65 #3
"Yes."
"Why?"
The question was soft.
It still frightened her.
She could have said because Trevor told me to.
That would be true in sequence and false in meaning.
Trevor had encouraged the call, but he had not created the desire.
Dorothy had opened Sebastian's contact before Trevor became noble enough to wound her.
She had checked her phone all morning. She had missed him in every room he was not beside her.
"Because I missed you," she said.
Sebastian's eyes changed.
The distance he had held for days seemed to tremble, not vanishing, but weakening under the weight of what he wanted to believe.
Dorothy saw it and felt both relief and fear.
"I missed you," she repeated, because the first time had been too quiet and perhaps not enough. "Not your protection. Not the public appearance. Not having someone manage the room. You."
For one brief, dangerous second, Sebastian looked as if he might reach for her.
Then he stopped himself.
The restraint hurt more now because she had asked for closeness without yet answering everything that stood between them.
"Dorothy," he said, voice rougher than before. "Do not say that because Vanessa frightened you."
"I'm not."
"Do not say it because Trevor told you to call."
She flinched.
He saw.
His expression sharpened. "He did."
Dorothy closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them, Sebastian's face had gone guarded again.
"He told me not to lose someone good because of him," she said.
The words entered him like a blade carefully placed.
Sebastian looked away.
"Of course he did," he said.
The bitterness was quiet, but there.
Dorothy's chest tightened. "He was trying to help."
"I know."
"Sebastian."
"I know," he repeated, then gave a short breath that was almost a laugh and almost pain. "That is the problem, isn't it? He keeps doing the right thing now, and I keep having to be decent about the fact that it moves you."
Dorothy had no answer that would not wound.
Sebastian looked back at her. "Did you call because he told you to?"
"No."
"Did his words make it easier?"
Dorothy hesitated.
The hesitation answered.
Sebastian's face closed another careful degree.
She hated it. Hated the truth. Hated that she could not undo the order in which things had happened.
"Yes," she said. "But not because he pushed me toward you. Because he made me realize I was afraid to lose you."
Sebastian's expression flickered.
Dorothy stepped closer this time.
He did not move back.
"I am still confused," she said. "I am still carrying things I do not know how to put down. I still do not have the answer you deserve about every room Trevor occupies in me. But I know this much. When you pulled away, something in my life felt wrong. When Vanessa answered your phone,
I was jealous because you matter. Not because I need a shield. Not because I want to punish Trevor. Because I do not want her anywhere near what is becoming important to me."
The words left her shaken.
Sebastian stood very still.
Then, quietly, "What is becoming important?"
Dorothy's throat tightened.
"You," she said.
The single word changed the air.
Not enough to solve everything.
Enough to make both of them feel the possibility of something still alive beneath the damage.
Sebastian looked at her for a long moment. "That is not the same as choosing me."
"I know."
His eyes softened with pain and longing at once. "But it is the first thing you have said that feels like it belongs only to us."
Dorothy's breath caught.
Only to us.
The phrase entered a room inside her that had nothing to do with Trevor, nothing to do with Vanessa, nothing to do with public statements or fake contracts or pitying headlines. It was small, fragile, frightening. But it was theirs.
Before she could respond, Hale approached from the end of the corridor with Marianne beside him. Both looked grim.
"We need to move," Hale said. "Security found evidence Vanessa accessed the mezzanine using credentials connected to Adrian Vale's assistant. She may still be in the building."
Sebastian's expression hardened at once. "Lock down the speaker exits."
"Already underway," Marianne said.
Dorothy looked at Sebastian. "She is still trying to use you."
"She failed."
"Did she?"
His gaze returned to hers.
The question had slipped out before Dorothy could soften it. It was not only about Vanessa's ambush now. It was about the distance, the jealousy, Trevor's selfless wound, the fact that every move Vanessa made seemed to find a real fault line because real fault lines already existed.
Sebastian studied her face.
"What are you asking me?" he said.
Dorothy knew what she should ask. Did she threaten you? Did she give you evidence? Did she mention Adrian? Did she try to record you? All useful questions. All legal. All safe.
But the unsafe question rose first.
The ugliest one.
The one Vanessa had planted and Dorothy hated herself for needing to hear denied in plain words.
Her voice came quietly.
"Did you use Vanessa to provoke me?"