Page 86 of The Moon & His Tides

She was torn away, not passed away. Ripped bloodily from my literal hands.

I didn’t realize I was sharing that until the silence pressed hard against my eardrums, and they popped with a jaw-aching pressure. Even then, though, I didn’t stop.

I wasn’t sure why.

Why I was telling Sebastian about Juliet Holland Yardley when I hadn’t even spoken her name aloud in years.

“She was lovely,” I admitted to him, the scenery blurring outside my window into a grey watercolour mass. “Warm and vivacious enough to fill our fifty-room house with sunshine every day.”

“Ah, so that’s who you got the charisma from,” he said, softly like he was afraid to puncture the atmosphere and lose the sense of a confessional we’d established.

I laughed, but it was only an exhalation of scorn. “I’m merely a weak replica. She was the original. She used to captivate peopleat dinner parties with her stories. I think she made most of them up, but she didn’t hide it, and people didn’t care. They just loved that she made them laugh.”

I rolled my head against the seat rest to look at the man beside me, the words bubbling up my throat before I could swallow them down. “You make us laugh like that.”

“I’m honoured by the comparison,” he said solemnly, and it made an indent in my soul because Sebastian was so rarely solemn.

He was bright and beautiful and filled with wonder, a young man who had tasted misfortune but decided to focus on the positive in life instead of wallowing in misery. He was so admirable, this eighteen-year-old who shouldn’t have lived as much life as he had, who shouldn’t be sitting there like a warm hearth for me to rest my weary self in front of.

“She was too good for my father,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure if I really meantyou’re too good for me.

He seemed to catch something in my tone, chin sliding to face me for a moment to gauge my expression. One hand fell from the steering wheel to clasp over my knee and squeezed.

“I’m not sure you have to be worthy of love,” he protested. “I’m no expert, but I think love just exists. Outside of worth and currency and measurements. It’s not something that can be quantified based on a set list or characteristics.”

“Maybe not, but it can be earned. And he didn’t earn it.”

And I don’t know how to earn you.

How could I when all I had to offer him was a life of secrecy and shame?

Because no matter what, I would never share my private predilections with the public. It would be pouring gasoline on my career and setting it on fire.

It would be roasting myself alive on the burning tongues of thousands of people’s mockery and criticism and cruelty.

I couldn’t survive something like that.

It was all I could think of when he and Savannah had confessed their feelings for each other before Sebastian left for his trip to Naples, and it was all I could think of the entire time he was gone.

It was one of the reasons we’d fought, Savvy and me.

“Why can’t we keep him?” she’d yelled at me. “Why can’t you love what’s good for you for once in your miserable life?”

They were both good questions, fair enough.

But loving what was good for you didn’t make you worthy of its goodness.

Loving him didn’t mean I had anything of value to give him.

“Hey,” Sebastian called, shifting his hand into mine and threading our fingers together so they were clasped on my thigh. “It’s a happy day,si? If you want to remember your mother today, let’s remember her with laughter.”

I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth, trying to cleanse the gunk in my soul with the scent of Sebastian.

“Okay, I’m in your hands,” I told him, clapping my other hand on top of our joined ones. “Be good to me.”

“Always,” he promised, solemn again, as an oath this time, and my joking tone felt rude in contrast. “Always, Adam.”

We drove for four hours.