepping outside.

When the door clicks behind him, my chest tightens, and I try to breathe, trying not to let myself panic.

I expect my father to come up to talk to me before long, but he doesn’t.

The morning stretches into afternoon, and one of the maids comes up with a tray of lunch—soup and a turkey sandwich and fruit—which I can’t imagine eating.

When it doesn’t seem like he’ll appear anytime soon, I go to take a shower, standing under the hot spray of water for a long time.

My face and throat feel stiff and uncomfortable from the endless crying, and I scrub myself clean, lingering until the water runs cold.

I change into a pair of leggings and another loose T-shirt with a sports bra under it, and collapse back into bed.

I can’t focus on anything—not the TV show I was watching, or a movie, or a book.

Every time I try, all I can think about is Luis—what happened to him, what might have happened, the fact that he’s gone.

The fact that I’ll never see him again.

As soon as that thought hits, I start to cry. The door clicks open a moment later, and Sebastian walks in, closing it quickly behind him. “Estella,” he says softly, walking over to me and touching my shoulder. “Estella, it’s?—”

He trails off, clearly not knowing what to say. And what can he say? It’s not going to be okay. It’s not going to get better. None of this can be changed or fixed or salved, and I can feel his helplessness, radiating from his hand where it rests on my shoulder.

He stays until I fall asleep again, wrung out from crying, and when I wake up in the early evening, he’s no longer in the room.

The next time the door opens, it’s one of the maids—a nice girl named Lila who I see often.

“Your father has asked that you come downstairs for dinner, miss,” she says politely, and her voice trembles a little.

Her eyes are red-rimmed, too, and I realize that news of Luis’ death must have spread.

My father and Sebastian, and I aren’t the only ones grieving now.

“You can’t be serious.” I stare at her, and she flinches. “I’m sorry, I just?—”

“He was very firm,” she says, glancing down at her feet. “I was… I was told to inform you.”