Page 23 of The Sun & Her Burn

Whoever it was at my door had already been vetted by the guard at the gate from my list of approved visitors, or by Chaucer, who was rung whenever someone else wanted access. I didn’t have to worry about modesty with the intruder, and I was too irritated by the interruption—and the general state of my life—to care as I stomped through the house to the foyer and wrenched open the oversized wooden door.

Nothing could have prepared me for the sight that awaited me on the other side.

It was like hitting an invisible force field. Every atom of my body was thrown against an immovable wall, then ricocheted back painfully, recoiling and freezing as if stasis would save me from the revelation of the guest who stood on my doorstep.

My system was overloaded by so many powerful emotions, it short-circuited.

I had not let myselffeelso strongly in a decade.

Almost to the day I had last seen the man with the golden eyes staring at me calmly as if I wasn’t having an internal meltdown in front of him.

“Adam,” Sebastian Lombardi said, and ohfuck, the sound of my name in his mouth…a song that haunted my dreams and had me waking up with a gasp lodged in my throat, a painful hardon and heartache like a stab wound throbbing in my chest.

Adam, he said as if it had not been ten years since we spoke.

Adam, he said as if we could just…pick up where we left off. Best mates, lovers, the moon and his tides.

Of everything that had happened to me in the past two weeks, the threats of blackmail, the leak to the press about my sexuality, the offers falling through and execs not returning my calls, somehow this was the worst.

To be faced with the only thing you’d truly ever wanted and fucked up too badly to ever be worthy of having.

“Sebastian,” I said, like an echo, like I didn’t have a choice but to respond to the sound of my name in his mouth with his in mine.

A small, crooked smile bloomed across his face.

Jesus Christ, he was gorgeous. So much more so than he’d even been at eighteen. A decade of living had hardened his exquisitely carved bone structure, packing more muscle onto that tall, broad-shouldered frame so his hips seemed even narrower and his legs endless in their tailored black denim. That boyish charm had rubbed away to reveal a wicked magnetism that was honestly arresting.

I knew because staring at him, my heart stopped beating.

He didn’t mock me for my long silence or bewilderment. If anything, he seemed to take advantage, his own gaze—those searing tiger yellow eyes—scouring every inch of my sweaty, naked chest and my bare legs beneath the athletic shorts I worelow on my hips. When his stare found mine again, his lips ticked up even higher.

“You have silver,” he murmured, his accent just as thick, and God, I was grateful because nothing about that voice should ever change. He reached forward for a moment as if he was going to touch me, and the thought sent electricity coursing through me so hard I jerked, as if flinching away from him. His hand snapped back against his chest as if I’d hit him before slowly raising to touch above his own ear. “Just here. It’s handsome.”

I swallowed the sob that rose in my throat, and when that didn’t work, I swallowed again, so hard I almost choked.

We hadn’t spoken in ten years, and he tells me I’m handsome, I thought fuzzily.

It hurt, God, it hurt to know he was still so beautifully honest and unfiltered.

“Are you going to invite me in?” he asked with that same crooked smile, rocking back on his heels with his hands in his pockets.

He seemed almost bashful, which was hard to reconcile with the scenario I had created in my head over the years. I always imagined if we saw each other again in a real way, alone with privacy, that Sebastian would rail at me, shouting and condemning me, rightly so, for the coward I had been back then.

How could you ruin both our lives?he would say.

I don’t know,I would answer,but I’ve regretted it every day since even though I don’t know what other option there could have been.

It was a self-serving fantasy, anyway. I felt he deserved to be at least half as angry with me as I was with myself, and in saying something like that, it might mean he still wasn’t over it.

Me.

That there was, in some fucked-up way, hope for us yet even after so many hurts and years later.

Without saying a word, because I didn’t know what the fuck to say, I stepped aside to let him into my house.

He stepped inside, immediately looking around and issuing a low whistle of approval at the view, which extended directly to the back wall of windows, offering a glimpse of the green cliff and the sun over the Pacific Ocean. It was setting, spilling thick, syrupy light into the house and over Sebastian, so he looked gilded. His eyes were pure, precious metal when they met mine.

“I like your house,” he said.