Chapter 5 #2
Everything in me stops. Jessica looks toward the hall, her face emptying of all softness.
“No,” I whisper.
She's already standing.
“Jess.”
“Go to the hallway by the laundry room.”
“I can’t?—”
“You can hear from there if you want to hear. You don’t have to be seen.”
The knock comes again. Firm. Not impatient. Desperate in a controlled way. I know that knock. My body knows it before my mind can form his name.
Sebastian.
I move because if I stay frozen in the kitchen, he will see me the second the door opens. My bare feet are silent on the hardwood as I slip into the narrow hallway beside the laundry room. From there, I can see a sliver of the entry reflected in the dark glass of a framed print.
Jessica opens the door.
“Jessica,” Sebastian says.
His voice wrecks me. It shouldn’t. I should be stronger than a voice.
But I know every version of him: Boardroom Sebastian, wry Sebastian, half-asleep Sebastian, and the private version who says my name like a benediction.
This version sounds like he hasn’t slept, like something has been scraped raw.
“No,” Jessica says.
“I need to see her.”
“No.”
“Please.”
The word is quiet. Sebastian does not beg easily. Pride is stitched into him too well. Not arrogance, exactly, though sometimes close enough to wound. Control. Training. The Austen name polished into manners and command. Tonight, he sounds stripped of all of it.
I press my hand to my mouth.
Jessica doesn’t move. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
“Did she say that?”
“She doesn’t have to.”
“I need to hear it from her.”
“You don’t get to need things from her right now.”
Silence.
Then Sebastian says, “Is she safe?”
My eyes burn.
Jessica’s voice shifts, just barely. “Yes.”
“Is she eating?”
“Barely.”
A sound leaves him. Not a sob. Not quite. Worse, somehow.
“Tell her I’m sorry,” he says.
“I’m not your messenger.”
“I know. I know, and I’m not asking you to fix this. I just—” He stops, then breathes. “I didn’t cheat on my wife.”
My whole body goes cold.
Jessica says nothing.
“I was in Katrina’s suite because there was a campaign issue,” he says.
“It was late. It was stupid. I turned my phone off because everyone kept calling, and I thought if I had ninety minutes to solve the problem, I could still get home. I was wrong. I was so wrong I don’t know how to look at it directly without wanting to put my fist through a wall. ”
“Try looking anyway,” Jessica says.
“I am.”
“Good.”
“I should have been home. I should have answered Chloe. I should never have put myself in a position where those photos could exist. I know that. But nothing happened.”
I close my eyes. Nothing happened. The words should lift something. Instead, they slide into all the other hurt and disappear under it.
Jessica’s voice is hard. “You expect me to take your word for that?”
“No.” A pause. “No, I don’t. But I’m telling the truth.”
“Congratulations.”
“Jessica.”
“No, don’t Jessica me like we’re having a difficult but civilized family brunch. My sister arrived here last night looking like someone had cut the floor out from under her. She took off her wedding ring, Sebastian.”
“I know.”
“She cried until she couldn’t stand.”
Another silence.
When Sebastian speaks again, his voice is lower. “I found her ring on the dresser. I picked it up, and I thought…” He stops. “I thought I had lost the only part of my life that has ever felt like mine.”
My knees weaken. I grip the wall.
Jessica is quiet for a long moment. When she answers, there is less fire and more grief. “Then why didn’t you treat her like that before the world watched you humiliate her?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer lands harder than an excuse would have.
“I can give reasons,” he says. “The launch. My mother. The pressure. Katrina’s contract.
The board. All of it is true, and none of it is an answer.
I failed her.” He inhales. “Please. Five minutes. She can hate me to my face if she wants. She can tell me to leave. I will leave. I just need to see her.”
My hand moves to my bare finger.
For one terrifying second, I almost step out. I almost go to him because he sounds like my husband, because he says he didn’t cheat, and because some starved part of me wants to believe that if I can see his face, the world will rearrange itself into something survivable.
Then I remember Katrina’s hand on his arm. His smile. The ring on the dresser. The way I waited.
I stay where I am.
Jessica looks toward the hall. I can’t see her face clearly, but I feel the question in the silence. I shake my head, even though she can’t see me. Maybe she does anyway.
“She’s not coming to the door,” Jessica says.
The words hurt like I’m saying them myself.
Sebastian is quiet so long I wonder if he’s left. Then I hear something small, a shift, a breath.
“Okay,” he says. It doesn’t sound okay. “I have her ring. I didn’t want to leave it at the house. It belongs with her.”
My chest cracks.
Jessica’s voice softens despite herself. “Sebastian.”
“Please. Don’t ask her to put it on. Don’t tell her anything from me if she doesn’t want to hear it. Just keep it safe.” A pause. Then Jessica says, “Give it to me.”
I imagine his hand opening, the ring dropping from his palm into hers, and that small, bright circle passing between them like evidence.
“I love her,” he says.
“Okay,” Jessica replies.
The door closes a few moments later.
I stay in the hallway until Jessica finds me there, one hand on the wall, knees trembling, face wet.
She holds out her palm. My ring rests in the center of it.
For a second, I can’t touch it. I can only stare. It looks impossibly small for something that has carried so much weight.
“He looked terrible,” Jessica says.
I laugh once, broken and sharp. “Good.”
“Yeah.” She swallows.
I pick up the ring. The metal is warm from her hand, or maybe from his. I don’t know which thought hurts more.
Jessica watches me carefully. “You don’t have to decide tonight.”
I close my fingers around it.
Sebastian came here. He gave it back. He said he didn’t cheat. He said he failed me. I don’t know if that’s enough. It isn’t enough. It can’t be. But something restless rises under the numbness, painful and sudden.
“I need to talk to him,” I say.
Jessica blinks. “Now?”
“If I wait, I’ll lose my nerve.”
“Honey, you are exhausted.”
“I know.”
“And hurt.”
“I know that, too.”
I look at her, and my face crumples before I can stop it. “I need to hear him say it to me.”
Jessica’s expression breaks open. She steps closer. “Okay.”
“I don’t know if I’m going back.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know if I can forgive him.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I just need to know.”
She nods once, then reaches for the hook by the door and takes down her keys. “Take my car.”
I wrap my fingers around the keys and the ring at the same time.
Outside, the air is cool enough to clear my head by inches. Jessica stands on the porch in her sweatshirt, arms folded tight against herself.
“Call me if you need me,” she says.
“I will.”
“Call me if you don’t need me but want me.”
“I will.”
“And Chloe?”
I pause beside her car.
“If you get there and can’t go in, come back. That’s still an answer.”
My throat tightens. “Okay.”
I slide into the driver’s seat. The car smells like cinnamon gum and bakery boxes. For one moment, I sit with the keys in my lap and my wedding ring pressed into my palm. Then I start the engine.
The road to the house is dark and familiar. Too familiar. Every turn knows me. Every streetlight feels like a witness. I drive toward the life I left last night with no idea whether I’m going there to retrieve it, bury it, or finally ask what it has become.
My ring stays closed inside my fist the whole way.