Reckless In Love (The Maverick Billionaires #2)(19)
But for the first time in his life, he knew he couldn’t do that. Because Charlie already mattered. Mattered a hell of a lot. Which meant he needed to figure her out first. Needed to be sure that they were the right fit in every way, rather than merely in bed, where he already sensed no one would ever fit him better.
“So?” She shifted to look at him. “What did you think?”
“It had a lot more screaming than I thought it would.” The way she’d spoken of the show had been so upbeat. “And it seemed like no matter how good a plan people made, things went wrong anyway. I kept looking for the happy ending.”
“The happy ending is right there in front of you,” she told him, her body swaying slightly as she leaned in to make her point. She was so warm, so sensual, that his blood heated even as he warned himself to cool it. “The screaming woman ended up figuring out her life and they all triumphed in the end.”
Sebastian was amazed that Charlie saw positive messages in a plan gone totally wrong. Ever since his parents had gone completely off the rails, he’d spent the past two decades on constant alert for the ways things could go wrong. Then he devised the right fix before everything got sucked down the tubes. He was always moving, planning, doing, acting—and encouraging others to do the same. But Charlie soothed something inside him with her unselfconscious laughter and relaxed sensuality. She inspired him too, with the way she approached her art so openly. So freely. Plus, she felt absolutely perfect against him.
“What were your favorite shows when you were a kid?”
In an instant, he went completely still inside, the relaxed feeling gone as if it had never been there at all. Sebastian didn’t hide his history from people, but he’d learned how to talk about his childhood on stage and in interviews without getting upset about it. He used his past as an example, treating his story as an object lesson in his talks: You didn’t have to be controlled by your past, but you did need to make sure you learned from it so that you wouldn’t end up repeating those mistakes.
But he knew he couldn’t do that with Charlie tonight. Not if he wanted her to know more about him than the billionaire fa?ade right there on the surface.
“Are you okay, Sebastian?” she said softly, breaking through the fog he’d let descend around them.
He stroked her cheek, her soft, warm skin helping to bring him back to her. “Just thinking.”
Thinking about how he hadn’t watched TV as a kid because he’d been too busy looking after his parents. As far back as he could remember, they’d drunk too much and partied too hard. When they were drinking, they’d had huge fights, but they’d never hit each other or him. Mostly they’d just loved to party, staying out till all hours of the night until their bodies gave out, forcing them home to pass out in their bed. Or as close to their bed as they could manage. Once his mother had recovered from their latest binge, she’d always promised they’d change their ways. But then his father would reel her into another drink, another party, another great night out.
Until the day things went from great to deadly in the span of a heartbeat.
Sebastian had learned that you could love someone with all your heart and still be the worst thing for them. Like his dad had been for his mom. Each other’s worst enemies. It was a lesson he’d never let himself forget—just how much love could hurt and how toxic it could be when two people were a bad fit for each other.
Finally, he told her, “I didn’t watch much TV. I grew up in a seedy neighborhood of Chicago and my parents were alcoholics. TV wasn’t a priority.” Keeping them alive was. Until he couldn’t even manage to do that anymore.
Her lips parted, then her gaze moved over his face like a caress. When she put her hand on his arm, her heat highlighted his cold skin and how easily she warmed him up again. “That must have been tough. That’s why your friends mean so much to you, isn’t it? Because they were there for you when you needed them?”
He not only appreciated her questions—none of the women he’d dated had wanted to know more about his past than they could read in an interview or hear him speak about from the stage—but how matter-of-fact she was about it. Concern without pity. Strength and support without anyone being considered weak.
Charlie Ballard was an extraordinary woman. So extraordinary that he understood less now than ever about what could possibly be holding her back from the glittering success she deserved. With her heat seeping into his bones, his marrow, his heart, he silently vowed to give her the world. Whether she was ready for it or not.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The words had rolled off Sebastian’s tongue as if they were no big deal. I grew up in a seedy neighborhood of Chicago and my parents were alcoholics.
Maybe most people let him get away with that because they were so wowed or intimidated by the billionaire with the entire world at his feet. But the pain she’d heard—the pain he’d clearly been working so hard to hide—made Charlie desperately want to reach out to him, to help him in any way she could. Even if it was just by listening, she hoped he’d know he wasn’t alone.
“You’re right. If my friends hadn’t been there...” There was little inflection in his voice, but from the way he played with the ends of her hair, curling it around his fingers in a repeated loop, she knew that what he was saying bothered him. “My parents were big partiers. My mom might have been able to make it on her own. But my father was always about the next party. Until he burned them both out.”