27. Reed
Reed
“Good morning,” I say, to a room full of journalists who did not expect me here.
Celeste is three steps behind me. She’s been three steps behind me since I called her half an hour after Mia left and told her what I was going to do. She didn’t try to talk me out of it. That’s how I know she agrees.
I put both hands on the podium and look at the cameras.
“Six weeks ago I approached Mia Calder with a contract. The terms were simple. She would act as my fiancée through the Walsh shareholder meeting and the custody proceedings currently before the court. In exchange, I covered her outstanding rent and paid twelve months in advance,” I say, willing myself to keep my face open to show I’m telling the truth.
“That contract was leaked. The press covered it. The public responded. Before I get to what happened after, I want to say some things I should have said a long time ago.”
The room goes quiet. Cameras stop moving, microphones dip forward, and nobody types anything for a full three seconds.
“My marriage to Vanessa Hawthorne ended because she was unfaithful. That’s documented, signed, and done.
I’ve let that be the whole story for two years because it was the easiest story to tell.
” I keep my hands flat on the podium. “But it’s not the whole story.
We got married too young, for the wrong reasons, and I spent most of that marriage at a desk.
Not because the company needed me to, but because I was better at running a company than I was at being a husband, and I knew it, and it was easier to stay late in the office than to go home and face that.
” I pause for a moment. “Vanessa made her choices. I’m not here to relitigate them.
But I built a marriage with no space in it for either of us to actually be happy, and then when it fell apart I made sure I came out looking like the victim, and I had the lawyers and the documentation to pull it off.
” I look at the cameras. “That wasn’t right.
She deserved better than what I gave her in that marriage, and I deserved better than what she did at the end of it, but neither of those things cancels the other out. ”
A few journalists shift in their seats, but none of them interrupt.
“We were doomed from the start,” I say. “That’s a hard thing to say out loud about the mother of my child, but it’s true.
We thought we were in love, but we were ambitious and young and we made sense on paper, and for a long time I mistook that for enough.
When it ended I fought the way I fight everything, with every resource I had, because winning felt like the same thing as being right.
It isn’t. I know that now. I just needed to say it somewhere it could be heard. ”
The room is completely still.
“We have a daughter,” I say. “Harper is six years old and she is the single thing I got right in ten years of getting most of it wrong.” I look at the camera. “Whatever Vanessa and I work out going forward, Harper stays out of the middle of it. I’m saying it here because I need to be held to it.”
I take a breath, giving myself a moment.
“Now,” I continue. “Mia Calder.”
I look straight into the camera, imagining she’s watching this wherever she is.
“I fell in love with her,” I say. “I didn’t see it coming and I didn’t handle it well when it arrived.
She’s a better person than I deserve and I accused her of the one thing she would never do.
I knew that when I said it, but I said it anyway, and that’s on me.
” I stop there. “I’ve spent a long time being very good at keeping people at a distance.
She made that harder than I expected, and I’m grateful for it, and I’m sorry it took me this long to say so. ”
I press two fingers to the bridge of my nose, hold them there for a second, and drop them.
“Vanessa and I didn’t fail because of the affair,” I say.
“We failed long before that. We just didn’t have the honesty to admit it.
” I reach into my jacket, set the letter I wrote an hour ago on the podium.
“I thought a relationship was something you managed. Something you kept running through discipline and structure and not letting the cracks show. I was wrong about that too. I know what it’s actually supposed to feel like now. ”
I take a deep breath, preparing myself to give up a big part of my life.
“As the last part of this press conference, effective immediately, I’m resigning as CEO of Hawthorne Group.
” The room breaks open, questions from every direction, cameras firing.
I wait thirty seconds, then raise one hand.
“Walsh closes Wednesday. My resignation doesn’t affect the acquisition.
The executive team is prepared, the transition is clean.
Hawthorne Group is not the story.” I look at the cameras one more time. “That’s all.”
I step back from the podium.
Celeste falls into step beside me before I’ve cleared the press room.
“That was not the approved statement,” she says.
“There was no approved statement,” I say.
“I had one ready.”
“I know you did.” We move into the corridor. “How bad?”
She turns the tablet toward me. The clip is already running, the resignation at the top of every financial feed, the confession about the marriage close behind it.
“The board is going to be furious,” she says.
“The board was going to remove me anyway,” I say. “I got there first.”
“Walsh is protected?”
“Briefed the executive team before I stepped to the podium.”
Celeste puts the tablet under her arm, stops walking, and pulls on my arm, making me stop too. “Reed,” she says softly. “That was the right thing.”
I force myself to smile and nod.
Knox is at the end of the corridor with his arms crossed. He looks at me for a moment, then puts both hands on my shoulders, grips once, and lets go.
“Welcome back to being a person,” he says. “Now find a way to get your girl back.”