Chapter 44 Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
I stare blindly at the screen full of numbers I haven’t processed for the last ten minutes.
The office is quiet—clean, controlled, predictable. The kind of environment that usually settles my brain.
But right now, it doesn’t.
My pen taps once against the paper. Instead of the quarterly report in front of me, I see Ivy in the café. Her smile aimed at him, laughter floating in the air.
I see Aaron looking at her like he has the right to. His gaze was too familiar. Too comfortable.
I see the exact second Ivy’s laughter shifts in her throat when I walk in. Like her body recognized me before her eyes did.
And I see my steps eating the distance between us. Taking up space. Making the air change.
I don’t truly believe Aaron is a threat. Yet I asserted control anyway.
It was instinct, I tell myself. It was reasonable.
Considering my past, it makes sense why I reacted the way I did.
But the truth needles at me in the quiet like a splinter digging into my skin.
I didn’t just walk in and claim the room.
I claimed her.
My jaw tightens.
It was protection hiding insecurity.
My phone vibrates on the desk. I glance at the screen, freezing when I see Ivy’s name.
For half a second, something warm shifts low in my chest.
Then the warmth turns sharp—because I know this isn’t a cute check-in. She wouldn’t call me for nothing. She’d text. She’d send something teasing. Something unhinged and sweet.
I answer, my tone neutral. “Hey.”
Her voice is calm when it comes through the speaker. “Hi.”
No sweetness. No playful lilt. Just Ivy—contained and measured. Like she’s already taken her emotions apart and filed them neatly in drawers.
That’s worse than yelling.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yes.” A beat. “Are you?”
The question is a blade wrapped in velvet.
“I’m fine.”
“Mm.” I hear her exhale, slow and controlled. “I’m not calling to fight.”
That’s not comforting. That’s a warning.
“I’m calling because I want to understand what that was.”
I lean back in my chair, staring out the window overlooking the street below. Cars move like they’re obeying laws. People walk as if nothing will happen to them today.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, and regret it immediately.
Silence crackles.
Then she says evenly, “I’m not fragile.”
My throat tightens. “I never said you were.”
“You didn’t have to.” Her tone doesn’t change. “You walked in like you were about to pull me out by my hair.”
I shut my eyes for a second. “That wasn’t what that was. I walked in—”
“No.” She cuts in, still calm. “You took over. You didn’t even ask me what was happening.”
My hand curls around my pen until my knuckles ache. “Ivy—”
“You don’t get to decide who’s a threat,” she says. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
Each word lands clean and brutal.
I swallow. “I saw the way he was looking at you.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t like it.”
I expect her to snap back, but she doesn’t. She takes a breath like she’s making herself stay grounded.
“After everything,” she says quietly, “you don’t trust me?”
That hits harder than anger ever could.
Because she’s right. This isn’t about a stranger in a café. It’s my insecurities from my past coming back to haunt me, threatening what we’ve been building.
I rub my thumb along the edge of my desk. “I trust you,” I say, but it comes out flat. I hear the tone even as I say it—how insufficient it sounds.
“Do you?” she asks. “Because it didn’t feel like it.”
I sit forward again. My voice stays steady out of habit, not calm. “I don’t like unknown variables.”
There’s a beat of silence before she speaks. “Ah.” Her tone shifts, slightly dry. “So I’m a variable.”
“No.” I exhale. “The situation.”
“You mean the café?”
“I mean environments I can’t account for,” I say, and I hate that I sound like I’m explaining a security plan instead of talking to a woman I can’t stop thinking about. “I don’t trust people.”
I can almost see her expression. Chin lifted, eyes narrowed, filing my words away like evidence.
“You don’t know what people are capable of,” I add.
She laughs once, not amused. “Sebastian, I’m a grown woman who has taken care of my father after my mother’s death. A college student studying behavioral psychology. I know exactly what people are capable of.”
That’s true.
And still, my body doesn’t care. My instincts don’t care. My brain doesn’t care.
The image of her smiling at Aaron behind the counter keeps flashing in my mind like a warning sign.
“You’re too open,” I say before I can stop myself.
There’s silence for a few beats.
Then a humorless laugh comes through the line. “Wow.”
Regret cuts through me like a blade. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did,” she says, voice steady, but there’s something in it now. A small fracture. A shift in the foundation. “You mean exactly what you just said.”
I stand up. I don’t know why. Like moving will fix it. Like pacing will undo my words. “Ivy.”
“I’m not an idiot, Sebastian.”
“You assume people are harmless,” I hear myself say, doubling down like an idiot. Like a man who can’t stand being wrong even when he knows he is.
Another beat of silence.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I’m fucking up. Bad.
When she speaks again, the calm is gone. She doesn’t yell, but her tone is sharp. “You don’t get to rewrite my instincts because yours are louder.”
My chest tightens.
“I didn’t ask you to protect me,” she continues. “I didn’t ask you to come in and—” Her breath catches. She steadies it. “I chose you. Don’t punish me for that.”
The words land and something in me goes dead quiet.
Because I realize—too late—what I’ve done.
I’m not treating the world like a risk. I’m treating her like one.
I stop pacing.
My office door is closed and locked out of habit. A line between me and everything else.
My mind flashes—without warning—to a different door. A different house. A different kind of silence.
Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that comes after something breaks. The kind that never fully lifts again.
I don’t think of my father at first.
I think of the lock on my bedroom door.
The way my fingers used to check it twice. Three times. Even when I knew it was already secured.
I think of the quiet in the hallway at night. The heaviness in the air. The way the house held its breath like it was waiting for something else to happen.
I think of my mother—sharp, impatient, exhausted by grief she didn’t want to carry. Exhausted by the way it ruined the picture of us she’d spent years arranging.
I think of Drew, small and quiet, watching me like I was the only thing left in the world that made sense.
And then it clicks. The night my father died, the house went quiet in a way that never lifted.
The sound wasn’t what stayed with me. It was the aftermath. The stillness. The before-and-after line carved into our lives.
My mother needed things to look fine. She needed schedules, routines, and performance.
And I learned what happened when you let emotion be in the open.
Emotion was dangerous.
Love meant responsibility.
Responsibility meant vigilance.
Because if you didn’t watch closely enough, someone slipped away. And you were left standing in a quiet house, staring at a door that would never open again.
My throat tightens.
The last time I loved something this easily, it ended in a body bag.
I flinch at the thought.
Even though I loved responsibility, I still failed.
My hand drags over my face.
This is what Ivy doesn’t understand. Because I’ve never told her.
I don’t fear commitment. I fear being trusted and failing anyway. I fear her looking at me like I’m her safe place… and finding out I’m not enough.
I swallow hard, forcing air into my lungs.
Attachment isn’t the danger. Complacency is.
And she makes me want to believe the world won’t take her.
My phone is still pressed to my ear.
Ivy is still there. Waiting.
I take a breath and try to step out of the control I live inside.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel small,” I say quietly.
Her answer comes faster than I expected. “You did.”
The simple truth slices clean.
I close my eyes. I’ve neutralized corporate disasters with less fallout than this conversation.
“I don’t think you’re weak,” I say. “That’s not what this is.”
“What is it, then?” she asks. I hear the hurt tucked beneath her control.
I should tell her the truth.
Because I can’t stand the idea of you being harmed and it being my fault.
Because I don’t know how to love anything without guarding it like it will be taken.
Instead, my mouth betrays me. “I’m not wrong to be careful,” I say.
I hear how it sounds. I know it’s not the answer she needs.
There’s another pause.
Then Ivy exhales a low, disappointed sigh. “Okay.”
The word somehow sounds final.
“Ivy—”
“I’ll see you later,” she says, still calm again. Guarding herself now. “Have a good rest of your day.”
And then the call ends, and I’m left standing in my office with the phone still in my hand, the silence loud around me.
Control has always kept me alive.
I just didn’t realize it might cost me her.