Page 22 of Kill Shot

Living a Lie

Seb

It was a few days before the two of them could meet again, but it felt like a lifetime to Seb. After all, it was going to be the first time that they met up together as an “official” item.

Seb checked his phone once more as his guards drove him to the shopping mall that was to be their meeting place. No new messages from Nico. In fact, their entire recent text history had just been a brief discussion and confirmation of where they would meet up next.

He knew that he could have asked for a more involved conversation.

He could have insisted on having a call or meeting up sooner, but Seb couldn’t help the nagging fear in the back of his mind.

What if Nico said no? The seed of doubt had already grown into a burden verging on crippling without him even realizing it.

They pulled into the parking lot, his guards not saying a word. They knew exactly what he was doing here, and they neither passed judgment nor wished him luck. They simply guarded him, just the same as they always had.

Seb got out of the car first, hurrying over to the food court where they were to meet.

His guardians followed at a respectable distance, at least taking a modicum of effort to blend in this time.

Ordinarily, he would have been thankful for that, but he was far too preoccupied with his own fears and whether they were irrational or not.

He felt his cheeks burn, and he hoped that he could pass it off as simple exertion once again. When he thought of how Nico had felt inside him, how the two of them had been so perfectly in unison, it seemed too good to be true. Far too good to be true.

Was it possible that Nico really liked him? Or was this all just pity and kindness on his part?

The instant that Seb laid eyes on Nico, all those doubts vanished. There was simply no room for both those and his soulful hunger for the tall, dark, beautiful man that could make Seb weak in the knees with nothing more than a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

Seb felt self-conscious as he approached. Nico looked him up and down with an appreciative eye, and that just made Seb feel even more embarrassed.

His guards were thankfully out of earshot—one of the concessions that his father had begrudgingly given since their last talk—but they were certainly keeping an eye on everything, so leaping into Nico’s arms and kissing him like Seb wanted was rather out of the question.

“Sebby.” Nico’s voice was like a caressing whisper meant for Seb and Seb alone. He even went so far as to look around to make sure that nobody else was passing by to hear what belonged to only him.

“I’ve missed you,” Seb replied as he stepped right up to the man that he simply could not quit. There was no mistaking the giddiness he felt within himself now, the way that merely smelling the woodsy notes of Nico’s cologne was enough to make him want to bathe in the stuff.

There was no kissing or hugging, but the way the two men stared at one another felt more intense and intimate than either of those things. It was like they were in a world of their own, and anyone who glanced at them for more than a moment could see how wrapped up Nico and Seb were in one another.

Oh yes, this was going to be a very big problem. This infatuation was not waning at all, and every time they met, Seb could feel himself falling deeper and deeper under the spell.

“Are you hung—Jesus! What happened?” Seb cried out, forgetting himself and grabbing Nico by the hand. The very bruised and recently bloodied hand.

“Ah…” Nico looked down at their hands as if he simply hadn’t noticed getting terribly injured. Which, all things considered, wasn’t all that much of a stretch given what Seb knew about him.

“Don’t tell me this is from…” Seb trailed off meaningfully, looking Nico right in the eye.

Nico glanced around, taking the precautions that Seb was presently throwing to the wind. But apparently nobody had really noticed the two men having a heartfelt, hand-clasping moment.

“Boxing,” Nico said with the traces of a cheeky smirk. “I was a little out of practice though, so I think I overdid it a bit.”

“Boxing,” Seb repeated, his mind already flying through every horrible possibility that might be lurking behind that euphemism. Bare-knuckle brawling in deserted alleys? Beating men to a pulp? Torture?

Nico nodded, and even though Seb could see his distraction attempt coming from a mile away, that didn’t make it any easier to resist when the man pressed his forehead against Seb’s.

If simply staring had been more intimate than making out in public, then this felt more perverse than if Nico had bent him over on the spot and had his way with him.

“Nobody’s watching,” Nico murmured. “Except your watchdogs, of course. To everyone else, we are just a perfectly normal couple sharing a perfectly normal moment. And isn’t that what you want? For us to be a perfectly normal, perfectly respectable pair of boyfriends?”

Seb swallowed, blinking back tears of unknown provenance. He wanted them to be from happiness and being emotionally overwhelmed, but he just didn’t know for sure. And how could he?

“I believe you were about to ask if I was hungry,” Nico said as he smoothly pulled away and slipped Seb’s hand into the crook of his arm with one easy motion, as if he was a gallant gentleman escorting a prince.

“Yes, exactly,” Seb said, feeling breathless and flustered. “Do you have any druthers?”

“Druthers?” Nico laughed. “Are you sure that you’re in college and not an old man in disguise?”

“No need to be prejudiced, my Nico. I could be both. Old men can still go back to college and better themselves.”

That won a genuine smile from Nico, and Seb felt a wave of relief rushing over him.

This was the old, easy friendship that had been missing for the last few days.

He’d been so caught up in the aftermath of their night together that he’d forgotten how things had used to be.

When the smiles came easy and the laughs were unexpected, everything was so much easier, so much clearer.

“So how did the talk with your father go?” Nico asked.

“Better than I expected,” Seb said, but left out the part where he’d threaten to run from home if his father tried to lock him down or go after Nico.

“I was expecting him to really blow up at me when I got back, but he just sat there behind his desk, coldly asking me if I had a good explanation for where I’d been.

I don’t think he was expecting that I actually did . ”

Nico took a moment to consider a burger joint before shaking his head and moving on.

“From the looks of it, you’d had a pretty big argument before you came over to my place. I imagine part of him was relieved considering you just left after getting into what I’m assuming was a shouting match. People often make the worst decisions after that sort of thing.”

If he was being honest with himself, Seb hadn’t really considered how things might have looked from his father’s perspective. Nico was probably right.

“He took the revelation that I was seeing you surprisingly in stride though.”

Nico snorted at that. “I think he probably had some idea. After all, his guards were reporting all the times that you met up with me before. He had to at least have considered the possibility that you were up to no good.”

“No,” Seb said weakly, but his heart wasn’t in it. He really didn’t want to think about just how much his father knew about how he’d been secretly madly in lust with Nico for the past few weeks.

“And how much exactly did you tell him?”

Seb didn’t answer immediately. His pretext was that a family was strolling right past them, but even he knew that was a flimsy excuse.

“I told him pretty much everything,” Seb said at last, more than a little embarrassed to remember exactly how the exchange had gone down. “How we first met, the way you’ve been helping me, what you’re like, all of it.”

Nico’s eyes narrowed, but both knew that he wasn’t really focusing all that keenly on the Chinese restaurant across from them.

“I thought it was the only way to calm him down and make him accept you,” Seb continued. “And it worked. At least I think it did. After all, he let me come out to see you today.”

Nico nodded thoughtfully. He looked back at the guards that were still following at a distance.

And now came the hard part.

“He wants to meet you.”

Nico didn’t look particularly surprised by that curveball. Then again, it probably wasn’t all that much of a curveball to a man who had already tried to see things from the perspective of his boyfriend’s father.

“He wants to, huh,” Nico said slowly. “Are you sure that it would go well?”

Seb couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief. He’d been expecting a battle, but they’d already skipped right over the step of Nico giving an absolute refusal. All that worrying that Seb had done about exactly how to convince him had gone to waste.

But there was a deeper, more intense source of his relief as well.

Maybe it didn’t matter that much to Nico, but this represented a big step in the right direction for Seb.

It was an affirmation that he wasn’t the only one who was taking this seriously.

If Nico was willing to meet Pablo, then it at least wasn’t a complete joke to him.

“Yes, I’m sure it would go great. In fact, I think the two of you might be a lot more similar than you realize.”

“Uh huh.”

But Seb barely even heard Nico’s unconvinced reply. His mind was already going a million miles an hour, imagining an ideal future that he hadn’t even dared to dream of before now.

“We could even do it at my graduation dinner. What do you think about that? Everyone I’m closest to will be there, but don’t worry, it’s not going to be a big get-together, just a few people. And you are one of those people that I’m closest to, of course. I promise it won’t be overwhelming.”

Nico had stopped walking, but he was watching Seb with a faint smile. If there was anything else in his expression, then it had already vanished by the time that Seb realized he was rambling.

“You will come, won’t you?” Seb pleaded.

He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help the desperation in his heart.

Even if he and Nico didn’t work out, even if this turned out to be a fleeting dream, he still wanted the memory of him being there for such an important milestone.

If nothing else, it would leave him with a treasured memory for the rest of his life.

As Nico continued to watch him, not saying a word, Seb couldn’t help but wonder if maybe their two worlds weren’t so far apart. Maybe Seb really could envision the man standing in front of him sharing a drink with his father.

“I think that sounds like a wonderful idea,” Nico said softly, and if there was an edge to his words, then Seb was far too overcome with elation to catch it.

“Feeling hungry?” Seb asked, tugging Nico onward.

“I could eat.”

“What are you in the mood for? Chinese? Mexican? Mongolian? Though I doubt this place does Mongolian—”

Before Seb could finish, Nico’s hands clamped down on his shoulders and spun him around so fast his vision blurred. He barely had time to steady himself before Nico was behind him, guiding him forward toward his bodyguards.