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The question seemed risky somehow, too intimate.

More intimate even than what we'd done in that opera house.

Physical intimacy I could handle. It was this emotional probing that terrified me.

"The storm," I lied.

"Liar." His hand squeezed my thigh. "Try again."

I sighed, watching condensation form on the window beside me. With my fingertip, I traced a small heart in the fog, then quickly erased it so he wouldn’t see it. "I was thinking about what you said earlier."

"I said many things."

"About love," I whispered, the word hanging between us.

We seemed to be balanced on a knife's edge. One wrong word, one misstep, and we'd cut ourselves open, revealing too much.

Another flash of lightning illuminated his profile. The strong jaw, the aristocratic nose, the darkness of his eyes focused on the winding road ahead. It struck me how beautiful he was, not in spite of his sharp edges, but because of them.

"What about it?" His fingers tightened slightly on the wheel.

"Did you mean it? Or was it just another way to control me?"

Sebastian slowed the car to navigate a particularly treacherous curve, the tires sliding slightly on the wet asphalt before regaining traction.

For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.

"Is it so hard to believe?" he finally said, his eyes still on the road.

"Yes," I answered honestly. "Everything between us started as a lie."

His jaw tightened. "Not everything."

"How can I know which parts?"

He lifted his hand from my thigh to shift gears as we crested a hill, the absence of his touch leaving me longing. When he returned it, his grip was firmer, more possessive.

"You know," he said softly. "In your heart, you know."

Did I? Had I allowed my mother's paranoia, my father's betrayal, to cloud my judgment? Had I been so determined to see Sebastian as the villain that I'd missed what was happening between us?

The rain pounded against the roof of the car, a steady drumbeat that seemed to match the rhythm of my heart.

In this moment, cocooned in the warmth and safety he provided, it was easy to believe he could love me.

That I could love him.

That we could build something real from the wreckage of our beginning.

Lightning flashed again, closer this time, immediately followed by a crack of thunder so powerful it shook the very air around us.

I jumped, a small sound escaping my lips.

Sebastian's hand moved from my thigh to capture mine, entwining our fingers.

"I've got you," he murmured. "You're safe with me."

Was that the cruelest lie of all?