Darling

XVI

Sebastian

The past never leaves you. It doesn't fade, doesn't soften. It lingers in the quiet moments, in the spaces between conversations, in the hollow ache of an empty room. Sebastian had learned this long ago.

He stood in his office, looking out over the city skyline, hands clasped behind his back. The glass reflected his image—stoic, cold, untouchable. A lie he had perfected over the years.

Clementine had left for the day. He had watched her hesitate by the door, waiting, almost expecting him to say something. But he hadn't. He never did. And she had scurried away, like she always did, her small frame swallowed by the towering hallways of his building.

He exhaled slowly, fingers pressing into the polished wood of his desk.

She was becoming a problem.

Not because she was incompetent—far from it. She was meticulous, eager to please, and frustratingly naïve. It was her innocence that clawed at him. The way she looked at him like he was something more than what he was.

She didn't know better.

But the worst part? Some small, ugly part of him wanted her to keep looking at him like that.

Sebastian had never been a good man. He knew that. It wasn't self-loathing—it was fact. He had spent his life building walls so high that no one dared to climb them. Except one person had.

Eleanor.

She had been wild, volatile. A storm wrapped in silk. The only person who had ever seen him—truly seen him—and hadn't turned away. She had dragged him into her chaos, made him want things he shouldn't. And in the end, she had left him with nothing but ruin.

The memory of her still lingered, sharp as broken glass beneath his skin. Some nights, when the silence pressed in too tight, he swore he could still hear her voice.

"You like control, Sebastian. But not with me."

No, never with her. Eleanor had made sure of that.

She had been the one thing he couldn't tame. The one thing that had ever owned him. And when she was gone, she had left him in pieces.

He had sworn never again. Never to let another woman carve herself into his bones.

Then Clementine had walked into his life.

The Problem with her was that she was nothing like Eleanor.

Eleanor had been sharp edges and reckless laughter, a creature of fire and destruction. Clementine was... soft. Delicate. Her nervous hands, the way she bit her lip when she was uncertain, the way she stammered when he so much as looked at her too long.

She was utterly breakable.

And yet, she was creeping under his skin, making a home in the parts of him he had locked away.

Sebastian clenched his jaw. He had spent years perfecting the art of restraint, of control. He did not lose himself over foolish things like desire.

But Clementine tested him.

She tested him when she looked up at him with those wide, uncertain eyes. When she blushed at the smallest interaction, her innocence bleeding into every word she spoke.

She didn't belong in his world.

But that didn't stop him from wanting her in it.

And that was the real problem.

Then he remembers his brother.

Alistair had always been different from him. Seven years younger, untouched by the things Sebastian had seen. Their father had made sure of that.