Ruined (Barnes Brothers #4)(4)

“I’m doing okay.” She shrugged nervously and looked away. “I’m . . . Uh, well, Hanson and I are over. I left him a few months ago.”

Sebastien lowered his glass without taking a drink.

“Oh?” he said. The calm note in his voice surprised the hell out of him. “I hadn’t heard. You must have kept it quiet.”

“He’s kept it quiet. I’d shout it to the world, but . . . Well, it’s not the wisest thing to piss off one of the biggest men in the business, is it?” She managed a weak smile. “It’s been over for a while, really. It just took me a while to realize it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Now her gold eyes flew to his and the innocent girl seemed to disappear, replaced by a woman who was ageless. Head cocked, she asked, “Are you? Why?”

“You were happy with him.” He shrugged. “I wanted you to be happy.”

She laughed and the sound was so bitter, it hurt him to hear it. “Then it’s good I left, because I was never happy with him.”

Before he could respond, the server approached.

***

“It was good seeing you again.”

Covering her hand with his, Sebastien looked down at Monica and smiled. “It was,” he agreed.

He’d thought about seeing her again a hundred times.

A thousand.

Each time, he’d imagined what he’d do, what he’d say. He’d tell her that she’d made the wrong choice—and she had—that she’d given up the guy who’d loved her—and she had.

But now, all of that seemed empty. Petty.

Pointless.

As they stood under the awning of the restaurant, she leaned against him.

He saw the yearning on her face. Something tugged in his heart, but again, his mind drifted back to Marin.

Reaching up, he brushed Monica’s hair back from her face. “It took me a long time to get over you,” he murmured.

Something flitted across Monica’s features. A smile wobbled on her lips. “And did you? Get over me, I mean?”

A commotion rose behind them, but he ignored it, trying to find the right words to tell her what he needed to tell her—without hurting her. “You were the first woman I’d ever loved, Monica. You know that—”

Somebody screamed.

Sebastien turned and saw him coming with something glinting in his hand.

Without thinking, Sebastien grabbed Monica.





Chapter Two




“Sebastien!”

He heard her calling him.

Her voice was desperate and demanding.

But it was too dark.

Pain clawed at him, all but ripped him open when he tried to twist away from it.

“Be still.”

Marin?

He tried to say her name, but couldn’t.

A hand touched his, and he went still.

Was that Marin?

“You need to be still, Seb,” she said.

It was . . .

Still.

That . . . That sounded good.

He stopped trying to escape whatever monster was eating at him and to his surprise, the pain eased.

He wanted to ask what had happened, what was wrong. But he couldn’t open his eyes and before he even realized it, he was sliding back down into unconsciousness.

***

Marin had been settling down with a book when the news had come on.

Somebody had caught the entire nightmare on his phone and uploaded it onto Youtube, so now the entire world knew—and had seen the entire bloody attack. Had seen Sebastien as he was roughly shoved away from the woman he’d been talking to, had seen as he fought to keep her behind him.

The woman was quickly identified as Monica Duprè.

Marin’s heart ached as she thought about what had happened after.

Sebastien was going to be devastated. Hell, she was devastated and she didn’t even . . .

“Stop,” she whispered to herself, even as those awful moments played out in her mind over and over.

The knife slashing out, blood blooming . . .

Sebastien fighting like a man possessed, first to get Monica away, then to disarm the man she’d chosen over him.

Hanson Smith had looked more like a monster than a man, splattered in blood, his lips peeled back from his teeth as he went for Sebastien. They had looked like two behemoths out there: Smith a little over six foot five, bigger than even Sebastien and armed with a knife. But Sebastien had trapped the weapon hand and started to drive a series of hard blows to the man’s ribs, looking even more powerful than some of the heroes he’d played.

The video feed had gotten shaky and out of focus then, and what she saw next was Sebastien on the ground, rolling away and leaping to his feet. His face was a mask of blood, but that hadn’t stopped him from ramming into Smith.

Smith might have been in his fifties, but he was in prime condition. People called him Mount Hanson behind his back, and not just because he was a formidable man to deal with. If Smith hadn’t been able to hold on to the blade, it would have ended much, much sooner. But he’d kept the weapon.

It seemed to go into Sebastien like butter.

Marin closed her eyes, the memories flickering through her mind in an endless reel, no matter what.

She hadn’t been able to watch anything else after that—just seeing Sebastien stabbed had almost made her pass out. But then she’d had to hear the media recount every last gory detail.