Never Gonna Happen - Cynthia Eden Page 0,79
with Alyssa?”
If he’d cut out the danger, if he’d put it all behind him… “It doesn’t work that way.” Dex had been correct on that point. Sebastian had been blind. “The enemies I made won’t just forget me. I’ll always be looking over my shoulder and wondering if my secrets have been discovered. I can’t ask her to live that way.”
A sly expression slid over Antony’s face. “So you’re just gonna give up on her?” He looked at Winston. “He’s gonna give up on her.”
Winston nodded. “Obviously.”
“He’s going to let Dex take her to some undisclosed location.”
“The hell I am!” Sebastian’s denial exploded before he could hold the words back. “His guards are crap—”
“He’s going to let Alyssa walk away,” Antony plowed on. “Let her go out and date some random guy. Get married. Have kids.”
A low, dangerous rumble slipped from Sebastian. Not a growl. Much, much rougher. Primal.
Antony paid no attention to the rumble. He waved vaguely to Winston, as if they were just having a grand old talk, and added, “Because you know, it will be fun when he shows up for holiday parties and he gets to watch Alyssa with her husband and kids, and no way will Sebastian ever think… ‘That could’ve been me. That should have been me. That could have—’”
Sebastian shoved past his friends. “I’m stopping Dex.”
“Yeah, and while you’re off being such a badass, be sure to tell me sister that you’re done with her. Tell it to her face! I dare you!” Antony called as Sebastian yanked open the door.
Sebastian didn’t answer him. He was dealing with one fire at a time.
Fire one…
Dex.
You are not using her again.
***
“I don’t think that went well,” Winston announced.
Antony’s shoulders dropped. “He’s always had that stupid martyr complex. Thinks that he has to do the right thing. That he has to save people from themselves. Gets old, real old.”
Winston glanced at the open door. “You don’t think he’ll be able to tell her goodbye.”
“Hell, no, he won’t. You are right, he is scared. But the whole reason he wasn’t going in there to see her? It’s because the moment he takes one look into her eyes, he’s done. He’ll probably drop to his knees and propose to Alyssa then and there.”
Winston didn’t look convinced. “He doesn’t want her in danger. He’ll put her safety above everything else.”
But you couldn’t protect someone from every single danger in the world. “Life is unpredictable. That’s a problem for Sebastian. He wants to control everything because when he was a kid, he could control nothing. No, scratch that. He could control numbers. Coding. That’s why he hacked.”
Winston let loose a low whistle. “Didn’t ever look at it that way. From the outside, control seems to be the last thing Sebastian wants.”
“The Bad Boy of Tech.” Antony shook his head. “Control is what he wants most. But with Alyssa, I think it’s the thing he has the least. He wants to control every threat to her.”
“Like you don’t want the same thing?” Winston sent him a knowing glance. “Isn’t that why you told him to stay away from her?”
Originally, when he’d first asked Sebastian to stay away…I just didn’t want her hurt. She was his sister, and Sebastian had been introducing him into a world of spies and danger. Keeping Alyssa away from that world had seemed necessary. But then time had passed, and he’d learned so much about Sebastian. I thought Alyssa hated him, though. Until today. Until she told me how she really feels. Now, everything had changed. He damn well didn’t want his sister to have a broken heart. He wanted her happy. So he’d just needed to move a few pieces around on the chess board. Needed to push the knight toward the queen. “Sebastian and I are very much alike on a whole lot of things.” And that was why he knew, with utter certainty, that when Sebastian saw Alyssa again…
You can bluff a good game, my friend. You can say you’ll walk away.
But if you wanted her for all these years…
You won’t let her go.
Especially not when Alyssa dropped her little bombshell on Sebastian.
Antony had deliberately not told Sebastian that Alyssa said she loved him. That was for Alyssa to reveal, not him. But once Sebastian heard those words, once he knew Alyssa was crazy about him…
He’ll never let her go.
“So you’re okay with Sebastian hooking up with your sister?”
Antony winced. “I don’t want any visuals.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“I didn’t want him to hurt her.