Page 68 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

SEBASTIAN

“ Y ou love them.”

I yanked my gaze away from the future Mr. and Mrs. Meyers holding court over at their table on the other side of the room to look at my sister Giselle.

She looked positively gorgeous in a midnight-blue dress that made her grey eyes look like silver dollars and emphasized the unique shade of her dark red hair. I felt a pang for not giving her my full attention this evening, but it couldn’t be helped.

Adam and Linnea were getting married.

And even though Adam had made me a part of the planning, of the moment by asking me to pick out the engagement ring for her, I felt surprisingly hollow sitting across the theatre from them.

I was so distracted by my melancholy that it took me a moment to process her comment.

‘Giselle,” I said on a quiet hiss. “We are surrounded by gossips, be careful what you say.”

“Okay,” she said, but her mouth curled into a sad little smile. “You don’t have to say it, but I can see it plain as day.”

I scoffed but didn’t try to refute it.

I was shocked the entire room couldn’t see the love shining from my eyes every time I looked over at the golden-haired couple who had stolen my heart.

“What happened to Savannah?” she asked quietly.

I sighed. “I do not know if I have the kind of heart that can ever stop loving someone once that love is given freely. Part of me will always love her, but she doesn’t feel the same way.

As I was waiting, two people came along and made it clear that I was waiting out of habit.

That if I just turned my head away from Savvy, I might find something better. ”

Giselle hummed, trailing her fingers over the stem of her wineglass. “I don’t know Savannah well enough to speak much on her feelings. Though, over the years, it’s become obvious to all of us that she loves you in her own way. But maybe this is better…can they love you where she couldn’t?”

Absently, I rubbed a hand against my aching breastbone. “As much as they’re able, maybe, given the circumstances.”

“Is that enough for you?” my sister asked, because she had known me my whole life and understood better than most what a voracious heart I harbored.

“I don’t know,” I murmured, shocked to admit it even to myself. “I hope so.”

Giselle leaned into my side, her familiar lavender scent washing over me like a cleansing balm. “The Lombardis have never chosen the easy path to life, but as someone who has made it out the other side to the happily ever after, I can promise you, the struggle is worth the reward.”

I caught the bright edge of Linnea’s laugh over the crush of ambient noise and followed it to the source, seeing her with her head thrown back, Adam’s arm around her waist so snugly, she seemed bound to him.

My throat ached with the need to be with them.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” I asked Giselle, taking advantage of one of the commercial breaks to go to the bathroom for a moment of much-needed solitude.

I only offered up nods and smiles to my friends and acquaintances as I weaved through the tables to the back of the room and waited for security to open the doors for me.

The hallway and restroom were mostly empty this close to the end of a commercial break.

If I did not hurry, I would have to wait for the next one to be let back into the ceremony.

“ Meno male ,” I said, thanking God for the quiet.

I braced my hands on the sink basin and breathed deeply for a few beats before running my hands under cold water and pressing them to my cheeks.

Could I live in the shadows forever, loving Linnea and Adam from a distance in public and carefully, always carefully, in private?

What of my own dreams of marriage and children?

Unbidden, images of a small daughter with Linnea’s Italian plum-purple eyes and my dark hair running with a little boy with Adam’s green gaze and dimpled chin flashed through my mind’s eye.

My gut cramped with longing.

Yes, I thought, as I stared down at Adam’s grandfather’s watch, as I looked at the kiss stain I’d been questioned about ad nauseum by reporters tonight, I could endure anything if it meant those quiet moments of loving them both.

I’d been born and raised both a lover and a fighter because I had been taught if you were not willing to fight for love then it wasn’t real.

And I was willing to do anything to protect Adam and Linnea, even if it meant living half a lie.

Resolved and eager to end this interminable evening, I twisted to leave the restroom and go back to the ceremony.

Only to find someone leaning in the doorway with their arms crossed.

I hadn’t seen Oscar Hampton in ten years, and even then, it was only once, at Pinewood Studios, when he had warned me off Adam and Savannah.

Still, I would never forget his narrow, almost pretty features and the slim, elegant lines of his body. Once, I had been jealous of him, of how he seemed to be Adam’s type.

I now had the evidence inside my sore ass that I was more to his taste than any other man before or since I’d entered his life.

“Well, if it isn’t Sebastian Lombardi,” Oscar drawled in his posh British accent that was somehow grating where Adam’s was lyrical. “You’ve come a long way since being the lowly chauffeur. That’s what working on your back will get you, I guess.”

“I suppose you should know,” I retorted, crossing my arms over my chest as anger sank sharp teeth into my spine. “I do not think you want to be caught alone with me, Oscar. I have never thought of myself as a violent man, but that was before I knew that you were holding Adam over a barrel.”

“I wondered if you were sleeping with him again,” Oscar continued as if I hadn’t spoken, a smug aura about him as if he knew something I didn’t. Foreboding tasted metallic on the back of my tongue. “Tell me, does he still fuck like a dream?”

“ Vaffanculo ,” I cursed him in Italian. “Watch your fucking mouth before I break it.”

“Oh, Mr. Tough Italian Guy,” Oscar mock shivered. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve heard the rumors about your sister, Elena’s husband, and his father, Amadeo Salvatore.”

“Be very careful when you speak about my family,” I warned him, eyeing the cameras in the corners of the room.

If I hit him first, he could press charges. I needed to keep my cool even though my Latin blood boiled me from the inside out. For the first time in my life, I thought I might have the capacity to kill a man.

“It is you who should be careful with me,” Oscar corrected, putting his hands in his pockets as he shoved off the wall and strolled toward me. “I am the one holding the stick of dynamite, after all.”

“You can speak to the press all you want about Adam’s sexuality, but it’s your word against his. You might make a few headlines, but now that his romance with Linnea is the talk of the town, I doubt any of your accusations will have a lasting impact.”

Bitter fury flashed across his face, and I wondered that anyone could ever find him good looking with such an ugly heart.

“If only it was conjecture,” Oscar sighed. “Alas, I have irrefutable proof.” He paused to let that sink in and then leaned closer with a wicked grin. “Would you like to see it?”

“A selfie in the back of the Rolls-Royce hardly counts as evidence,” I told him coldly.

“Too true,” he agreed easily, fishing his phone from his pocket and fiddling with it for a moment before he raised the screen to me. “But I think this does, don’t you?”

The video played without sound, but it didn’t need it to be utterly damning. Naked, Oscar sat on top of Adam who lay flat on his back in some generic hotel room with his eyes closed and his hands loosely clasped over Oscar's rolling hips.

They were fucking.

Jealousy and fury raged in my gut and for one horrifying moment, I thought I might throw up right there on the floor.

I had seen Adam in the throes of passion many times, but never like he was in the video, loose and almost sloppy in his movements, his eyes slumberous with something like sleep or drink and not bone-deep satisfaction.

“He did not consent to that,” I lashed out, grabbing the phone and throwing it to the floor where it cracked neatly in half.

Not nearly good enough, I stomped on the remaining pieces until the screen was in smithereens and the body was completely warped.

Oscar just watched me with his hands in his pockets again, head cocked. “You know, I have copies of that everywhere. You just ruined a perfectly good phone.”

“I will ruin your cazzate life,” I roared, reaching out to fist my hand in his shirt and lift him to his toes.

“You will wish you had never been born, you pathetic excuse for a man. I will throw everything in my power at you, including Dante and Amadeo Salvatore if you think you can release this to the public.”

“I’m not afraid of you. You are not the only one with powerful friends,” Oscar said, meeting my eyes for a moment before darting away at the no doubt feral look in mine. “And you don’t have to be afraid of me releasing this film if you do exactly as I say.”

My fingers were numb with the strain of holding him aloft so I dropped him to his feet and snarled into his face, “I’m not doing a fucking thing for you.”

“Oh, I think you will,” he disagreed with a meek little shrug, opening his palms as if he couldn’t help but be a porca puttana .

“If you don’t, I’ll send this little video teaser to all the major outlets and upload the full things to Porn Central.

Hey, maybe having a sex tape will do his career good?

It worked for Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. ”

“Fuck you,” I said, spitting at his feet.

“Oh that’s right.” He snapped his fingers. “This proves Adam is gay , not a good look for Hollywood’s leading man and the next in line to play the famous womanizer Anton Daventry, is it? I remember Adam telling me all about his dreams of one day donning the famous tuxedo as Daventry.”

“Why are you doing this?” I had to ask. “Did he hurt you so badly?”

Oscar waved the words out of the air. “Yes and no. I thought I loved them both, but I realized they were just using me. Why shouldn’t I use them, too?”

“That’s psychopathic,” I accused, shocked that there were people like this in the world. “You would ruin his career for that?”

“I would do it for pleasure,” he said with bared teeth. “But money’s better.”

“What do you want?” I gritted between my teeth.

“Twenty million dollars,” he said, as if asking for spare change to buy a coffee.

“You think I have twenty million dollars?” I asked, incredulous.

I had been a movie star for a decade and I made that much on Waking Nightmare , but I had also spent the first five years of my career setting my family up with houses, cars, and careers. I had savings, but not as much as one might think.

“Nice try, hotshot. I know you made ten mil on Waking Nightmare and twenty on Black On . You can afford me.”

“This is fucking extortion,” I ground out. “What makes you think I’d pay your hush money?”

“You love him,” he said simply. “You always have, I think. It’s disgustingly obvious. And I have it on good authority that you’d do anything for the ones you love.”

My pulse pounded so hard against my ribcage I thought I heard the crack of bone breaking under the pressure.

“If I do this, you’ll delete the video,” I said.

“Oh, I think I’ll keep a copy just in case, but I’ll sign something promising never to release it,” he promised, and at my skeptical look, he laughed. “You can have your lawyer draw something up, and I’ll sign it in blood. Just get me the twenty million dollars.”

A muscle spasmed in my jaw as I ground my teeth together. I couldn’t think of a way out of this other than to do what the sniveling little weasel wanted. And if I could shield Adam from this, I would take any chance at that, even if it meant keeping a sordid, awful secret from him forever.

“Fine,” I grunted. “I’ll have my lawyer draw something up.”

“Excellent,” he crowed, clapping his hands.

Behind him, someone knocked at the door, and I realized Oscar had locked it behind me.

“Just one more thing,” he singsonged. “And you have to understand, this is a pivotal part of the deal.”

“What?” I bit off like a curse.

Oscar rolled to his tiptoes to smile in my face. “You break up with Adam and Linnea.”