Page 25 of The Sun & Her Burn

My breath caught.

Of course, he had.

It wasn’t exactly low profile, though it hadn’t yet exploded the way it had the potential to. Oscar would not make good on his threat to expose me until I had what he termed “adequate time” to fulfill his list of demands.

“I hate this for you,” Sebastian continued, his voice low and intimate, the way he once spoke to me in the late hours after making love when Savannah lay already asleep between us. “I hated it then, and I hate that it is happening again now.”

“Yes, well.” I cleared my throat. “Obviously, I do, too.”

“I’m sure you have a whole team on it.”

I did. Chaucer had reached out to Mi Cha Lee, the best crisis PR manager in the business, and my agent, Rachel Hoffman,was an absolute gladiator who would go to war before she let blackmail tank my career.

“But I figured,” he continued, “maybe you could use a friend who could understand a little of what you’re going through.”

The words pierced me through the tenderest points of my flesh.

“Pardon?” I breathed, gutted by his kindness.

He shrugged one broad shoulder. “I thought you could use a friend.”

My fingers flexed against the marble countertop.

God, I couldn’t remember the last time someone had made me such a genuine offer.

It would have been irresistible to a saint.

And I was no saint.

“You know,” I said gruffly. “I can’t quite remember the last time someone called themselves my friend.”

Sebastian’s nervous sobriety cracked as his mouth ticked up. “It’s hard to make friends, Adam, when you do not let anyone close.”

“It’s been ten years since we last spoke,” I said mildly. “Perhaps I’ve changed.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Well then, where are your friends in your hour of need?”

His gaze was intensely gold in the honeyed light spilling in through the window. It hurt to look at him the same way it hurt to stare at the sun.

I wrenched my gaze away to look out the window.

“Chaucer is here, somewhere,” I said quietly, an admission.

She was my constant, the silver lining in my split with Savannah. My ex-wife acquired most of our social circle in London, our house in the Pacific Palisades, and the country home I’d hated in Yorkshire, but I retained Chaucer. Her keen mind and unwavering loyalty had seen me through my years ofexcess and sorrow. Without her, I would probably have killed myself a long time ago.

But Sebastian was right. Other than her, I only had Arthur and Alasdair, the princes of England, and Iker Ferrera, Europe’s beloved soccer star, all of whom could not just fly to California on a whim because I was about to be outed to the press.

“You were always good at evasion,” Sebastian murmured before taking a sip of water, his mouth molding around the can. “But I must know if you need my friendship or if it is like…before.”

The word echoed in my mind.

Before. Before. Before.

Before when I slaughtered his dream of that impossible universe where we might have ended up together.

Before when I unceremoniously banished him from my home.

“You don’t need to be caught up in my shitestorm, Sebastian. You’ve done well for yourself.”