Sebastian appraises the cigarette in his fingers. “She hardly cares if I smoke, you know. If you did it, she’d drop you like she did her last boyfriend. She found a pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket. Next day, he was gone. Lasted one taxingly long week.”
“You planted the cigarettes on him, didn’t you?”
Sebastian takes a long drag and breathes the smoke right into Connor’s face. “Perceptive.”
Connor doesn’t even flinch. “Maybe you should be.”
Sebastian lets out a laugh. “You don’t think I am? I know that Rose has spent almost no time with you since Calloway Couture has suffered. I know that she cried on my shoulder two nights ago, not yours. I know that she called me, not you, to help pack up her office.”
She already started boxing her workplace?
“You feel threatened by me,” Connor states, stepping forward so only a small space separates his body from Sebastian’s. Connor has the height advantage—he usually does.
“By Connor Cobalt? A guy who is willing to sell out anyone if the benefit weighs on his side. No, I am not threatened by you. I just hate you.” Sebastian gives him a long once over. “Rose always did too. I don’t know what you said that changed her mind.”
“She never hated me,” Connor says casually.
“She bitched about you all the time in prep school. She’d return from Model UN, and I’d have to listen to her drone on about how Richard made a treaty against her country’s best interests. How Richard won the highest honor for countering terrorist actions.” Model UN sounds mildly intense and slightly scary.
“For such a smart guy, you really know nothing,” Connor says, his voice even-tempered. “She liked me, Sebastian. She bitched to you because she was attracted to me, a guy that riled her more than placated her, and that pissed her off.” Connor steals the cigarette from his fingers. “And if you truly cared for that girl, you’d realize that every time you smoke in this house, you set off her OCD.”
Sebastian’s lip twitches.
“You didn’t know that, did you?” Connor says. “While she cries on your shoulder about her company, yesterday she stayed the night at my apartment. And I spent four fucking hours calming her down because you put wild ideas in her head. You smoke, you mess with her things, and you return her to me restless. She paces back and forth, muttering idioms that make no sense, and I have to figure out how to put her back together. You are not a friend to her; you’re a parasite.”
I drop my pastry on my lap.
Sebastian is left speechless, his lips pressed tightly together.
Connor won this round. But when Rose enters the mix, I just hope he’s able to win the whole battle.
After Connor snuffs out the cigarette on his empty cup, he masterfully bottles his annoyance towards Sebastian, and his eyes fall to the scattered scantrons. “You should be taking those in a quiet testing environment, preferably somewhere clean.” His collects the gum wrappers, and Sebastian’s crinkled magazines, tossing them in a nearby trash bin.
“She’s fine,” Sebastian says, finding his voice again.
“What are you even doing here?” Connor asks. “If Lily’s taking her finals, she doesn’t need to be tutored anymore.”
“I’m monitoring the exams so she doesn’t cheat,” he lies. I want to snort, given the fact that minutes ago he offered to bubble-in my finals for me.
“I can do that,” Connor says. “Go propagate cancer somewhere else.” He takes a seat next to me—right on the same cushion where I buried the tests.
I hear the crunch and the crackle of papers, muffled but still distinguishable. I close my eyes and count to five in my head. This cannot be happening.
“Lily,” Connor says tensely, “am I sitting on porn?”
What?! I open one eye and meet Connor’s gaze. I expect him to be calm in the normal I’m-Connor-Cobalt-and-I-don’t-show-real-emotions kind of way. Instead, he wears disappointment fairly well. This is the moment where I can either out myself as a somewhat-cheater or take the hit for stashing porn. There’s no contest.
I spent days without self-love or any kind of sex from Lo, trying desperately to return to good faith with him. All of that will be squandered in one moment if he thinks it’s dirty mags. And I’m so sick of lying.
“It’s not porn,” I confess.
Connor stands and lifts up the cushion. He stares at the papers, the top exam with a random name （Jeremy Gore） and a letter grade （A-）。