Shattered Glass: His Brother's Fiancée

"I wish I'd never met you. If we ever see each other again, we're strangers." Four years ago, Sebastian Vance said that to me in a flat voice and agreed to the breakup.

He didn't even slow down on his way out. I had a pregnancy test in my coat pocket. Two pink lines. I ran, and I didn't look back either.

Get tangled up with an oldmoney guy who was famously antimarriage? Bad math. Four years later. A ballroom with too much light in it.

My new fiancé slid his arm around my shoulders, easy, like he'd earned it. "Come on. Come meet my cousin." I looked up, and my breath stopped somewhere behind my ribs.

Sebastian sat back in a leather armchair. His eyes found me and stayed. Then they moved. Down my throat, my shoulder, my waist. They stopped on my fiancé's hand. Crack.

The glass in his fist split. Nobody in that room was breathing. Not one person there knew that the fiancé holding on to me had wired me $300,000 to play this part.

Or that his cousin was the secret I'd been keeping for four years. My son's father.

Chapter 1 "Any interest in being friends?" I said it to a stranger on a beach off the Great Ocean Road, with sand in my shoes, the year I was studying in Melbourne.

Nobody on that continent knew my name. It made me bold. He was unreasonable to look at. Clean line of jaw, lashes down at an angle that shouldn't have been allowed.

Wind pushed at his shirt and gave me half an inch of his waist, there and gone. So that was love at first sight. Fine. Noted. He turned. One eyebrow went up.

Surprise moved through his eyes. "Friends who do what?" "Friends who see if it goes anywhere. Boyfriend, girlfriend. That kind of thing." His friends lost it behind him, whooping.

He cleared his throat and looked at the sand. I pulled up my Instagram and held the phone out. He thought about it. A full second, maybe two.

Then he followed me back. "We'll start with your name." Sebastian Vance was not an easy man to chase. He followed me back and then never said a word to me again.

I invented reasons to message him. Stupid ones. He left every one of them on read. One night, late, the little Typing… came up at the top of the thread. It sat there a long time.

A really long time. Nothing ever came through. That was when it landed on me: he wasn't interested.

He'd followed me back on that beach so I wouldn't have to stand there in front of his friends with my hand out. So I dropped it. Let him be.

The second time I saw him was at a department mixer. White shirt, buttoned to the top, everything about him in order. He stood off to one side and let the room happen without him.

Cold, and closed, and shut like a locked door. I clocked him the instant I walked in. But we weren't friends, so I didn't go over.

I spent the whole night trailing a senior in my program. Something kept landing on me. A look. It was gone every time I turned my head.

Then the senior knocked his drink into my skirt and started patting at it, redfaced, apologizing over the music, and I found the source. Sebastian.

Mouth pressed flat, staring at us. Not liking a single thing he saw. On my way to the bathroom, a hand shot out and pulled me into a corner. He leaned down.

Those cold, narrow eyes cut into me. "You wanted to see if it went anywhere," he said, low. "Boyfriend, girlfriend.

And tonight you look at me like we've never met." Even like that, that face was ridiculous. His Adam's apple slid when he spoke and it made the whole thing worse.

I tilted my head at him. "Sebastian. Are you jealous?" He stopped. He caught his bottom lip in his teeth. He didn't say no. I laughed at him.

Out loud. "See, you have to earn the right to be jealous. What are you standing on, exactly?" The color went out of his face. His jaw locked.

The hand around my wrist got tighter, and tighter, and did not let go. I went up on my toes until my nose touched his. "So I'll give you one more shot," I said, quiet. "Sebastian.

Any interest in being my boyfriend?" "You've got three seconds." "Three. Two—" Chapter 2 I never got to one. His mouth was right there. I went up and took it.

It was supposed to be a touch. A tap. I don't know which one of us broke first.

He put me into the wall, one hand cradling the back of my skull, and kissed me like he'd been holding it back for weeks.

Even the yes came out wrecked, halfswallowed, somewhere in the middle of it. "Wren. We're together." What I felt for Sebastian was chemical. That's the honest word for it.

Every time I saw him I wanted to be closer. I wanted more of him. My body decided before I did. Sebastian was not like that. He held the line. He booked two rooms when we traveled.

Two. If I hadn't been able to feel what kissing did to him, I'd have started to wonder if the man worked at all. The night it broke was his birthday.

I booked an oceanview room and parked myself against his chest with a movie on. Halfway through, I stood up and took off my jacket. Under it: the bunny outfit.

Ears on my head, the whole thing. I took his hand and put it on the round little tail. His breath stopped. I felt it stop. He didn't pull away. He just looked down and let me do it.

So I got braver. I fisted my hand in his collar and put my mouth on his throat, right over the Adam's apple, and stayed there until he swallowed against my lips.

Then I pushed his shirt up and took my time learning the map of him. He was exactly as good as I'd imagined. Chest cut in blocks. Stomach hard.

That V of muscle at his hips running down like it had somewhere to be. And he still didn't move. His chest was going like he'd run here. His skin was hot enough to scare me.

And the man did not move. I looked up at him from under the bunny ears. "If you don't like it, I'll go." Then I bit his stomach. Not gently.

And I got up and strolled toward the door. My fingers touched the handle. That was where it ended. Two steps.

An arm around me from behind, locking me in place, and his teeth in my shoulder. "Wren." His voice had gone to gravel. "You did that on purpose." "You wind me up on purpose.

You walk away on purpose. How is a person this cruel?" The locked door came off its hinges.

In the morning his shirt was on the back of the chair and my bunny ears were on the floor by the door, and he was still holding on to me in his sleep. He never ate candy.

But there was always a peach hard candy somewhere in his pocket. Every time he saw me he'd peel the wrapper back and put it on my tongue, then watch me squint up at him and laugh.

I thought that candy would always be there. Six months, me and Sebastian. Lake Hillier in Western Australia. Hyde Park in Sydney. Bruny Island down in Tasmania.

Hotel rooms where we held on to each other and shook. I remember thinking there wasn't a better version of this. Not for anyone.

Then I posted a photo of us to Instagram, still stupid with happiness, and read the first comment, and stopped. Wren. Look at you. You actually landed the Vance heir.

Studying abroad hides what people come from. A serious watch, good clothes. I had him filed as comfortable. A normal guy with a nicer coat. Not just rich. Old. Connected.

The kind of name that opens rooms. The kind I'd only ever met in books. And if that were the whole problem, fine.

But Sebastian Vance was also famously, publicly, permanently antimarriage. Everyone in that world knew it. I found this out with a pregnancy test in my hand. Two pink lines.

A month before, he'd been rough with me and the condom tore. I took the morningafter pill the next day. I did everything right. It didn't matter.

Chapter 3 I needed to know if the rumor was true. So that night I came at it sideways. "Sebastian. I walked past a bridal shop today.

The dress in the window was unbelievable." "Speaking of. When are you getting married?" He didn't like the topic. His brows pulled together. "I'm not." "What about kids?

You don't want kids either?" The line between his brows cut deeper. "No." A reasonable person would have let it die there. I wanted one more inch. "Okay.

Say someone got pregnant with your kid. What would you do?" He hesitated. It was small.

Half a beat, and then it was gone. "I wouldn't let that happen," he said. "And if it did, she'd get rid of it." Then he was finished with the conversation.

He crossed the room and pulled me in the way he'd done a hundred times, kissed the corner of my mouth twice, and his eyes went dark and slow. I knew that look.

That look meant he was about to stop being careful. We had never once had a problem in that department.

But when he got an arm under my knees and lifted, I put a hand flat on his chest. "Not tonight." It wasn't that I couldn't. I just didn't want to.

I'd seen a doctor before we flew out. She'd explained it kindly and it hadn't helped. My body was built wrong for this. Conceiving at all was a long shot.

If I lost this one, the odds on a second were basically zero. My parents died when I was young. I've got no family left.

Somewhere in all those years I'd decided I wanted one person in the world who was mine. And Sebastian was goodlooking, steady, smart.

On paper he was an excellent father for a child. I turned it over for a long time. I was keeping the baby. Which meant the rest of it. Mine to carry. Mine to raise.

That way I'd never be standing in his way. I did it the day before we flew home.

He was packing, folding shirts into a case, talking through the plan like he'd been saving it up. "LA turns brutal in the afternoon, so we'll hole up at the hotel until the sun drops.

Then I'm taking you down Abbot Kinney. We'll walk out to the boardwalk, drive up to Griffith after dark.

There's a jazz bar on Sunset—" I cut him off with the thing I'd been carrying around. "Sebastian.

Let's break up." His hands stopped on the shirt. "Say that again." "I bought a ticket home to Austin. Tomorrow.

I'm not coming to LA." I made myself hold his eyes. "And we're done." Men like Sebastian Vance do not get dumped. So he wanted a reason. He kept asking for one. There were plenty.

That I was pregnant with his kid and he didn't want kids. That I'd been dating him toward a wedding and he was never going to have one.

That his family was his family and mine was a photograph in a drawer, and that was never going to work. I couldn't hand him a single one of them. He asked a third time.

I shut my eyes for a second and picked the knife up. "How about I got bored of you. Does that work?" "Bored." I nodded. "Bored. Like a lychee.

You peel it and it's white and sweet and you want it in your mouth. Eat enough of them and the sweetness turns your stomach." Something dark came up in him.

His hand clamped down on my shoulder and stayed there. "Wren." His teeth were together. "Say it one more time." I looked back at him like we were discussing the weather. "What?

We've slept together how many times now. You're telling me you're not bored?" Chapter 4 He looked at me for a long time that night.

Like he could get through the back of my skull if he stared hard enough.

The sky had gone gray at the edges before he asked again. "You're serious." "I'm serious." He didn't say anything after that.

He just stood there and watched me shoulder my bag and pull up the handle of my suitcase. I got as far as the entryway. Behind me, he made a sound. Not quite a laugh. "Wren.

Is there a heart in there?" "You're the one who wanted me. Now you're the one who's bored." His voice stayed even the whole way through, which was worse. "Am I that cheap?

Something you pick up when you feel like it and put down when you don't?" His eyes were down. The rims had gone red. His knuckles had bled out to a bluish white.

He looked like a thing about to come apart. Something in my chest went soft, and I opened my mouth, and I was too slow. "Wren.

I wish I'd never met you." Every word set down carefully, on purpose. "If we ever see each other again, we're strangers." He never asked me to stay.

I pressed my lips together and nodded. "Okay." Then I pulled my suitcase out the door and got on a plane to Austin. We ended it clean. Every thread cut, every account gone.

He went home to one coast and I went home to another and we were half a country apart. Nothing about him ever reached me again. He walked out of my life and stayed out.

Eight months later I had Beckett. On the form they gave me before they wheeled me in, I signed my own name on the "next of kin" line. Beck was an easy baby. He didn't cry much.

He entertained himself. He never asked me for more than I had. He had my face shape. Everything inside it was Sebastian. The eyes especially.

I raised him quietly and I didn't make trouble for anyone. The way I had it planned, Sebastian was never going to find out he had a son. I planned wrong.

The year Beck turned three, the two of them met. For a few years now I've had a friend in Austin. Dashiell Voss.

He opens his mouth and that coastalmoney accent falls out and everyone in the bar knows he isn't from here. Spends like the account refills itself overnight. Gay, and a bottom.

His family had been on him forever about settling down and producing a grandkid. This year his parents gave him a deadline. Bring a girlfriend home or get cut out of the will.

He panicked. He thought about it for weeks. And then, God help me, he came to me. He wanted me to play his girlfriend and Beck to play his son.

One trip home, both problems solved. "We'll tell them I moved to Austin for you," he said. "That we already have the kid.

That you didn't want to deal with my parents, and I respected that, which is why I never brought you out to LA." Dash came to Austin looking for a top.

That's the entire reason he's here. It has never had anything to do with me. I wanted no part of this.

Then he wired $300,000 into my account to hire me for the role, and I said yes. I wasn't proud of it. I had principles in school. Then I had rent. And a kid.

Nobody says no to that number. So I apologized to Dash's parents inside my own head, and I took Beck to LA.

All I had to do, Dash said, was show my face to his parents, sit through one dinner, and stay a week. Not much to ask. I nodded.

Then he crouched down in front of my son and looked up at me, grinning. "Goodlooking guys all kind of blur together anyway. Look close, though. Your kid does look a little like me.

It's the eyes." "We say he's mine, we'll fool every last one of them." Chapter 5 On the flight to LA, I thought about him. I was afraid I'd run into him out there.

Then I talked myself down. Los Angeles is enormous. What are the odds two people land in the same room out of all those millions? People aren't tied together like that.

Beck sat next to me with his feet not reaching the floor and listened to every word of the briefing. "Don't worry, Mom.

I've got it." I'd told him we were helping Uncle Dash put on a play. He's a smart kid. You tell him something once and it stays told. I wasn't worried about him breaking.

It was only after we landed that Dash mentioned his parents had thrown a welcome party. Invited a few relatives. A few friends. I'd pictured a private dining room. One long table.

I had not pictured this many relatives. I had not pictured a ballroom. I stopped dead in the doorway. Gold on everything. Chandeliers dropping light like water.

Glasses touching, all night, everywhere. Dash leaned in near my ear. "Forgot to mention. My family has a little money. Don't stress, though. My parents have more money than sense.

Just do the thing. They'll buy it." There was no time to swear at him and no time to run. I put my chin up and walked in.

The crowd closed over me and Beck the second we cleared the door. They talked and talked. Dash's parents were the worst of it. Question after question after question.

Thank God we'd rehearsed. I had an answer for every one.

Eventually Dash's mother got her hands on Beck and would not put him down. "One look at this child and I knew he had our blood in him. Look at those eyes.

He's Dash all over." Beck played it perfectly. Grandpa this, Grandma that, until both of them were glowing. We were through it. We were fine.

I let my shoulders come down and went to the bathroom to fix my face. That's when it turned. A message from Dash. His cousin had shown up after all.

The cousin, he explained, was the heir the family had been grooming for years. Taking over the business now. Knew everyone worth knowing.

If I could get an introduction, there was no downside. Come back. Say hello. Do not leave the man standing there. So I set my makeup with powder and went back out to the ballroom.

He was already there. Dark suit, cut to the millimeter. Straight back. He had his shoulder to me, talking to Dash. One look was all it took. Sebastian.

I never once thought Dash's cousin would be Sebastian Vance. Everything went white.

Before I could get my face under control, Beck spotted me across the floor and started waving both arms. "That's my mom! Mom's back!" Sebastian turned toward the sound. Slowly.

His eyes came to rest on me. For a second I wasn't standing anywhere at all. Dash came over fast and put a hand on me. "Seb. This is Wren. My fiancée." "She's shy.

Wouldn't come out to LA for anything. Took me forever to talk her into it." Then he tugged at the hem of my dress, pushing me forward. "Babe. Don't just stand there.

Say hi to my cousin." Sebastian's eyes moved down. Inch by inch. They stopped on the hand Dash had wrapped in my dress. Crack. The glass split in his fist.

The whole room was laughing. The whole room was waiting for me to open my mouth. Four years, and the first words out of my mouth were going to be Mr. Vance?

In front of every person in this room? Chapter 6