Page 6 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

“Ah,” he exclaimed, reaching over to squeeze my shoulder warmly. The touch sent sparks of electricity showering down my spine. “ Certo , this is why you are here. To pursue design!”

I winced. “Not exactly.”

Between taking care of Miranda, serving at Affaire Restaurant, and taking as many auditions as I could to supplement the rest, I did not have much time for design.

Oh, I constantly carried around my sketchbook and pens, stopping at Mulholland Overlook on the way home from work at three in the morning to take inspiration from the night lights, or dashing off a loose design at dawn before I dove into the frothing surf with my board.

But the illustrations of elaborate gowns, cocktail dresses, and lingerie I tended to gravitate towards were as useless as scattered leaves glued into the pages of a scrapbook left to decay over time.

Sebastian’s sun-gold eyes burned my skin as he studied me, but I refused to look over at him. One glance at that beautiful face filled with concern would unravel me completely, and I couldn’t afford that.

“I saw a photo of you and Savannah Richardson a while ago,” I said, cruelly turning the tables onto him once more so I wouldn’t have to talk about my pain. “I was surprised.”

“I think I am, too,” he admitted, rubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw so it rasped like sandpaper on wood. “Whenever I agree to see her. Nostalgia is a dangerous emotion.”

I hummed, reaching out without looking at him to pat his—rock hard—thigh. “Or a comforting one.”

“Yes,” he agreed, collecting my hand in his as if our friendship had always consisted of holding hands. “It is very good to see you again, trottolina .”

My hand spasmed in his at the use of the Italian nickname.

Little spinning top , it meant.

I could still remember the first time he’d called me that on our tourist date around London the night of the BAFTAs when I was just sixteen.

Even though he was only three years older than me, there had always been something powerful about Sebastian Lombardi, an intensity of purpose and purity of passion that made him seem so much older, his aura highly addictive.

That quality had only magnified itself in the intervening decade, and I found myself poorly equipped to deal with it.

We had barely started hanging out, and I was already dreading its inevitable end.

“I’m sure it is,” I teased with an impish grin that made him laugh. “I’m hard to forget.”

“Impossible,” he agreed, easily.

He was still holding my hand. In a way, I wasn’t even sure he knew he still held it, fiddling idly with my fingers.

It felt good, not just because he was ungodly levels of handsome, but because I didn’t get a lot of physical affection these days.

Miranda could be sweet and docile sometimes, but mostly, she was either paranoid and angry or lucid enough to be rude and demanding.

Even though I’d been in town for a year and a half, I hadn’t had the time to make many friends except for Rozhin, who worked with me at Affaire.

I was touch-starved and so lonely that my gut ached hollowly.

“Why do I get the sense you don’t want to tell me about your life? You have been very vague in your postcards, too,” he said quietly. “Do you think because I am famous or some cazzate that I would judge you? You are my friend, Linnea. There is nothing about you that I would not try to understand.”

“How do you always know the right thing to say?” I asked, incredulous. “You could give Ted Talks if acting doesn’t work out for you.”

His smile was indulgent because he knew I was just dragging it out, hiding behind my snark. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

I was saved by the fact that we were pulling into the parking lot by the Santa Monica Pier.

It was the closest beach to the Tower Bar, though it wasn’t my favourite.

Even on a weekday in January, it was packed with locals and tourists alike.

I grabbed a loose knit sweater from the pile of clothes in the back seat of my car to ward off the cool ocean breeze.

We were quiet as we walked down the pier to grab ice cream, but Sebastian stayed close, his shoulder brushing mine as we stepped in tandem down the wooden boards.

The ocean was so different here than back at home in Maui, less vibrant and tropical, spreading out like muted blue velvet from the caramel sand, but it still brought me untold comfort to be near the waves.

He smiled quietly to himself when I ordered bright blue Cookie Monster ice cream.

“What?” I demanded, taking a big scoop of the sweet cold dessert onto my spoon. “I thought you wouldn’t judge me for anything, hmm?”

Sebastian’s eyes crinkled with mirth, and he lifted his shoulder in a Latin shrug. “That was before I saw you get a flavor named after a blue children’s puppet. It’s not even a real flavor!”

I took another large spoonful and hummed my delight before sticking my tongue out at him. “It’s delicious. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.”

“Your tongue is blue,” he noted dryly as he accepted his own cup of chocolate and coffee ice cream.

“Don’t judge until you try it,” I tsked, waving my spoon at him in condemnation.

The motion flicked droplets of melting cream onto my cheek.

Sebastian chuckled, that belly-deep rumble that made my thighs clench, and reached over to collect the blue liquid on his thumb. I could not have looked away from that golden gaze or those full, sensual lips parting, even if a nuclear bomb went off beside us.

His mouth closed around his finger, and his throat worked as he sucked at it.

A little gasp escaped me at the sight of him.

“Not bad,” he deduced with a crooked grin. “But I will stick with cioccolato and caffè . Though American ice cream is never so good as Italian gelato .”

I blinked at him, still momentarily struck dumb by what might have been the single most erotic experience of my life thus far, and he hadn’t even touched me.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, my throat parched. “I’ve never been.”

Sebastian clucked his tongue and shook his head despairingly as he led us back down the pier. A few teenage girls noticed him and tittered behind their hands as he passed by. He flashed them a megawatt grin that would probably fuel their fantasy for years to come.

“I will take you one day,” he said conclusively as if it was that simple and obvious. “You will love it. The people, the scenery, the food . It is all a sensory delight.”

“Everything is magical to you, isn’t it?” I asked, happy to say it aloud when I’d thought it every time I received one of his postcards, filled with cramped, spikey script as if he was in a rush to communicate with me the joys of his life. “Even the bad things.”

Sebastian hummed as he sucked ice cream off his spoon, causing a passing woman’s mouth to fall open at the sight. I hid my smile behind my own spoon as we took the stairs down to the beach.

Instantly, Sebastian toed off his expensive leather shoes and dug his toes into the sand. I followed suit, the cool, dense sand like heaven against my skin after the high heels.

“Do you want the truth?” he asked as we started to walk down the beach. It was a gorgeous day, so it seemed that everyone was out on the sand.

“Of course.”

“I like the bad things just as much as the good,” he admitted, angling so that we cut down to the water and he could walk through the frothing edge of the waves. “They remind me not to take anything for granted, not even for a minute.”

“Wow, you’re scarily well-adjusted,” I muttered.

He laughed, throwing his head back to do it to the heavens. Someone sitting on the beach snapped a photo of him, but I couldn’t blame them.

He was glorious.

And I was lucky enough to count him as a friend.

“I have my burdens,” he told me with a slight shrug. “But overall, how could I not feel lucky? Even now, just at this moment, I am walking along a beautiful beach under a bright sun with one of the most beautiful and interesting women I have ever known.”

“I grew into my face a little,” I quipped, because I’d never known how to accept a compliment gracefully.

Sebastian stopped suddenly, so I mimicked him. Only then did he reach out and rub his thumb along the thick arch of my ash-brown eyebrow, shades darker than my hair.

“I think you’ve grown into yourself,” he corrected. “You don’t seem happy, exactly, but you have this light about you. Luminosità . Luminosity. I would like to get to know you better, Linnea. In person, again.”

His hand had dropped to my neck, cupping the side of my throat warmly in his big palm. My pulse was probably beating a tattoo against his skin, but I didn’t let myself be embarrassed by it.

I tipped my head back to look up into those sunlit-gold eyes and smiled more genuinely than I had in months.

“I’d like that.”

“ Bene ,” he said with a satisfied grin that edged on smug. He let his hand fall away and started walking again. “Tomorrow, you will show me where you like to surf.”

“Oh, will I?” I raised a brow at him. “I’m not sure you could keep up.”

He laughed again, and it felt like such a gift to have him here in Los Angeles with me that if I were a different kind of girl, I could have cried.

Instead, I stuck out my tongue at him and smeared the side of my melting cone against the arm of his white dress shirt as I sprinted past him.

“Prove you can keep up!” I hollered.

“You brat,” he called out from behind me.

I laughed as I surged through the edge of the ocean away from him, feeling lighter than I had in years.