Chapter 83 Chapter Eighty-three
Lena’s POV
Avery’s question doesn’t leave me.
It lingers in the quiet the way smoke does after a fire—thin, invisible, but choking if I breathe too deeply.
What happens when Wes finds out?
She didn’t mean it like a weapon. Avery never does. She asked the way someone asks about weather they know is coming eventually. Calm. Curious. Practical.
But the question sinks into me anyway, heavy and sharp, and it follows me from the couch to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the hallway, from the hallway into my chest where it settles and refuses to move.
I have survived danger.
Real danger.
Men watching me. Threats that slid under my skin and stayed there. Doors left open that shouldn’t have been. Phones that rang with voices that knew too much.
I survived all of that.
But honesty?
Honesty feels like a different kind of threat entirely.
I sit on the edge of the sofa, one leg tucked beneath me, the other stretched out carefully because my toe still complains if I forget myself. The apartment is quiet in that late-afternoon way—sunlight slanting through the curtains, dust floating like it has nowhere else to be. Avery has stepped out to take a call, and for the first time all day, I’m alone with my thoughts.
That’s the most dangerous place of all.
I think about Sebastian.
About the way he stood in front of me earlier, hands loose at his sides, shoulders not quite relaxed. He looks different lately. Less sharp around the edges. Like someone who has been holding their breath for too long and hasn’t figured out how to exhale yet.
He checked on me this morning. Not dramatically. Not with grand declarations or apologies he’s already given too many times.
Just quietly.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low, careful, like the answer mattered more than the question.
I told him I was fine.
It was a lie—but a soft one. The kind you tell when the truth feels too big to put down between two people who are still learning how to stand without hurting each other.
He nodded, accepting it without pushing. That’s the part that scares me. Old Sebastian would have pushed. Would have dissected my silence, demanded clarity, demanded control.
This Sebastian just watches.
That gentleness feels earned.
And fragile.
We talk for a while—about nothing important. About work he’s not supposed to be doing yet. About Avery’s terrible taste in late-night snacks. About the weather turning cooler sooner than expected. The normalcy feels surreal, like we’re borrowing it from someone else’s life.
Then, casually—too casually—he mentions Wes.
“My son’s flying back in next week,” he says, eyes flicking to me briefly before settling on the window. “He’s been restless lately. I think he needs grounding.”
The word son lands like a dropped glass inside me.
I freeze.
Not physically. Not in any way that would give me away.
Internally.
My heart stutters, then starts racing, every beat loud enough that I’m convinced he can hear it. My hands go cold. My mouth feels dry, like I’ve forgotten how to swallow.
Wes.
His name is a shadow that stretches too far back, too deep. A history I packed away carefully, convinced it belonged to a different version of me. A life before Sebastian. Before danger. Before love that feels like standing too close to the edge of something vast.
I keep my face neutral. I have years of practice at that. I nod, hum softly, like this is just another piece of information, like his son is just a name and not a living reminder of everything I haven’t said.
“That makes sense,” I manage. “Travel does that to people.”
Sebastian smiles faintly, distracted, already thinking about something else. He doesn’t notice the way my fingers curl into my palm. He doesn’t see the way guilt rushes in like a tide, cold and relentless.
I didn’t plan this.
I didn’t seek him out knowing who he was to Sebastian. I didn’t walk into this with deception in mind.
But intention doesn’t erase consequence.
And right now, I am standing in the middle of something delicate, something that could shatter if I move the wrong way.
We talk a little longer, then he leaves, saying he has a call to take. He brushes his fingers against my shoulder as he passes—a light touch, almost absentminded, but it sends a familiar ache through me anyway.
When the door closes behind him, the apartment feels emptier than it should.
I pace.
I replay Avery’s question. Sebastian’s casual mention. The way his voice softened when he said my son, like that role is the one place in his life that hasn’t been corrupted by power or fear.
I think about how that truth—my truth—would land on him.
Not just as a betrayal.
But as a collision.
Father and son. Past and present. Me standing right in the middle of it, holding a secret that doesn’t belong to me anymore but feels impossible to give away.
My phone buzzes on the table.
I jump, then exhale at myself when I see Sebastian’s name on the screen—not a call, just a notification. He must have pocket-dialed something. It disappears before I can open it.
Avery comes back in, watching me with that look she has when she knows better than to ask but wants to anyway.
“You okay?” she says.
I nod. Again.
Another soft lie.
Time stretches. Evening creeps closer. Shadows lengthen. I try to focus on mundane things—folding a blanket, straightening a stack of magazines, counting steps from the couch to the window and back again.
Then I hear his voice.
Not in the room.
On the phone.
I’m heading toward the hallway when I realize the sound is coming from the bedroom—his voice drifting through the door he left slightly ajar when he stepped in earlier to grab his jacket. He must have moved there for privacy, not knowing how thin the walls feel when you’re holding a secret.
I stop.
I shouldn’t listen.
I know that.
But my feet don’t move.
His voice is low, tense. Gone is the gentle cadence from earlier. This is the Sebastian who negotiates, who plans ten steps ahead, who carries the weight of consequences like armor.
“I understand,” he says. A pause. “No. Listen to me.”
My chest tightens.
“I’m saying if this ends badly, it can’t touch Wes”
The words hit me all at once.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just devastating.
My breath catches. My throat closes. Something sharp presses behind my ribs, like panic trying to find its way out.
He keeps talking, his voice fading as he moves farther into the room, but I don’t hear the rest.
I don’t need to.
Because now I understand exactly how high the stakes are.
And exactly where I stand.
Right between the one thing he would burn the world down to protect—
And the truth I’m still too afraid to say.
My chest tightens, the air suddenly too thin, and I press my hand against my sternum as if I can physically hold my heart still.