Page 75 of My Dark Prince
He pierced me with a gaze of his own. “I’m not your boyfriend, Briar. You can’t strongarm me into talking.”
Another migraine drilled its way into my brain. With it, came a memory.
Of me, outside this very mansion, standing at the gate, shaking it desperately. It was pouring rain. I was young. Angry.Hungry.
My clothes clung to my body like leeches. Sobs tore out of my mouth as I sank to my knees.
Mud caked my shins. I shivered from the cold, begging for Oliver to open the gates.
He didn’t.
I knew that he was home, but he didn’t.
Why had he been so cruel? So horrible to me? What had I done?
Seb frowned, sizing me up. “You doing okay?”
I hadn’t even realized that I’d begun clutching my head, hyperventilating. This was a memory, not a nightmare. Something tangible that had happened in the past. The scent of wet metal seared in my nostrils, the cold from my soggy clothes deep in my bones.
“Did Oliver kick me out of the house at some point?”
Seb’s face couldn’t hold an expression other than a scowl, but it seemed to smooth over in surprise. “What do you mean?”
I pointed at the door. “I just had a flashback of me outside these gates, begging to be let in.”
Sebastian’s gaze darkened. “This is Oliver’s story to tell.”
“But I—”
“Boundaries,” he cut me off. “Respect them, or next time, I won’t let you in.”
My eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Bold of you to assume I’d want your company.”
“Considering Ollie is my main intellectual competition, and he is always a fart away from a poop joke, I think it is safe to say you’ll be visiting here often.”
I was desperate for the truth, but I also didn’t want to make this moment about me when Sebastian seemed to be having his own breakthrough. I had to delay my revelation.
“So …” I hopped on his dresser, forcing him – and myself – to look at his face. To get used to it. “What do you do here all day?”
“Workout. Cook. Row.” He shrugged, glancing at everything other than me. “I’m doing remote studies at whatever online program that’ll take me. I’m on my fourth degree now.”
“Holy shit. What are you studying?”
“Business management at Cambridge and Northwestern, psychology at Johns Hopkins, and right now, cyber security at Georgia Tech.”
“You’ve always been so smart.”
“Intelligence means jack shit if you don’t know how to use it.”
“And Oliver is your only companion?”
Sebastian scratched his left cheek, or whatever was left of it. “Pretty much. Though there are entire days we don’t see each other. Contrary to general belief, he does work. Quite hard, too. Other days, I’m not in the mood to be social. We see each other about one or two times a week.”
Sebastian was basically a hermit. This man had once been the most sought-after teenager in the whole Western world. He’d datedactualprincesses. He was a Junior Olympic rower. He even did a TED talk.
“What do people say about your disappearance?” I remembered the bullshit story about backpacking, but surely, no one bought it. “They must be asking questions.”
“They think I went to live in India. To meditate after a mental breakdown.” A bitter chuckle rattled his chest. “Highly effective lie. Believable, too. Think about it. After years of pressure from being a competitive athlete and a gifted student, I decided I wanted out of the rat race. So, I escaped to paradise. Radhanagar Beach.”
