“A motorcycle spill.

Years ago.

Before your time.” And he said it smoothly enough, and reached for me, and meant for the moment to move on.

But that single second, that fractional catch, ran through my veins like ice water, because I knew something he had apparently forgotten I knew.

Sebastian had never owned a motorcycle.

Sebastian had been, if anything, cautious to a fault about exactly that kind of thing; his own brother used to tease him for driving like a grandmother.

There had been no motorcycle, and there had been no spill, and the scar he was explaining away was not his at all but his brother’s, made by glass in a bathroom he claimed never to have shared.