OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Sebastian watched Via very carefully for signs of trauma. He was deeply grateful that the incident with the man in her office hadn’t been worse. In fact, the bruise was already completely gone from her hand.
He only saw her at softball and school, there being no particular reason to see one another extracurricularly.
November waltzed in in that stiff-wind, fall-downpour, golden-leaves-at-every-turn sort of way. And then dumped eleven inches of snow on the city.
Welcome to winter, mofos.
Just when you thought New York would let you dip a toe into anything. Nope.
Seb was embarrassed at how cute he found Via’s winter coat. Especially the fact that she was wearing it in the middle of a staff meeting. She was so put together and stylish, he’d figured her for a peacoat kind of gal. But there she was, zipped to the chin in a puffy REI coat he was pretty sure was only used for subzero winter sports.
“Don’t say a word,” she growled as she plunked down into the chair next to him. “Hi, Shell. Hi, Grace.” She accepted the gum he automatically handed around and lifted an eyebrow.
“You said not to say a word.” He grinned and lifted his hands in an I’m unarmed type of gesture. “It’s not my business if you have to wear a polar bear parka when it’s forty-two degrees outside.”
“First of all, that’s saying a word. Second of all, the temp dropped to thirty-nine and there’s a foot and a half of snow on the ground!”
Seb swallowed his smile down. “There was a whopping seven inches that’s been reduced to a measly four in the sun. Matty didn’t even wear mittens today!”
“That child is insane. And this school is insane. Can’t the city of New York afford heating in its public schools?”
“Oh, we’ve got heat,” Grace assured her as she turned around in her chair. “It’s just not evenly distributed. Trust me. Come on down to my classroom and bring your Hawaiian shirt and a piña colada.”
“It’s true,” Shelly admitted. “But the woman who had your office used to complain, too, Via. Maybe your heating is broken.”
“I’ll come take a look after the meeting,” Seb said.
Via furrowed her brow. “You think you can fix the heating in a ninety-year-old building?”
He shrugged. “Not sure until I see it. But I’m pretty handy.”
Seb turned to her, and his breath caught in his throat. Was she...? Yeah. Yup. Yes. She was side-eyeing his hands and blushing. Straight-up blushing.
Via quickly turned away and shuffled through her messenger bag. But when she straightened up a minute later, not having removed a dang thing, Seb was fairly certain she was just attempting to look busy while she got her blush under control. Interesting. Very interesting.
Grim chimed the staff meeting to order, and Sebastian struggled to pay attention to a single word that was said.
It was either his imagination, or Via was especially wiggly today. Usually, she sat completely still, the picture of stoicism. But today she crossed one leg over the other and then switched back. Every time her weight shifted, her shoulder knocked into Seb’s. Frankly, he wasn’t even positive that she could feel it under all that coat, but every touch was kicking his heart into his ribs like the smash of a piñata at a children’s birthday party. Her hands were jumpy, too. She touched her hair, the back of her neck, her fingers dancing over the knee of one leg, tracing the herringbone pattern.
He had no idea what was going on with her, but frankly, wiggly Via was apparently a turn-on for Seb, and he didn’t need to be popping wood in the middle of a staff meeting.
“Are you hot?” he leaned over and whispered. He’d miscalculated the distance and he felt the light, fragrant brush of her hair over his lips. Whoops.
“What?” she asked him, her mouth dropping open and a half-scandalized expression blooming on her face. Half-scandalized and half...something else. The reality of the situation hit Sebastian like a sack full of baseballs to the face. Oh. She thought he meant a different kind of hot. An inappropriate kind of hot. To Seb’s thinking, there was only one reason that her mind would have taken her there so quickly.
Because she was hot. The inappropriate kind.
Extremely, painfully aware of their surroundings, Seb attempted to defuse the situation. “Your coat. You’re acting like you’re overheating.”
“Oh.” A flush crept up her cheeks and her eyes were just a little unfocused.
Hold the phone. Had she just looked at his mouth?
“Right. Yeah. You’re right,” she muttered.
She quickly unzipped her coat and let it loll off the back of her chair. Seb immediately, deeply, regretted prompting her to remove it because her warmed scent lifted off her skin and into the air. She smelled herby and sweet at the same time. Had he ever really noticed that before? Like rosemary mixed with almond. And maybe, yeah, just the sexiest little touch of girl-sweat in there, too.
Christ. He needed to scream into a pillow. Preferably Via’s pillow. That smelled exactly like her. Did he say scream? He meant huff into it while he dreamed of every dirty-sexy sex position on the planet.
Was this the longest staff meeting in the history of all time or was it just him? He shifted his hips in his chair and glared at the clock on the wall. Good God, they were only fifteen minutes in. He didn’t know what the hell was going on with Via, but he didn’t know how much more of this superheated charge he could endure.
She seemed horny.
Fuck. He realized what it was. Evan, the dumbass-shiniest-hair-having, luckiest-SOB-in-all-of-history, was probably still upstate with his family. She probably was horny.
And Seb had to endure the sweet torture of her wiggly nearness, and then whenever she saw her boyfriend next, Evan got to reap every single benefit of a hot little Via DeRosa. Great. Just great.
He couldn’t think of a single other reason why she would be damn near combustion in the middle of a staff meeting.
Her knee started to toggle up and down, jostling his chair slightly, and Seb prayed for sanity. His hand sliced out and pressed her knee into stillness. He felt her eyes snap to the side of his face, but he didn’t look at her as he took that hand back and jammed it into his pocket. He pretended to be riveted to whatever the hell Principal Grim was yammering on about.
Finally, finally, the meeting was over, and Sebastian stood up so fast his seat scooted back a few inches. “I’m gonna run and check your heating real quick before I grab Matty from aftercare.”
“Sure,” she said faintly, looking as dazed as Seb felt. “I’ll come with.”
Seb said a few goodbyes and then they strode together toward her office. They were walking fast and far apart from one another. It felt weird. She held her coat in front of her like a Roman Catholic nun with her hands in her sleeves. That was weird, too. Seb felt very much like he was playing a game and no one had bothered to explain the rules, or even to tell him that the starting gun had gone off.
They turned in to her office, and Seb immediately got to his knees in front of her heating unit. Luckily, the ornate iron gate lifted neatly off. He started inspecting it, trying very hard to ignore her heated, glowing presence behind him.
“You, uh, got a haircut,” she said quietly.
“Oh. Yeah. Yesterday. It was time.”
“It makes your hair look darker.”
“Yeah. Both Matty and I have hair that can’t make up its mind. Dark when it’s short and blonder when it’s long or in the sun.” He attempted to twist a few knobs on the piping and realized he needed a better angle.
“It looks nice.”
“Thanks,” he grunted, lying on his back and trying like hell to twist the rust off a handle that wouldn’t budge.
“And you’re wearing a new shirt.”
She sounded nervous as hell. He glanced up at her and realized that she was standing just about as far away as the room allowed. She’d also put her coat back on and zipped it clear to her throat. “Nah. It’s an oldie. I just bring it out when the weather gets cold.”
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “Regardless, you look handsome.”
“Thanks,” he repeated, his brow furrowing. Some puzzle pieces started to click down into place, and Seb was immediately terrified that he was going to break this foggy, warm haze that had fallen over her. He moved slowly as he messed around with the pipes, unwilling to startle her.
“I thought for sure that you must have a date tonight, because you look so nice.”
Was she fishing?
“Nope.” He finally got the knob to twist and he heard the telltale hiss of hot water, unblocked and starting to fill the pipes of the heating register. He dusted off his hands and rolled up to his knees. “No date.”
Free as a bird, something inside him wanted to add. But Seb clamped down on that. He wasn’t free as a bird. He had a kid and a dog, and she was in her twenties with a boyfriend—as far as he knew. Even if she was biting her lip and looking at him like she wanted to go behind the jungle gym and kiss at recess, that still didn’t make Seb free as a bird.
“That oughta do it,” he told her, setting the iron gating back into place and putting his hands on his hips, mostly so he didn’t reach out and test the puffiness of that coat.
“Wow!” She looked surprised, like she’d barely remembered what he’d come into her office to do in the first place. “Thanks!”
“You got it. I’m gonna jet and grab Matty. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She nodded absently and moved over to her desk to gather up a few papers.
Sebastian gave her a quick wave and melted out the door of her office. He was both intensely relieved and wildly disappointed to be free of her.
SOFTBALL GOT RAINED OUT, so it wasn’t until the next staff meeting that Seb really got to see Via again. He was painfully curious if it would be back to normal, or if it would be anything like last week. Sexy, tense last week.
“I see you left your sleeping bag at home today,” Seb said, grinning at her as he slid into the seat next to her. He greeted Grace and Shelly and passed out gum.
“If you’re referring to my very fashionable winter coat—” she shot him a look “—yes, I left it at home. Some guy fixed the heating in my office.”
“Sounds like a great guy.”
“Meh, he’s fine. A little full of himself.”
They both laughed and only stopped when they found a hot pink envelope being wagged in each of their faces.
Seb saw his name scrawled carefully across the front. “What’s this?” he asked Sadie, who was the person doing the wagging.
“Open it and see!” she squealed, practically bouncing on the spot.
“You set the date!” Via said, her voice delighted. “Oh, Sade, I’m so happy for you guys.”
“It’s the weekend after next,” Sebastian said, frowning down at the invite, assuming it was a typo.
“Yup. We wanted to give people as little notice as possible. Rae’s family is huge, but they won’t all be able to make it on such a tight time frame.” She whispered the last part out of the side of her mouth.
“Wow.” Via stared down at the invite. “Okay. Cool.”
“So, please fill them out during the meeting and then hand them back to me by the end, because I don’t have the time for tardy RSVPs, ’kay?” She air-kissed and then moved on to pass the next row their invites.
Via pulled a pen from her bag and neatly wrote her name on the line. She checked fish instead of chicken and then put a 1 in the box for number of guests attending.
Seb felt the light scratch of her pen rattle him like Godzilla’s footsteps. He could almost hear the echoing reverberation of that number one rolling around his thick skull.
“Evan still upstate?” he asked, not even caring that she’d know he’d been peeking at her response card.
“Hmm?” she asked, handing the pen to him.
Seb nodded at her invitation. “Your boyfriend will still be out of town next week?”
“Oh.” She dropped her gaze immediately to the invitation, flipping the incriminating information over. “Ah. No, he’s back in Brooklyn. I heard.”
She heard. SHE HEARD.
That had to mean one thing. That could only mean one thing. Was he breathing? He commanded himself to breathe. It would be the geekiest move of all time if he passed out right now. Seb forced himself to write his name down on his invite.
“But he’s not my boyfriend anymore,” she said softly, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.
Seb felt like spiking the save-the-date in the end zone. Like tap dancing down the hallway of the school. Like tipping her back in her chair and kissing the hell out of her.
But then the look on her face at that softball game flashed through his eyes. The way she’d wiped tears with her wrist, looking so small and lonely.
He found he didn’t have to lie when he replied with, “I’m sorry, Via. Breakups are hell.”
“Yeah.” She nodded.
“How long ago?” he asked, sort of hating himself for fishing.
“Um, when I took that trip upstate last month? You remember, right after...you were sick.”
Right after he’d spilled his guts out to her. After she’d taken care of his sick ass. After she’d put Matty to bed and sat with Seb on the couch. Did the timing of it mean anything? Was it all coincidence?
He had no idea what to ask next. How to ask what he so desperately wanted to know. Was I in your heart when you left your boyfriend? “Was it messy?”
She nodded, something that looked like guilt in those brown eyes she still wouldn’t turn in his direction. “He was pretty blindsided. It took a while to convince him that I meant it.”
Seb tried to imagine what it would feel like to have Via DeRosa leave you. Suddenly, months of pent-up resentment toward this Evan kid just kind of dried up. He felt sympathy. Seb was sure she’d been sweet as pie during the breakup. And fuck if that wouldn’t have made it even worse.
“Damn.”
“Yeah. I’d never broken up with someone before,” she said, almost thoughtfully.
“Never? You’re twenty-eight years old. You must have had lots of boyfriends.”
She smiled a little. “I’ve had a few.”
Seb wanted to punch a wall, and then himself in the face for bringing up this line of conversation. He didn’t want to hear this shit.
“But they all broke up with me.”
“Not possible.” The words were out of his mouth before he could even consider not saying them. They were sharp and high resolution. The kind of words that said a million other words. He was practically telling her I wouldn’t break up with you.
She started at his tight tone, but otherwise didn’t indicate that he was being a total psycho. “No, seriously. Like clockwork. Bing, bang, boom. It was sort of weird to be the one ending it this time. But...” She shrugged. “It wasn’t fair to stay with him when—” Suddenly her eyes were on his, brown and clear and making the air crackle with static all around them. “When I wasn’t being honest with myself.”
What the fuck does that mean?
Principal Grim started the staff meeting and Sebastian swallowed down his growl of frustration. His mind was in about eight different places all at once, and he’d never in his life felt more aware of another person as he was of Via DeRosa. She crossed one leg over the other, and Seb held his breath. When she tapped her capped pen on the back of the hot pink invitation, Seb felt insane, like she was trying to tap out a message to him. And when she leaned forward to whisper something in Shelly’s ear, he caught that scent again. Almond and rosemary.
So many things hit him at once. He hadn’t realized quite how constrained he’d felt that she’d had a boyfriend. He’d convinced himself that it didn’t matter either way. But here he was, considering the fact that he could now flirt with her, guilt-free, and the idea was swelling up like a piece of ripening fruit.
She was single. She was available. She was free.
He held back a groan.
She was single and free. Which meant she was probably going to get on Tinder like everyone else her age. She was going to date and hook up and party. She was free, but that didn’t mean she was available to Seb and all the baggage that came with him.
She was in her twenties. Just like yesterday and just like tomorrow. She was single, and it changed so much.
But it didn’t change everything.
Fuck.