Chapter 92
“Yes,” Selena blinked innocently.
“Then, do you like Uncle Caleb?” Valeria asked again.
“I do,” Selena replied.
Caleb’s mother was close to Lucy since they lived in the same neighborhood. Lucy lived alone,
so whenever something broke, like a leaky showerhead or a broken light, Caleb would come by to fix it if he had the time.
Selena had met him many times.
Valeria thought she would get a clear answer. After all, children at that age didn’t have complicated thoughts like adults do.
But Valeria hadn’t expected to actually see a hint of hesitation and thought on Selena’s face.
“Uncle Caleb is nice, but Uncle Sebastian is even better!”
Seeing Valeria’s silence, Selena continued, “Mommy, can Leo and Uncle Sebastian come for my birthday?”
Selena’s birthday was just a week away.
Valeria stroked her hair and said, “Lenny, it’s on Saturday. We’ll be visiting Great-Grandma.”
“Oh,” Selena looked a little disappointed. But she quickly cheered up and threw herself into Valeria’s arms. “Then we can see Great-Grandma on that day. I have so much to tell her, and I even drew her a picture!”
Sebastian took a cab home.
On the way, he opened WhatsApp and saw that Mallory had sent him a message, asking why he
had suddenly disappeared.
He didn’t reply.
What could he even say?
Was he supposed to tell her that he went to Valeria’s place but barely stayed a few minutes? All because he saw a pair of men’s house slippers by the door and Selena’s handmade poster of a family of three and two dogs?
The poster reminded him of something whole-a complete family.
And the whole house was filled with warmth.
Was he supposed to tell Mallory that the apple he ate turned sour in his mouth? That he felt like he didn’t belong there and that he couldn’t sit still?
So he left.
Sebastian never replied to Mallory, but he did respond to a message in the family group chat. Martha had found out that he turned down Sabrina and tried to set him up on another blind date with someone else.
He answered simply, “I’m busy next week. I won’t be free.”
Then Mallory started blowing up his phone with messages, his notifications buzzing like crazy.
She wrote, “I saw you went to Valeria’s neighborhood. Leo told me you know her, so you actually do? I didn’t think you would add her on WhatsApp.”
She added, “What were you doing there? Don’t tell me you wanted to walk her home. Her
husband’s still there.”
Sebastian was getting annoyed with the barrage of messages, and he texted back, “Her
husband is in Amaran.”
Mallory replied, “You even know her husband is overseas?”
Sebastian responded with a simple, “Yes.”
“What do you mean by ‘Yes’? Sebastian, I saw you. You were sitting next to her at Leo’s birthday, and you were touching her back,” Mallory wrote.
“Yes.”
It was the same one-word answer.
Mallory lost it and called him right away.
Although she wanted to start with a storm of questions, she held back. Her first choice of
words was careful.
“Sebastian, are you serious about this?”
Mallory thought she knew Sebastian very well. There was no way her little brother would fall for a married woman with a child.
It wasn’t that she thought Valeria wasn’t good enough. On the contrary, she found Valeria to be beautiful, well-spoken, and composed.
Valeria’s daughter, Selena, was adorable too, and Mallory felt a special bond with the girl at
Chapter 92
first glance.
But Valeria came from an average background. More importantly, she was married. She had a happy family, and Selena was already six years old.
And now Sebastian was barging into someone else’s family.
What kind of mess was this?
Earlier, she had thought she was seeing things. How else could she have seen Sebastian’s fingers brush down Valeria’s back?
