She opened the door, and the one person she wasn’t expecting was the very person who stood there.

He’d loosened his tie, and his hair looked like he’d run his hands through it one too many times. “Sebastian,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”

“Willa told me,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

Willa told him? She stepped back numbly and let him enter. “It happened pretty quickly.”

“This is a big step for you.”

“It should have happened a long time ago.”

He looked around, his hands in his pockets. He seemed so shut off that it made her heart ache. “I have a question,” he said. “One I can’t stop asking myself. Why did you kiss me when you’d seen me kiss another man all those years ago? Is there some twisted side to you I don’t know about, Pax? Did it turn you on?”

She was caught off guard by the question. “No,” she said, appalled. “It wasn’t like that at all.” He stared at her, and she shook her head. “God, Sebastian, people fall in love all the time. And it’s not always with the right people. And it’s not always reciprocated. I fell in love with you. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop it. But I was prepared to deal with it in silence until it went away, or at least lessened to the point where I could see you and not want you so much. That night at the pool house, I was out of control, and I hated the feeling, and then you came by because you were worried about me when no one else was. If you cared that much about me, I thought maybe I could turn it into something more. It was careless and selfish and, as I have said time and time again, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Sit down,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”

“I don’t have any chairs. And I don’t think I want to hear anything you have to say right now.”

He walked over to her and took her arm. He led her to the stairs. “Sit down and listen to me,” he said in a tone she wasn’t familiar with. He was nervous.

She slowly sat. She set her notebook and iPod next to her on the step, then folded her hands in her lap.

He stood in front of her for a moment. Then he started pacing. “I didn’t belong anywhere growing up,” he finally said. “Not at home, not at school. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time at that diner on the highway, mostly as a way to keep from going home and facing my father. One Saturday night when I was sixteen, I was sitting there in the back booth, it was probably three in the morning, when a group of teenage boys came in, asking for directions back to Asheville. They’d gotten lost coming home from some party they’d gone to in South Carolina. They were loud, flamboyant, happy, not like anyone I’d ever met before. One of them spotted me, and it was like he’d spotted a lost member of his tribe. He came back to me and started flirting. His friends joined him, and we all had coffee and laughed. A door suddenly opened for me, this door of acceptance. Hours later, they said they had to go, that their mothers were going to be mad enough as it was. But they said if I could find a way to Asheville, they hung out at Pack Square every afternoon, and if I wanted to join them, I could. Then that boy who had first come over to me, Alex, ran his hand over my hair and said, ‘Who knew something this beautiful grew way out in the backwoods?’ ” Sebastian shook his head. “I think humans are basically pack animals. And I finally found a pack. I’d never had one before.”

“Are these the same boys I saw you with at the Asheville Mall?” Paxton asked.

“Yes. And the boy you saw kiss me was Alex. It was a confusing time for me. Those were my friends. They saved me. And on some level, I loved them. I loved Alex. But the reason I became one of them is that I needed to belong somewhere and they took me in. I didn’t become one of them because I was one of them.” He gave her a look she knew meant that what he’d said was significant, but she didn’t understand.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not gay, Pax,” he said.

She felt his words burn into her skin.

“When I entered college, I started seeing a counselor who helped me work through some issues. The best, most accepting people I’ve ever known were gay. But it was a fallback position for me, and it wasn’t who I was inside. So I began to date women in college, and I even fell in love a couple of times. But it never worked out because none of them understood me—they saw me as a platonic friend, or thought they were converting me. Those were some interesting years, and not ones I would ever care to repeat. It got to the point where I was simply tired of trying to defend myself. How people choose to live their lives, and who they fall in love with, should never have to be defended. So I made the decision about five years ago to not address my sexuality in any situation anymore. And that decision made life so much easier. Until I met you.”

She stood. She wasn’t going to cry. No matter how much she wanted to. “What kind of game are you playing with me? I don’t deserve this from you, Sebastian.”

She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her by the arms and made her face him. “I’m not playing a game,” he said in short, measured words, words that dropped like falling off a cliff.

“Then why are you telling me this?”

He let his hands drop. She swayed a little. “Because I love you in a way that’s deep and raw and terrifying. And I don’t know what to do. I’ve never felt anything like what I felt when you kissed me.”

He was scared. She could see it so clearly now. “Then why did you stop it?”

He ran his hands through his hair. “Because I was still clinging to my conviction that sex only ever gets in the way of good relationships.”

She swallowed. “And now?”

“My past will always be with me. It’s a part of who I am. And I didn’t think there was a single person in the world who could know everything about me and love me anyway. Until I met you. I love you, Paxton, and I have every intention of being with you forever, if you’ll have me.”

She’d been in his position just weeks ago. She knew what it felt like to stand in front of someone and ask them to love you, to try to pull them to you by the sheer force of your desire, a force so strong it felt as though you were going to die from it. She didn’t stop to think. She knew only that she didn’t want him to feel the way she’d felt. She reached for him and kissed him. Her arms wrapped around him, holding on for dear life. He backed her against the wall and her head thumped against it, but she didn’t stop. She pushed at his jacket until it was off, then reached for his tie. Their hands were everywhere, getting in the way. Paxton lost her balance when the toe of her bare foot got caught in the cuff of his trousers, and she went down, taking him with her.

Sebastian rolled over, pinning her to the floor. She reached, trying to pull his lips down to hers again, but he resisted.

“I need you to say it,” he said, breathless.

She looked up at him, confused. “Say what?”

“That you’ll have me.”

She suddenly thought about that list she’d made in high school. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Sebastian.”

He kissed her again, and she worked at the buttons on his shirt. One of them popped off, and she heard it tick across the bare floor. “Are we going to do this here?” he asked against her lips. “We can go back to my place.”

“No. Here. Now.”

She felt his smile. “At least I know you don’t love me for my furniture.”

“Don’t you dare bring over that suit of armor.”

He lifted his head again. “Willa told you?”

Her hands went to his hair. “Some things she tells me, some things she leaves out.” Like telling her Sebastian was coming over.

He lifted one brow. “So you compare notes?”

“Yes.”

“Then I better make this good.”

She hesitated. “It already is,” she whispered.