Sebastian: The Complete Series (19 page)

“I didn’t catch you rimming him over the kitchen table or something. What the fuck!”

Harry sighed heavily, running his finger through his hair, then down his face where they stopped and covered his eyes while he shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t kiss. I haven’t in so long.” That was me months ago and we both knew it, but we didn’t speak about it. “We were just talking, and then… It wasn’t just him.” Harry eventually removed his face from his palms and looked at me. “I just wanted to comfort him. It was just a hug, but then… Seb, he’s so…I wanted to kiss him.”

“It’s okay.” I took a step to him and he held his hand out to me and growled.

“I'm not in the mood. I need some air.” Harry walked past me, heading to the door.

“Wait. You two didn’t do anything wrong. Just go in there and talk to him. Don’t give up before things have even started.”

“No. I'm not going to hurt him. He doesn’t know what I am. I can’t deal with this right now.” Harry ran out, still putting his coat on and leaving me in a stunned silence.

I stared at my bedroom door then walked to it, knocking on it and calling out to Leigh. “Hey, erm, Harry’s a bit… He’s high strung and not used to… well, he’s difficult. He really likes you.” Oh, good save! “Can I come in?”

“It’s your room.” Leigh opened the door, all dressed up in Harry’s clothes that time because they’re bigger, and he looked like he was planning on leaving us.

“Whoa! You’re not thinking of running off now, are you? Because that’s not what I'm going to let you do.” I placed my hands on his chest and walked him backwards to the bed, then forced him to sit down on it. I had no idea if he regretted the kiss or if he felt like he’d done something wrong. “Look, it was just a peck, not even a real kiss.”

Leigh’s eyes shot to mine and I saw the first real angry look I’d ever seen on his cute as a button face. “It was the realest kiss I’ve ever had.”

I grinned. I was hoping he’d feel like that. “Great. Look, Harry—he’s been hurt bad and he doesn’t want this to happen, or his head doesn’t want this to happen. But I know him really well and I’ve never seen him like this before. Trust me. The guy’s heart is made of steel encased in stone. You’re breaking through it. Don’t give up on him.”

Leigh chewed his lip and dropped his gaze to the floor. “I like him a lot. I’d like to get to know him more. I knew the kiss was too much, but I just meant it as a thank you. It wasn’t a full on kiss with tongues.” He looked at me with a soft smile. “It didn’t need to be. It was perfect. He’s perfect.”

Yeah! Perfect. “So, you going to stay, then?”

“I was going to go for a walk.”

“Why don’t you go down by the canal? Take a left outside the building and you can't miss it. It’s pretty and quiet.” I helped him into one my spare coats and was practically marching him to the door. “It will help.”

“Okay.” Leigh was obviously confused, but he left anyway and I smiled as soon as the door shut.

That walk was one Harry always took. It was where he ran in the morning and where he sat and thought about shit while I was being too noisy. Hopefully they would run into each other and sort their shit out.

I did a little victory dance then decided to have a shower. By the time I finished and got dressed in something loose and comfortable, I was flicking through my phone, checking for a message from Harry, when I came across the text from Liz and there it was, his number flashing at me again. I looked at it, repeating the numbers over and over, thinking about what I would say if he picked up.

I was still sitting there in a daze when Harry and Leigh came back with Mexican food for dinner. They’d obviously got past their issues and I lifted my eyebrow at Harry expectantly, but he just scowled. He’d obviously found out my little interfering and wasn’t happy about it, but they were talking again, so it was all good.

While Leigh was giving out the food in the kitchen, Harry pounced on me in the sitting room. “You should have left things alone.”

“Why? You’re friends again.”

“I just needed space. And don’t go telling him anything else about me. He got curious after your little talk and I had to lie to him out there. I don’t want to lie to him.”

“So don’t. He knows what I do, Harry. Shit! He was a paying client. He can’t judge you for what you do.”

“It’s not about that.” Harry slumped down next to me and stared into space while he thought. “It’s about me. He’s so open and honest. He’s one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met. I’ll only hurt him.” Harry whispered the last part and I felt even more determined to get him to open up and think about Leigh. “He deserves better than I can give him.”

“You don’t even know him. No big deal. Just be friends. Or fuck him and get it out of your system. That usually works for me.”

“Really?” Harry looked over to me with that snotty upper class look again. “How’s Robert?”

“Fuck you!” I stood up, my mobile sliding off my lap and landing beside him. He saw the text from Liz which I’d stupidly left open and grabbed the phone before I could.

“Oh, I see.” Harry laughed, holding the phone above his head while I danced around him trying to grab it. “Robert, huh? God, you’re so stupid, Sebastian.” He pushed me backward.

“Harry, give me my fucking phone back now.”

“Oh, but this is too sad. How many times have you tried to fuck him out of your system, huh? Did it work? No! So, don’t stand there giving me advice when you're running from the one you love.”

I stopped jumping for the phone and just stood there. “I’m not… Just give me the phone.”

“But you do, don’t you? Love him?”

I fell silent, but it was true. Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen in love with Robert. The fucking prick!

Harry looked even angrier when he looked at me. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t be in love with him and now he just saw the truth. “You should call him. See why he hasn’t called to book you again. But then what's the point when we both know the reason why? You're just a convenient fuck. A little toy he can use when he feels the need. Despite what he says, it’s all lies. You know it. I know it. Everyone fucking knows it.

“There’s no happy endings in our job, no white knight, no silver lining. We’re whores. Men use us. Nothing more.” Harry stopped shouting when he saw Leigh standing in the kitchen door, holding a plate of food and looking between us. “Fuck!” Harry threw my phone at me and stormed into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Leigh looked from me to Harry’s bedroom door and nodded slowly. “Right.”

“Leigh…” I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s okay. I should have guessed, maybe I did. He’s too gorgeous to want me without getting paid for it.”

“No!” I moved to him and took the plates from him. “That’s not what this is. Harry...” I lowered my voice. “He’s been doing this longer than me. He doesn’t have relationships because he’s an escort. He doesn’t even have sex if he’s not getting paid for it. And kisses? Forget about it. He likes you. That kiss is proof of that.” We stared into each other’s eyes and I could see the disbelief shining back at me through those big blue eyes. “I'm not playing with you. That’s the truth.”

The man was blind.

“Do you even know how beautiful you are?” I ran my fingers through his baby blond hair and smiled. “Why do you think we had such a good time, huh? I wanted you a lot. You’re stunning. I felt bad for taking your cash because I wanted you so much. You’re blind. Take a look in the mirror.” I turned him around and he looked everywhere except at himself. “Leigh! Look for fuck’s sake.”

He eventually lifted his head and looked at his reflection while I stood behind him, holding him tightly.

“You’re beautiful.”

“No, you are.”

“Okay, I know
I
am. So, we’re both gorgeous.” I rolled my eyes and he laughed.

“I’ve missed you.” His big green eyes found mine and I kissed his neck softly.

“I’ve thought about you a lot.”

He sighed heavily. “Does he really like me?”

“A lot. Like, shit loads.”

“I like him too. Is that okay?”

I was confused for a moment then I caught up.

He was worried about hurting me.

“Yeah, we didn’t have any ties, just sex. I mean, I liked you, you know I did, or you wouldn’t be here now living with me, sharing my bed.” He smiled softly again and I grinned at him. “We need to sort that out, by the way. I’m not a robot. I can’t sleep next to you for another night and not do something to this sexy body of yours.”

He blushed like mad and I laughed.

“I’ll share with Harry tonight.” I could see Leigh’s eyes when I said that and the worry made it through. “It will be fine. We don’t… I mean, we don’t have sex. We did, once. That’s it.” I shouldn’t have said that because he wasn’t expecting it and I worried I’d just fucked up.

“You and him look good together.”

“It’s not like that. He’s my best friend, my brother. I love him, but it won't ever be more. Besides, he’s only got eyes for you.”

“I’m going to go talk to him, try and get him to come eat. I’m not mad at him. How could I be?” I watched him hesitantly go to Harry’s door. He paused outside then knocked quietly. “Harry, can we talk?”

There was a long pause and I think Leigh thought the same thing I did, that Harry was ignoring us, but then the door opened and Harry just looked at Leigh for a few seconds, and then let him in.

“Thank you.” Leigh brushed past him, both of them not taking their eyes off the other’s. I could taste the electricity in the air and I smiled like a fool.

“I'm sorry.” I heard Harry say as he ran his finger down Leigh’s cheek.

Then he closed the door and I frowned. I needed to know stuff.

I grabbed the plate of forgotten food which Leigh had prepared and sat in front of the TV. As soon as I got comfy—isn’t it always like that?—my phone buzzed and I glanced down at it. My fork stopped before it got to mouth and I picked up my mobile. Two missed calls and three texts.

All from Robert.

“What…” I didn’t understand. He couldn't have called me. He didn’t know my number.

I read the first text.

Sebastian?

That left me more confused, so I read on, hoping the next text would explain.

Can you please call me? Just to let me know you’re okay. I heard you arguing with someone. I’m worried about you.

I stopped reading, immediately looking at my caller list, and saw somehow, in all of the commotion, Harry had called him up. It had better have been by accident.

He’d called. I couldn't believe it. But then it was only because he was worried and didn’t want me on his conscience. I sighed, thinking how much he had heard, and then I felt my skin flush. I couldn't call him back. I just couldn't.

I was prepared to spend the rest of my life in hiding and never see him again. And then… the phone vibrated in my hand. And there it was—his number and name flashing at me. Taunting me to pick up.

I placed my plate on the table and stood up, staring at the phone. Then I did something really stupid…

I took the call.

T
he phone was pressed slowly to my ear, where I paused for a moment, thinking how stupid it was. Robert could have overheard anything, and I knew it sounded bad. Did I say I loved him, or did I just stand still and stare at Harry?

Please don’t have heard that part, Robert.

With
a soft sigh, I answered the call. I didn’t even get a chance to say hello before he rushed out my name.

“Sebastian?” I could hear how worried he was, and it made me smile despite the nerves running through me faster than a Porsche.

“Hi, Robert.” I rolled the r and t and listened as he growled down the phone.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“How much did you hear?” I was hoping he’d say not much, but…

“Oh, no! That’s not what’s happening. First, I talk. Tell me you're safe.”

The concern he showed me surprised the hell out of me. I thought he’d run straight into what he’d heard Harry saying. Mainly about me loving him, but then maybe God was being nice to me and he hadn’t heard it after all. I was burning up when I thought about it. That was the one thing I didn’t want to talk about, and it took me a few seconds to catch myself and get the words out. “I'm fine. I'm safe. That was my roommate being a prick, but he’s stressed out, so...”

I could hear him sigh. Almost feel the tension leave him. “Okay. I was worried. I didn’t know who it was or where you were.” Robert took in a deep breath. “I'm not using you,” he said quietly. “Everything he said about me, about how I feel for you, it’s not true, Sebastian. I don’t want you to think that.”

I stared out of the window, not even daring to breathe.

“Do you believe me?”

I smiled. I was so stupid. So bloody stupid. “I do.”

He breathed out, then we went silent, both deep in thought it would seem about what to say next. “I’ve been trying to contact you for nearly two weeks.” Robert sounded pissed off, like it was me ignoring him or something, but I had no idea he was trying to get hold of me. “We need to talk about your pathologist.”

I sat down on the sofa with shock. That was the first time I’d thought of Anthony since I last saw Robert two weeks ago and I was happy keeping it that way. “Why? He’s stopped calling me up for dates. I don’t think I have anything to worry about. He’s probably gone back to using a different escort for each night like he used to do.”

“Yeah, but… Sebastian… there’s no pathologist who fits the description you mentioned at York. Not now anyway.” Robert paused and I knew it was because he was about to deliver some bad news which I didn’t want to hear. “I don’t want you to see him again. I mean it. He’s not who he says he is, that I’m positive about, and if you don’t know who he really is, then you can’t be protected.”

“You’re not telling me something, and I have a feeling that something is important.” Why I wanted to know more bothered me. I should have just said I was fine, that life was good and Anthony wasn’t an issue anymore, but I didn’t, and then it was up to Robert to tell me more shit which I didn’t want to know.

“I don’t want to worry you.”

I rolled my eyes, and I think he could hear it in London because he sighed heavily. “By not telling me, you’re worrying me.”

“I just… Sebastian, please.”

I tapped my fingers on the table
really
loudly and he groaned.

“I wanted to do this differently. Maybe in person.”

The thought of seeing him again made my stomach flip, but seeing him just to deliver bad news and having to wait another day to hear it made me want him to tell me right then. “You’re killing me with all this waiting, just tell me.”

Robert paused. I could hear him fiddling with something in the background, and I imagined his teeth chewing on that sexy bottom lip of his while he thought to himself. “There was a guy who used to work as a pathologist at the hospital there, and he fitted the description of this Anthony you see. He also had an accident like you mentioned Anthony did a few years back, but… Sebastian, when he came back to work, he wasn’t the same man. He did…” Robert cleared his throat. “We could meet up. I could even get there this evening if I left now. It doesn’t have to be at your place, we could meet at the Hilton.”

“Robert, please.” The tension was making me sweat, and I never did that.

“You're going to worry. I wanted to make sure you’d be okay.”

“I'm at home with friends. I’ll be okay.” Would I rather have him sitting beside me while we talked? Yes. One hundred percent yes. But he wasn’t. He was four hours away in London.

“Well, when he came back after the accident, he’d changed. They noticed things over the following few months which caused them to look into him a little more, and what they found out…” He sighed. “There’s no easy way of saying this. He did things to the corpses he was working on.”

I didn’t even pause before I spoke. “Don’t tell me he fucked one?”

I was hoping it wasn’t Anthony. I didn’t want this person to be him. Anthony was strange and gave off a freaky feeling, but this…

Was he really the same person who Robert found?

“No!” Robert paused, and then cleared his voice. “Well… they don’t know.” I gasped and he quickly continued. “He mutilated two bodies. The hospital let him go, obviously, and he underwent psychiatric care for a few months in a private clinic. That’s all I could find out. I didn’t have access to his personal or medical files. The only reason I know this much is because I found a guy I used to… who I knew, and could get access to his personal files.” He fussed around in the background again. It all sounded a bit wrong, and I knew Robert could get in trouble for looking into this for me. “All I know is after he was discharged, he disappeared. He fell off the grid. But now… this Anthony. It just all seems to fit.”

“So, you don’t have anything linking Anthony with the pathologist who went crazy?” I felt lighter when I realised he was just guessing.

I mean, why would I want him to be him? I wanted this to be wrong so badly.

“I got his picture, that's all. It came from his files and it’s an old one. I'm not sure if it would be any use to identify him, but I thought it may help, you know, if you wanted to see it.”

I went silent. Did I really want to know this? Did I want to have shared the bed of someone who did crazy shit like that? I was with Anthony for hours. He could have done anything to me, to any of the men he slept with. “I need to see it. I need to know. The agency needs to know.”

“I sent it to the manager, your boss, Harriot. Not that she wanted to be involved. But I basically made her take it by threatening to talk to the police and let them deal with it.”

“And?”

“She said it didn’t match his picture and they hadn’t met in real life.”

“That’s bullshit. He’s used her for years. I mean, okay, she doesn’t meet everyone, but… Show me.”

“And what if it’s him?”

“What if it’s not? I don’t know.”

Robert sighed and I could hear him messing around with his phone, pressing buttons, then my phone vibrated and he came back on the line. “You get the picture okay?”

“I think so. Let me look.”

I opened the message and stared at the picture. I had to enlarge his face a little bit. The guy was a lot younger and chubbier than Anthony, but like Robert said, it was an old one. I zoomed in on his eyes, then his lips, then pulled back and just stared at him.

“Sebastian?”

I was stuck looking at the picture and didn’t answer.

“It’s him, isn't it?”

I was cold all over when I lifted the phone back to my ear. “Yeah, it is.”

“You have to contact the agency. He can’t be safe. And he’s given false details, according to their own rules, that’s not allowed. But to be honest, the questions I was asked when I joined up weren’t that great. As long as the name I gave matched my credit card, that was the most important thing. Everything else would be pretty easy to fake.”

I’d always felt safe working through the agency. I trusted the men I saw had been checked out and didn’t question if they were who they really said they were or some nutter. “Yeah. I’ll speak to Harriot first thing tomorrow morning when I get my head in the right place.” I stared off into the distance, thinking about if she would actually do anything, then I thought about the break in at my old place and how all my clothes had been slashed. “Maybe the police first. Or maybe not.” I was lost. Harriot would hate me giving Anthony’s details to the police, and they didn’t even know I was an escort. Telling them would open up a whole new problem for me.

“Police? I don’t know if they’d be able to do anything. I mean, the guy hasn’t done anything wrong apart from lying on the agency’s contact details, and I'm sure he’s not the only one to do it. I think the agency would be the best place to start. But if your boss isn't going to do anything, then I would contact them and see what they think.”

My mind was all over the place, so I blame the next thing I said on that. “I’ll call the officer who came round last time. I don’t know what I'm going to say to him. He doesn’t know I work for the agency.” I was talking out loud, mainly just for myself. “I mean, I'm an escort. Will they even care? And Harriot, she’ll be pissed I talked to them, but… I don’t know.”

“Sebastian… Is there something I'm missing here? Something you didn’t tell me about Anthony before that I should be aware of?”

I slammed my hand over my mouth. How did I slip up and tell him that?

He didn’t know about the break in or what the police found. He didn’t know I'd moved out because of it and worried about who it was constantly.

“Sebastian!”

“I don’t know if it was Anthony. But… the night I last saw him, my house got broke into. I wasn’t there at the time, so don’t panic.”

“What did they take?” Robert was trying hard to not let the anger I could feel vibrating through the phone come out in his voice, but I heard it loud and clear.

“This is why I didn’t tell you before.” I sighed at his loud grunt. “They didn’t take anything. They… they targeted my room, my clothes. I’d left through the back door, kinda snuck out late to visit Harry, my friend. He’s the one I live with now. I moved out the next day. I think that’s why the police were worried. The guy had been watching the house, waiting for me to get home, then when it went dark, he got in. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d stayed the night, and I don’t like to think about it, but I want whoever did this to be found. I feel like I'm being watched all the time.”

“Right.” Robert went deadly quiet so I began to talk again, but he cut me off. “It was wasn’t a break in, they wanted you. And if you'd been there… How did they find you? Do you think it’s this Anthony?”

“I think he’s the best person to be questioned about it. He could have followed me home after the date. I drove that night. I remember a big flashy car passing by after I parked up. I thought it was strange at the time. I did mention it to the police, but I don’t know if they tied it to the case in any way.”

“I’m here if you need them to talk to me about what I found. I want this guy out of your life and you safe.”

“But how you got the information, it isn't exactly legal. I don’t want you to get in trouble for this. I'd rather leave you out. Just hand over what you told me and don’t give them your name. I'm sure they would find out everything they need legally and without bothering you. If I had to tell them who you were, they’d want to know why you would do this for me. I don’t want you to be in trouble with them. I don’t really ever think about the illegal side of this job, I know I should, but I don’t.”

“All they would need to know is that I'm a concerned friend. Which I am. Don’t worry about anything else. I'm offering to help and I'm well aware of what I'm doing by offering that help.”

“I’ll send them the picture and explain the basics. I’ll miss you out and see what happens next.” I played with my fingernail. “I may even try to keep the job out of it, just see what they come up without that info.”

“Well, I want to help. I want you safe.”

“Robert… if this is the same guy… is he safe or…” I didn’t want to know.

“He could be perfectly fine. He had treatment, but until he’s questioned, we don’t know. The thing is, why would he give you such personal information about himself when he’d lied to Harriot? Why tell you anything different from all the others?”