18. What He Tells Vanessa
Eighteen
What He Tells Vanessa
Sebastian’s POV
The Whitfield acquisition closed formally on a Monday, which meant a final round of paperwork, a handshake in a conference room full of lawyers, and, afterward, Vanessa lingering by the elevator bank in a way that told me she wanted a conversation I’d been putting off having properly.
“Drink?” she asked. “To celebrate. Properly, this time — no misunderstandings.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Because of the kiss.” She said it plainly, without embarrassment, which I’d always respected about her, even now. “I understand, Sebastian. I embarrassed myself. I’d like to at least talk about it like adults instead of pretending it didn’t happen.”
We found a quiet corner of the lobby instead — public enough to keep things honest, private enough for an actual conversation.
“I owe you a better explanation than I gave you that night,” I said. “I’ve been in therapy. I understand some things now I didn’t understand then.”
“Go on.”
“When you came back into my life, I mistook something for desire that wasn’t actually desire at all.
I was exhausted, Vanessa — genuinely, deeply exhausted, in a way I hadn’t let myself acknowledge because Cole Capital doesn’t leave much room for acknowledging exhaustion.
And you represented a version of my life before any of that weight existed.
Seeing you felt like relief. I confused that relief with wanting you back, specifically, instead of understanding it as wanting an escape from a life that had gotten too heavy. ”
Vanessa was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. “That’s not exactly a compliment.”
“It’s not meant to be a compliment. It’s meant to be the truth, because you deserve better than a comfortable half-answer, and so does Claire, and honestly, so do I.
” I held her gaze. “I don’t want you, Vanessa.
I want to be completely clear about that, so there’s no ambiguity left for either of us to sit with.
What I felt wasn’t about you as a person.
It was about what you accidentally represented.
I’m sorry it cost you something to be the mirror I needed. That wasn’t fair to you.”
She looked at me for a long moment, something moving behind her eyes that I couldn’t fully read — disappointment, maybe, or something closer to a private grief of her own, some old door finally, definitively closing.
“For what it’s worth,” she said finally, “I don’t think I wanted you back either. Not really. I think I wanted to know that leaving hadn’t been a mistake — that some part of you still needed proof I’d been worth loving. That’s an ugly thing to admit, but it’s true.”
“You were worth loving,” I said honestly. “You still are. Just not by me. Not anymore.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not anymore.” She stood, gathering her coat, something in her posture settling, some tension I hadn’t fully noticed until it released. “Good luck with your wife, Sebastian. I mean that. She sounds like she deserves the version of you that’s finally showing up.”
“Thank you. For understanding. And for not making this harder than it needed to be.”
“I’m not a villain in this story,” she said, not unkindly. “I never wanted to be. I just happened to be standing in the wrong place at a moment when you were looking for an exit.”
She left, and I stood in the lobby for a long time after, feeling something settle in my own chest that I hadn’t expected — not triumph, not relief, exactly. Something closer to clarity. A door closed cleanly, honestly, without leaving anything unresolved behind it.
I thought about Claire’s studio, the drafting table, the woman who’d told me plainly that she couldn’t hand me a list of instructions because I needed to learn how to sit with uncertainty on my own.
I understood, standing there, that closing the door on Vanessa wasn’t the hard part. It had never really been the hard part, whatever I’d told myself for three confused weeks.
The hard part was still ahead of me — becoming, consistently, in small unglamorous daily ways, the kind of man who didn’t need a mirror or a crisis or a therapist’s careful questions to remember that presence was the entire point of loving someone.
I didn’t call Claire that night. I didn’t send anything. I’d learned that much, at least.
I went home, and I sat with the quiet, and I started, slowly and without any guarantee it would be enough, to become someone worth choosing again.