18. Sebastian
— ? —
Sebastian
Ten days of silence.
The calls go unanswered. Every single one, morning, afternoon, evening, late at night when sleep won’t come and her name is the only thing in my head. The phone rings and rings, and then voicemail, and then nothing.
The texts sit unread for hours before the little checkmarks appear. She’s seeing them. She’s just not responding.
The flowers were the worst idea. An enormous bouquet of peonies, the ones I remembered from the vow renewal, the flowers she arranged herself, delivered to the borrowed apartment with a card that said simply I’m sorry. Please call me.
Nothing.
She’s building a life without me, and I can’t blame her for it. I did what I always do, made the call, took control, decided I knew better. Moved the pieces on the board without asking if the pieces wanted to be moved.
Just like when I picked her off that list and handed her to my brother.
My whole life has been spent being right. Being strategic. Seeing three moves ahead while everyone else is still figuring out their first. Winning.
I don’t want to win anymore.
I want her.
The borrowed apartment is in a part of the city the Sterling name has never reached, walk-ups and bodegas and laundromats, a corner where no one cares who I am because no one here has ever heard of me.
I stand outside her door for five minutes before I knock.
The hallway smells like someone’s dinner. The fluorescent light above me flickers. My hand hovers over the wood, paralyzed by the certainty that whatever happens next will determine everything.
I knock.
Footsteps. A pause, probably checking the peephole. Then the lock clicks, and the door swings open.
Noelle looks exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes, hair pulled back in a messy knot, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that’s too big for her. She looks like she’s been crying and decided to stop.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Sebastian.”
“I need to say something.” The words come out rushed, desperate. “You don’t have to forgive me. You don’t have to take me back. But I need you to hear it.”
She doesn’t respond. Just steps aside and lets me in.
The room is small. Smaller than I expected, a twin bed shoved against one wall, a desk covered in papers, a single window looking out onto a brick wall. A suitcase sits in the corner, half-packed, like she’s getting ready to leave for somewhere.
My chest tightens at the sight of it.
The folder is in my hands. I’ve been carrying it for three days, waiting for the courage to do this.
I hold it out to her.
“What’s this?”
“Everything I fought for.” My voice is steady, even though my hands are not. “Everything I spent my whole life clawing back from my brother. My share of all of it. The name, the place, the things that were supposed to make me matter.”
She takes the folder. Flips through the papers. Her brow furrows as she reads.
“I signed them into a trust,” I continue. “For you. And for Theo. No strings. Nothing you have to do. It’s yours, whether you ever speak to me again or not.”
She stares at the papers for a long moment. When she looks up, her eyes are searching, confused.
“Why?”
“Because I was wrong about you.” A breath. This is the hardest thing I have ever said, and I have spent a lifetime saying hard things to rooms full of people who wanted me to fail. “I thought you were a name on a contract. A line item. Something my brother got to keep, like furniture.”
I step closer. She doesn’t move away.
“I’ve never been more wrong about anything in my life.”
“Sebastian-”
“I don’t want the company more than I want you.
I don’t want winning more than I want you.
I don’t want anything more than I want you.
” The words pour out now, unstoppable, my voice cracking open on something I’ve kept locked away for thirty-five years.
“I know I don’t deserve it. I know I keep making the same mistake. But if you give me a chance-”
“Stop.”
I stop.
She sets the folder down on the desk. Takes a breath. Her hands are trembling.
“Before you say anything else,” she says quietly, “there’s something you need to know.”
My heart stops.
She won’t quite meet my eyes. Whatever this is, it’s bigger than I’m braced for.
“I’m pregnant.”
The word stops everything. My breath. My hands. Whatever I was about to say next dies in my throat.
Pregnant. She’s pregnant.
“It’s yours,” she continues, her voice shaking now. “From the storm. I found out the day the news broke. I wanted to tell you, but I was so angry, and I didn’t know how to-”
I drop to my knees.
Sebastian Sterling, who has never knelt for anyone, not for his mother, not for anyone, not for any of the powerful people I’ve spent my life managing and manipulating, kneels on the floor of a cramped borrowed apartment and presses my forehead to her stomach.
My whole body is shaking. I press my forehead harder against her stomach because it’s the only thing keeping me upright, and I don’t try to name what’s tearing through me. There isn’t a word big enough.
“Sebastian-”
“I’m sorry.” The words are muffled against her shirt, against the place where our child is growing. “For everything. For five years ago. For last week. For every time I treated you like a piece on a board instead of a person.”
My phone rings. The screen lights up with my mother’s name.
For the first time in my life, I silence it without looking.
“You’re sure?” My voice is hoarse, barely recognizable. “It’s, we’re-”
“I’m sure.”
I look up at her. My eyes are wet. I don’t care.
“I want this,” I say. “I want you. I want to be better than I’ve been. I want-”
She steps back.
Not far. Just enough that my hands fall away from her, just enough to put cold air where her warmth was, and the loss of her is immediate and total.
“No,” she says. “Not yet. You don’t get to kneel and cry and have me hand it all back like the last ten days didn’t happen.”
I stay on the floor. I deserve the floor.
“I’m only going to say this once, so hear me.
” Her voice doesn’t shake now. It’s the steadiest I’ve ever heard it.
“I spent five years with a man who decided things for me and called it love. Where I lived. What I signed. What I was allowed to know about my own life. You did the same thing. You went to the press about my name, my reputation, my sister, and you decided you knew better than me what I could handle.”
“Noelle-”
“I’m not finished.” I go quiet. “If you ever make a choice that’s mine to make again, I will take this baby and I will go.
I will build a good life without you and I will not look back.
I already survived losing everything once.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I can’t survive losing you too.
I can. I would hate every day of it. But I can.
I need you to believe that, because I mean it all the way down. ”
The worst part is that I do believe her. Every word. It isn’t a threat. She’s just telling me where the edge is, the way you’d warn someone about a step that isn’t there.
“I believe you,” I say.
“Then know that I’m choosing you anyway. Not because of the baby. Not because I have to.” Her eyes go wet. “Because I love you, you controlling, impossible man, and I’m furious that I do. This is the only second chance you get. There is no third.”
“There won’t need to be.”
“There better not.”
She kisses me.
Her hands cup my face, pulling me up to meet her, and her mouth finds mine with a certainty that undoes me. I rise from my knees without breaking the kiss, wrapping my arms around her, holding on in case she changes her mind and pulls away.
What follows is slow and certain.
Nothing like the frantic first time in that motel, the desperate need to get to each other before sense came back. Nothing like the stolen hours in his office and borrowed rooms, always listening for a knock at the door.
This is two people choosing each other with their eyes wide open.
I lay her down on the too-small bed and worship every inch of her body. My mouth traces paths down her neck, across her collarbone, between her breasts. My hands learn her all over again, every curve, every soft place, every spot that makes her gasp and arch into my touch.
When I finally sink into her, we both go still.
“Look at me,” I whisper.
Her eyes meet mine. Open. Vulnerable. Trusting me in a way I haven’t earned yet but am desperate to deserve.
I move slowly, deeply, watching her face as the pleasure builds between us. Her nails dig into my back. Her legs wrap around my waist.
“I love you.” It comes out of me on a stroke, low and rough, my voice cracking on the word the way nothing has cracked me in years. “I love you. I should have said it to your face, not buried in a text. I should have said it the first night in that car. I love you, and I’m done being afraid of it.”
Her breath stutters. Her eyes go wet.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.” I press it into her mouth, into her jaw, into the damp skin of her throat, every word landing with every stroke of my body. “I love you. I love you.”
She breaks with my name on her lips and my confession still warm against her skin, and I follow her over the edge, holding her so tight there’s no telling where she ends and I begin.
The bed is too small. My feet hang off the end. One of my arms is going numb from being pinned beneath her.
I’ve never been more comfortable in my life.
“I’m still angry at you,” she says eventually, her head resting on my chest.
“I know.”
“You’re going to have to earn this. Every day. For a long time.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not moving into your apartment. We find somewhere new. Together.”
“Whatever you want.”
“And the card.” Her accounts thawed the morning it all came apart for Dorian, the freeze lifted as quietly as it came, never anything but a leash to begin with. “It’s already paid back. To the dollar. The day my money came back, that was the first thing I did.”
“I know.” My mouth curves against her hair. “I saw the transfer. You sent it with no message.”
“You didn’t deserve a message. You deserved the receipt.”
She laughs. It’s the first real laugh I’ve heard from her in ten days, and the sound of it loosens something in my chest that’s been wound tight since the moment she hung up on me.
“This is going to be a disaster,” she says.
“Probably.”
“But it’s our disaster.”
“Yeah.” I pull her closer, press a kiss to her hair, feel the steady beat of her heart against my ribs. “It is.”