Chapter 330: The moody husband_Part 2
Viola stayed in the living room with Zoe, who had finally fallen asleep against her, and when she glanced at the time she saw that a full hour had passed since Zoe arrived. Neither Sebastian nor Nick had come to the door.
Nick had stopped calling, but Sebastian’s phone was still unreachable, which made her frown slightly as she sat there staring at his contact on her screen, his aloof picture the only one she had saved of him, staring back at her.
She didn’t know how long she had been drifting in and out of a light doze before she heard the door unlock. She glanced at the clock, 10 pm, and before she could fully wonder who it was, her husband walked into view, shrugging off his coat, and stopped the moment he noticed her on the couch with his sister sleeping with her head in her lap.
He looked from Zoe’s sleeping face to hers, his hand suspended mid-motion on the coat.
"Hello," Viola murmured, watching him from where she sat, unable to get up without disturbing Zoe.
"Hi," he replied, then resumed removing the coat and draped it over the arm of the nearest chair. "How did she end up sleeping here?" He asked, gesturing to his sister who was using his mate’s lap as a pillow and looking perfectly comfortable doing so, where his head ought to be, not hers. That was his woman.
Viola looked down at Zoe’s sleeping face. "You don’t want to know. It’s complicated."
"Complicated? Now I’m curious. Go on." He said with a smile, leaning down as if to kiss her, but then he paused. The smile slipped from his face and he straightened back up, his expression shifting into an aloof look, as though he had just remembered something unpleasant that made him pull back from showing her any affection.
Viola noticed it but didn’t allow herself to dwell on it. She knew she had a tendency to overthink. Instead she said, "Have you eaten?"
"Hmm." He hummed softly, working at the buttons of his shirt. "I ate with some of the Alpha guests who came to Silver for Javier’s funeral." He lied, knowing he couldn’t have eaten anything even if it had been placed directly in front of him, not after what he had discovered, which had not only killed his appetite entirely but ruined his mood and made him deeply regret ever having invited Lara here to dig up the truth and plants seeds of doubts in his head.
"Oh." Viola said, unable to fully mask the disappointment in her voice, since she had cooked for him. The ham had still been warming when she turned the cooker off, and she could have redone it quickly, but he had already eaten.
"Have you?" He returned the question, giving her a sideways glance.
Viola nodded, even though she was no longer hungry despite having been earlier, when she had been waiting for him.
"Are you staying here tonight?" She asked, looking up at him hopefully.
"Yes. But first I need to remove that big baby from your lap, she’s occupying a space that isn’t hers. Should I wake her up?" He said, leaning down toward his sister, but Viola quickly stopped him.
"Can you carry her to the guest room instead? Don’t wake her, she’s going through some conflict. if you wake her up, her mind will go straight back into overdrive and she won’t be able to sleep again." She said.
Sebastian arched a brow, quietly curious about what conflict could possibly be weighing on his sister so heavily that sleep would abandon her the moment she woke. He leaned in and lifted Zoe carefully from the couch, his face coming so close to his wife’s in the process that they were barely a breath apart, his eyes dropping briefly to her lips, but he pulled back just as she began to lean in, and carried his sister up the stairs, taking that addictive scent of his with him.
Viola sat there staring after him with a small frown. "Am I overthinking his behavior again, or is he actually avoiding kissing me?" She said aloud to the empty room.
A few minutes later it became clear to her that she hadn’t been overthinking it at all. As they lay in bed together, Sebastian was flat on his back, hands tucked behind his head, staring at the ceiling without blinking and without saying a word. He hadn’t moved to touch her. He hadn’t spoken since returning from settling Zoe in the guest room, he had only looked her over briefly when he came back to find her changed into her silk nightdress, and then walked to the bed and taken this position, where he had been lying in silence for the past twenty minutes.
"How was your day?" She asked, opening a conversation, because his quietness was baffling after the morning they had shared when he had barely been able to let her leave his office.
"As usual. Stressful." He muttered.
She waited a moment, then tried again. "Have they left for Mexico yet, Mrs. Kade I mean?"
He only hummed in response.
"Did you know Laila found her fated mate?" She tried, believing this might actually pull him out of wherever his head had gone since he once had a history with the shewolf.
He turned only his head and looked at her with a slight frown. "She has? Where did you hear that?"
"She came to me herself a few hours ago and told me. And you won’t believe who the man is." She said, feeling quietly relieved that he was at least facing her now and engaging.
"Who?" He asked, fighting the overwhelming urge to reach out and pull her into his arms, to kiss her until neither of them could think straight and tell her he didn’t give a fuck about Laila or anything beyond her. But he couldn’t hold her. Couldn’t kiss her yet, not until he had confirmed what he suspected tomorrow and make plans.
"Doctor Gilbert. She found out he was her fated mate and came to me asking for his contact information." Viola said, smiling a little at the sheer irony of it all. "Isn’t that something?"
Even buried under the weight of everything else pressing on him, it was surprising enough to make his brow lift.
"I’ll be damned. Is that why Zoe was here?" he asked.
And was that why Gilbert had looked so flushed that morning? Sebastian put two and two together and realized Laila and the doctor must have met that morning in the hallway outside his office.
"No, Zoe doesn’t know yet. I haven’t told her." Viola said. "She wouldn’t have wanted me to tell you either, but I think you should know, since you’re the one who raised her. She texted Doctor Gilbert today and confessed her feelings to him. She’s been beating herself up over it ever since and can’t stop regretting it."
Sebastian let out a slow sigh and turned onto his side to face her, his head pillowed against his bent elbow. "I didn’t like how taken she was with that man from the beginning, and now she’s going to walk straight into a heartbreak. I’ve spoiled her too much, she might not take this well at all when she finds out. Why on earth did she text him?" He muttered, the frustration of a protective older brother sitting plainly on his face.
"Please don’t scold her for it. Women go through that, and there is no rule that says a woman can’t make the first move." Viola reasoned, and reached out to place her hand over his, but she noticed him shift back slightly and turn his face toward the ceiling again. She felt the confusion settle in her chest but said nothing about it.
"It’s different when it’s my sister. She shouldn’t have put herself in that position over a man who wasn’t actively showing her attention, it will only feed his ego, if Gilbert even has one. Honestly, I have never met a man more clueless and more absorbed in his work and completely blind to everything else."
Sebastian said, still struggling to picture Laila and the doctor as a pair, though he couldn’t deny he felt a quiet wave of relief that the she-wolf would finally stop circling him and disturbing his life. The problem was that now it was his sister who would pay the price for it.
