Virtue and Vice

Chapter Three

A/N: Since you guys have been so great in voting for the first couple of chapters just hours after I posted them, here's the third instalment. Let's hear some comments, shall we? Things are finally heating up and I want to know what you think.

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It had been three weeks since I came to Cove Manor and once again, Sebastian made himself scarce.

I could hardly blame him.

If I were him, I’d also avoid the attentions of an infatuated school girl who made advances at every opportunity.

I was mortified by our last conversation but like how I dealt with most of the unfortunate circumstances in my life, I got over it and pushed myself to carry on.

There wasn’t anything else to do about it.

After he left me, I’d stayed behind and picked at my food. Finally, I walked the rest of the way down to the beach where I’d unstrapped my sandals and walked barefoot along the shore, enjoying the solitude nature offered to my inner riot.

I came here as a virgin prize to a complete stranger who wanted nothing to do with me.

I should be relieved and not dejected by the fact. 

I was seventeen and my life had been less than ideal.

I never had the chance to be in love or come close to anything like it but I had the most nagging suspicion that Sebastian Vice irrevocably became part of my soul the first day I looked into his eyes.

But there was nothing to be done about it, really.

Not when I was just merely a passing distraction which I confirmed when I’d walked back up the stairs from my walk along the shore and saw him standing by the balcony of Aurora’s room that overlooked the beach, his arms wrapped around his exotic goddess, his expression fierce and passionate as their mouths melded. 

I couldn’t compete with that and like anyone who couldn’t lose what little they had, I picked my battles and this wasn’t one of them.

I longed for my happily-ever-afters and wanted to sink back into their temporary happiness.

No wonder romance novels were sold everywhere—happily-ever-afters were rare in reality. It’s been missing in my life for a long time and I’ve only really just noticed.

I did find a cozy and charming little bookstore in town called Dover’s. I discovered it when I accompanied Mrs. Simmons on an errand at Seaside’s shopping center which was really only a few blocks of small local business that sold anything from food and household goods to souvenir items and specialty products.

I’ve ventured back into the bookshop on my spare time, walking the twenty-minute distance and spending an hour or two of my day there when the Mrs. Simmons and the staff shooed me off to go out and enjoy.

The owner was a nice, older lady named Francine and helping her around was her son Ty who was home for the summer. He’s nineteen, returning to Georgetown as a sophomore in the fall, and he was tall, lanky and cute with his sandy blond hair and blue eyes—everything a boy-next-door should be.

I didn’t really have money to buy books and Ty seemed to have known this without me saying anything. He always let me sit by the store’s bay window and let me read the book I’d started and left behind from my previous visit. He’d make coffee and share a cup with me and when we’re both not reading and the store was quiet in the early afternoon, we’d talk.

I’ve mostly evaded his questions about my background but he knew I was staying at Cove Manor for the summer. 

Ty was smart and charming and I once caught myself looking at him while he read, and I realized that he would’ve been the ideal boyfriend. He was the exact opposite of the dark, brooding man who lurked in the shadows of my current castle.