tossed it to the very end of the yard, and it hit the wall with a loud thwack. His mouth curled into the smallest, sweetest grin as he watched her run after it, and it was that look that had Sebastion abandoning his coffee to join him,
“I didn’t mean it,” he said, sliding one hand around Luca’s waist. “I’m just angry that his ghost fucked up what little peace we managed to get back.”
Luca glanced down at him, then turned his face and rubbed his nose along the crown of his head. “He’s not a ghost.”
The truth of that was also brutal. He wasn’t a ghost. Their Alexander the Great was very much alive. He’d stepped over their borders with kindness and left mass destruction in his wake. And it was never his intention to ruin—that much was obvious. He was just…lost. He was the product of his past and looking for some kind of escape, some way to ease the pain.
Sebastion had a handful of almosts and maybes that existed in some form of regret or another after things with Rhys finally ended for good. He chose men with eyes full of cruelty the way Rhys’s had been, and he was a monster to them right back for a few weeks. He chose men who weren’t looking for anything serious, and he let them wreck his body to see if he could still feel something.
He chose men who might have been good for him, if he’d been in a place where that goodness didn’t hurt as much as the pain left behind, and even today, he wished he’d never met them because they hadn’t deserved the short-lived disaster their relationship had been.
After that had come the silence and learning to be alone.
And then Luca had stormed into his office and shattered all of Sebastion’s resolve to never inflict himself on another person ever again.
Sebastion just hadn’t realized he could be on the other side of it. That history could repeat itself in the most profound, painful way, and he would be the one on the outside looking in.
“What do we do?” Luca asked again, holding Sebastion a little tighter.
He breathed out and kissed the edge of his husband’s jaw. “Nothing,” he said, echoing the words Luca had spoken for him before. “We do nothing.”
Nothing was easier than he expected once they were unpacked and settled. The service Sebastion had hired got him a handful of patients, and his receptionist was booking more appointments each day now that his ads began running. The local Deaf community was small, but word was spreading there too, and he started to feel comfortable in his new place there the first time he was able to conduct an entire appointment in ASL.
He had another after that and then two more. Then a fifth in tactile sign with a deafblind teen who was homeschooled but applying to Gallaudet. She spent the entire appointment telling him how excited she was to finally live away from her parents, and he understood that feeling in the echoes of a past that still lived in his bones.
He spent the week in a sort of euphoria, his life feeling like it was coming together, and even with the dark cloud of Xan’s return and silence hanging over him, it couldn’t shake his mood. He was still smiling that Friday as he pulled into the driveway and parked next to Luca’s car. He left his laptop bag on the seat, not even wanting to think about work until Monday morning, and he walked through the door, instantly dropping to his knees to hug Ivy, who slobbered all over his face.
“You seem happy, princess,” he said, scratching her ears.
He heard Luca’s voice laughing from the kitchen. “She stole a whole plate of bacon. She’s thrilled.”
Sebastion rolled his eyes and gave her a few belly rubs before pushing to his feet, ignoring his protesting knees as he walked around the corner to find his husband at the stove. They hadn’t planned their big housewarming party yet, but it hadn’t stopped Luca from using every single inch of their kitchen now that he was something like retired.
“Have you thought about opening a restaurant,” Sebastion said, taking the glass of wine his husband was holding out for him. It was a very dry white, something German if he remembered correctly. Luca had been driving to little niche shops in the valley—sampling wines and cheeses he’d never given a shit about before, and Sebastion kind of