He orchestrated the destruction of my relationship with my mom, but if I’m honest with myself, wasn’t it fractured before he came into my life? Before Sebastian I was more of the parent than she was. I worried about and paid the bills, I did the grocery shopping and cooked our meals. I was the adult, while she hid from the world behind her keyboard and the worlds within her books. Sebastian might have hammered the final nail in the coffin, but I can finally admit that what happened between me and her wasn’t solely his fault.

I was numb until he brought me here and jump-started me again. Now I’m living, with a new friend and possibilities. His love is a hurricane that hurts and destroys but when you’re in the eye of the storm with him, it’s calming, peaceful and beautiful.

For the very first time, I allow myself to be honest about how I feel about him. I don’t disguise my feelings with hurt or anger, I just let them flow out and think about how I’d feel if he was gone.

“I love you too,” I blurt.

“What?” he gasps, leaning into me, crowding me, before he inhales sharply and leans back, putting space between us again.

“I’m in love with you,” I say, trying the words out on my tongue and liking the way they feel.

“No you’re not. You hate me, you should hate me.”

“I do, and you’re right I should hate you. I don’t really understand why, but I love you too, no matter how fucked up it is.”

With the words out there, I exhale and relax. Saying it out loud is like taking a weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying around off my shoulders. “I love you,” I say it again.

“You can’t love me,” he says, shrugging with that austere look he gets that makes me want to slap him.

“I can’t?” I question.

“No, you can’t. I’m an asshole, I’ve done terrible things to you, ruined your life, ruined you. You hate me, you don’t love me.”

Scoffing, I crawl across the bed and into his lap, straddling his legs until my butt is sitting on his thighs. “Sebastian,” I whisper against his lips.

“Yeah,” he gasps, his hands curled into fists at his sides as he tries to stop himself from touching me.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

The end

EPILOGUE

ONE MONTH LATER

Since the attack and me confessing my feelings for him, everything and nothing has changed between us. He insisted that I hated him and couldn’t possibly love him after everything he’d done and I agreed, then I stripped naked and convinced him that I could both love and hate him in equal measures. After that I think he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and just accept that I want him in spite of our tumultuous past.

For the first two weeks he was on his best behavior, not demanding anything from me and waiting for me to offer whatever I decided to give him, but after two weeks of taunting and torturing him, it got old and I found I actually missed his over-the-top, crazy, jealous, obsessed, stalkerish ways.