Page 41 of Contested

Sebastian sighed, bringing his hands back to the table and running his fingers along the fine cracks in the wood. Stella’s had the kind of tables that looked deliberately old even though half the damage was probably real. He followed one crack with his thumbnail until it disappeared beneath the edge of his mug.

Loren watched him do it. “Look,” she started, reaching her hand across to rest on Sebastian’s. “I know you haven’t forgiven them fully. Or want to get close to them again. But I have. And I am. And I don’t want to lose them.” She paused. “And sometimes I just want to talk to my fucking brother.”

Her hand was warm over his.

Sebastian stared at it, his heart slamming harder in his chest. He nodded. “Yeah. I know. I… I get that.”

“Honestly,” she added with a shake of her head, “none of this lying bullshit you do.”

He glanced up from their hands.

There was too much sitting behind his teeth, wanting to come out. Too much truth he had already hidden behind so many lies.

None of it came out.

Loren’s thumb shifted once over his knuckle, small enough that he could have pretended not to notice.

Sebastian swallowed. “Okay. Yeah. I can do that.”

He didn’t know if that was a lie. He didn’t want it to be. But for now, he was hoping it was enough.

|| Chapter Ten ||

Sebastian – “I’m always in a good mood”

“So, you’re in a better mood today?” Randal asked, his palms pressed firmly on Sebastian’s boots.

They were on the field at the Mustangs club, bodies spread across the grass around them. Some jogged along the boundary line, others stretched in loose groups, and a few had joined Randal and Sebastian in doing a light bodyweight workout before Jacob started the actual session. Conversations carried across the oval in pieces, broken by breath, boots, and the occasional thud of a football being handballed between players.

It was midday. The high sun had already made the ground too warm, and Sebastian could feel heat gathering under his shirt, sticking between his shoulder blades and along the back of his neck. He had barely been out here long enough for it to annoy him properly, which meant the day was already going badly.

His mind was still back at Stella’s with Loren. Still caught on his father’s surgery and the way Loren’s hand had sat over his in the café. Still tangled somewhere around Felicity’s name being dragged back up after he had spent every month after the move making sure it stayed where he could ignore it.

And, underneath that, fighting for its way to the centre of everything, there was Marcos.

So, no, he wasn’t in a better mood.

“I’m always in a good mood,” Sebastian lied in between situps, twisting his body as he reached his knees, then bringing it back to the ground.

“Really?” Randal questioned, scanning the field. “Fuck. Remind me not to be around you when you aren’t then.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“I was at the goal posts and still saw you.” Randal chuckled. “Looked like one of those cartoon characters with the steam coming out of your ears.”

Sebastian forced himself to smile as he focused on what his body was doing. He rose, twisted left, lowered himself back to the grass, then rose again and twisted right. His core burned as he flexed and controlled each movement, which was at least something he understood. Pain that belonged to effort. Muscles doing what they were told.

The thought that people had seen him act the way he had sat uncomfortably under his skin.

Of course, most of them had seen him aggressive before. They had played against him when he was at the Rams. Some of them had probably worn the edge of him in tackles, bumps, late pressure, and the kind of contact that sat right on the edge of being called illegal, but never called. That was football. Anger was allowed if it stayed useful. Aggression was praised if it ended in a clearance, a mark, or a goal.

This had been different.

This wasn’t an unfair call made by the umpire, or a sharp elbow into his ribs that had set it off. It wasn’t something that could be clipped and turned into a hard-player highlight with some stupid caption about passion. It was Sebastian being too inside his own head and giving in to his own frustration before he had stopped to check whether the world was actually how he thought it was.

At the time, he had been right to be angry.

At the time, it had felt clear.