“Seb, what’s wrong?” Alarmed, she dropped the socks she was working on and leaned toward him, one hand on the ground.

“Nothing. I just...feel so fucking old.”

“Why?” she asked incredulously.

“Because I’m fucking this up. I don’t know how to date a woman in her twenties.”

“Seb.”

“I’m making you pack for me, for fuck’s sake. Like what the hell is that? And then I say the words break up and you look totally freaked out. Which is fine. Because I’ve obviously committed some sort of dating faux pas. But the problem is, I haven’t dated since my twenties, honestly. Cora and I weren’t even really dating when she got pregnant.” He lowered his voice, aware that Matty was awake and playing in his room down the hall. “We were just kind of regularly messing around. And then we were getting married. Nothing in between. And before that, there hadn’t been anyone serious in—God—years. So yeah. Basically, I haven’t done something like this,” he gestured between them, “in fifteen years, and—”

She cut him off when she crawled between his legs. He looked down at her. He was so big and she was so small that his bent legs pretty much surrounded her, and when he rested his elbows on his knees, well, she was completely inside Sebastian world.

“Seb,” she said as she leaned forward and messed with the buttons on his old blue work shirt. “I think we just freaked each other out.”

“So I did mess up with the breakup thing?”

“No.” She shook her head. “You didn’t mess up.”

His hands looped behind her as she gathered her thoughts.

“I was just surprised was all. I think because you have to be, you know, together to break up. And Evan didn’t consider us together for, I don’t know, half a year. I didn’t even know if he liked me for months after we started sleeping together and—”

The look in Seb’s eye had the words dying in Via’s mouth. He looked like he could set paper on fire with his mind.

“Seriously, if I see that kid again, I’m punching him straight in the dick.”

Via’s mouth dropped open and she threw her head back to laugh. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Cosmically, you kind of already did.”

“What?”

“I mean, I broke up with him because...” She paused. Wow. Sitting here in this warm little Sebastian cave was making her all kinds of comfortable and she was apparently just spilling all the tea. The words were tumbling right out of her.

“Because...”

The look in Seb’s eye told her he’d already guessed exactly what the because was. Via took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to skitter away from this moment. She wanted stability in her life? That meant leaning her weight against something that was strong. Things with Evan had been predictable toward the end, sure, but there’d been no substance. No strength.

“Because I realized I had feelings for you. And it wasn’t fair to him or to me to pretend like I didn’t.”