Chapter 3

"I will take you home. You're badly injured."

I pushed myself up from the pavement I'd been sitting on. Everywhere in my body hurt… my ribs, my elbow, my fucking soul… and I hated that Sebastian seemed to have noticed all of it.

"What were you doing out here?" I asked. "Following me?"

"I was leaving." He shrugged. "Saw you run out like your ass was on fire. Wanted to find out what happened."

"Nothing happened."

Nothing happened. Just twenty minutes ago, I agreed to strip for money. Ten minutes ago, I found out my girlfriend had been playing me for a fool. And now I was standing on a wet street with my stepbrother, injured and bleeding, while the city went on around me like I didn't exist.

Why the fuck does my life have to be this way? Why can't it just go normal like everyone else's?

"I need to go home," I said.

"I will take you home. Just let me know the location." He nodded at his car, parked a few feet away from us but closer to the bar. The black Mercedes shone under the streetlight.

"I don't need your help, Sebastian. I can go on my own." I picked up my bag… the strap had broken in the fall, great, just fucking great… and I started limping toward where I could find a bus or a taxi. My elbow throbbed. My knee screamed. Every step was a conversation with pain.

"I'm not asking because I care about you, if that's what you think, stepbrother." His voice came from behind me. "If you collapse on the street, someone will call an ambulance, and then somehow it will come back to me being the problem when my father finds out. It's your choice to hop in." I heard his car door open. Then close.

I kept limping for another three steps. Four. Five.

Then I stopped.

What could possibly go wrong? I thought. It's just a ride. It's not like he's going to lock me in the trunk.

I turned around. Sebastian was already in the driver's seat, engine running, not even looking at me. Like he didn't give a shit whether I got in or not.

That's what made me do it. The fact that he didn't care.

I walked back to the car and got in the passenger side.

"Address," Sebastian said.

I gave it to him. He typed it into his phone and pulled away from the curb without another word.

The drive was silent. Like we were both pretending the other person didn't exist. I stared out the window and watched the city blur past. The rain had started again.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Then again. Then again.

I didn't check it. I knew who it was. Sophie, probably, is sending screenshots of people laughing at me.

Embarrassing, right?

I shoved the phone deeper into my pocket and didn't look at it again.

* * *

When we finally pulled up to my building, I almost told him to keep driving. The graffiti on the mailbox. All of it looked worse than usual, like the building itself was embarrassed to be seen by a Mercedes.

"Goodbye," I said, reaching for the door handle. "See you in school."

I didn't wait for a reply. I just got out, slung my broken bag over my shoulder, and started walking toward the entrance. My knee was really starting to hurt now. Probably twisted it when I hit the pavement.

I was halfway to the door when I heard it.

The car door is closing. Again.

I turned around.

Sebastian was getting out of the driver's side. He'd killed the engine. He was walking toward me, hands in his coat pockets, with an expression I couldn't read.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I asked.

He didn't answer. Just kept walking, past me, toward the entrance of my building. He pushed open the door.

"Your elbow is bleeding through that bandage. And you live on the third floor with no elevator." "So?"

"So I'm not going to let you fall down the stairs and die in a building that smells like piss." He jerked his head toward the stairwell. "Move. I'll walk you up."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"Then stop needing one."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him to go back to his fancy car and his fancy life and leave me alone in my shitty apartment with my shitty problems. But my knee hurt. And my elbow hurt. And I was so fucking tired of doing everything alone.

I walked past him into the stairwell.

"Second floor," I said, mostly to fill the silence. "The elevator's been broken since before I moved in."

"There's an elevator?"

"Technically."

Sebastian didn't laugh. But I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

By the time we reached the third floor, I was breathing hard and my vision was doing that thing where the edges go fuzzy. I fumbled with my keys… left, right, left, push… and the door swung open.

The studio was exactly how I'd left it. A mattress on the floor. A single plate in the sink. And everything else.

Sebastian stood in the doorway, looking inside. His face was carefully blank, but I could see him taking it all in.

"Thanks for the ride," I said. "You can go now." He didn't move.

"Sebastian. Go."

Still nothing. He just stood there in my doorway, looking at my shitty studio. His hands were still in his coat pockets. His jaw was set.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said finally.

He stepped inside without asking, as he lived here. "Where's your first aid kit?"

"I don't have one."

"Of course you don't." He sighed and started opening cabinets. The one above the sink was empty. The one below had cleaning supplies and a half-empty bottle of vodka. "This is pathetic."

"Nobody asked you to be here."

"You think I want to be here?" He found a clean-ish towel under the sink… the last one I had, actually… and ran it under the tap. "You're falling apart. You should be grateful I'm helping." "I'm not falling apart."

"Your girlfriend was on top of my best friend. Your photo is probably in fifty group chats by now." He turned off the water and walked toward me, towel in hand.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to shove him out the door and lock it and pretend this whole night never happened. But my body wasn't listening to me anymore. I just stood there, frozen, while he stopped in front of me.

"Sit the fuck down," he said.

I sat down on the mattress, because it was the only place to sit. Sebastian knelt in front of me.

Again, just like in the car.

He reached for my arm. I let him.

"You're an idiot," he said quietly, peeling back the old bandage. "You should have gone to a hospital."

"With what money?"

"With my money. I told you, the cash on the counter…"

"I didn't touch it."

He stopped. Looked up at me. His face was close. Too close. I could see the individual lashes around his eyes, the small scar on his eyebrow, and the way his mouth was slightly parted. His curly dark hair fell to his face. Now I get why girls would rush over him at the university.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because I don't want your fucking charity."

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he shook his head and went back to cleaning my elbow. The towel was warm and his fingers were gentle in a way I didn't expect from someone with hands that looked like they'd never done a day of hard work.

"You're stubborn," he said.

"So I've been told."

"It's going to get you killed."

"Maybe that's the point."

His fingers stopped moving. The towel pressed against my arm, and his other hand came up to hold my wrist.

"Don't say that," he said quietly.

"Say what?"

"Don't talk about dying like it's a fucking option."

I laughed. "You don't know anything about me, Sebastian. You don't know what it's like to wake up every day and wonder if this is it. If this is all there is. A shitty apartment and a shitty job and a girlfriend who was laughing at me behind my back for two years."

"I know more than you think."

"Then tell me." My voice came out harsher than I meant it to. "Because I don't fucking understand it."

He didn't answer. Just kept wiping the blood from my arm.

"Sebastian."

He looked up at me. His eyes were dark. Darker than I'd noticed before.

"Because I've been watching you," he said. "For months now. I know I've been a cruel stepbrother to you before and since my father got married to your mother."

"What are you saying?"

He didn't answer. He finished taping the fresh bandage over my elbow. His fingers brushed my wrist once as he pulled away, and then he stood up.

He looked down at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes that I couldn't read.

Then he walked to the door.

"Lock this behind me," he said, without turning around. "And eat something. There's money on the counter. I don't care if you want my charity or not… take it or don't. That's your problem." The door closed softly behind him.

I sat there on the mattress for a long time, staring at the place where he'd been.

For months now.

What the fuck did that mean?

What the fuck did any of it mean?