20. Hannah
— ? —
Hannah
I saw his headlights swing onto the street last night, while I was sitting up reading by lamplight, and I crossed the room and switched the lamp off before I could ask myself why.
Watched from the dark window of the apartment I moved into two weeks ago, my own place, finally, paid for with my own salary from the company I built.
A small one-bedroom in East Hollywood, in a neighborhood I actually like, with morning light that streams through east-facing windows and street noise that reminds me I’m not alone in the world.
The boxes are still stacked against the walls, half-unpacked, because I wanted to prove I could do this myself before I made it feel permanent.
Watched Cameron’s car pull up to the curb, the headlights cutting through the dusk like searchlights. Watched him sit there, engine idling, a shadow behind tinted glass, staring up at my window like he could will me to appear.
I stood in the dark with my hand on the lock. I could feel the metal under my fingers, cool and solid. All I had to do was turn it. Walk down the stairs. Let him in.
My thumb traced the edge of the deadbolt. Back and forth. Back and forth.
I thought about his face in my office, the desperation in his voice when he said if you want them signed, you’ll have to take them back from me.
I thought about Violet’s hand on his arm in that photograph, the proprietary curl of her fingers.
I thought about the years of silence and absence and the slow, quiet death of everything we’d built.
I didn’t open the door.
I watched him sit in his car for an hour.
Watched the streetlights come on, watched the sky darken, watched other cars pass and pedestrians walk by without glancing at the man sitting alone in the dark.
At some point he checked his phone, the screen lighting his face for a moment, still handsome, even in profile, even from three floors up, even when I hated him.
Then he drove away.
I stood at the window long after his taillights disappeared, my hand still on the lock I hadn’t turned, wondering if I’d made the right choice.
This morning, I make coffee in my own kitchen.
The machine was a housewarming gift from Summer, an Italian espresso maker that probably cost more than my first month’s rent at this place.
Completely unnecessary for someone who mostly drinks regular drip, but Summer insisted, and I’ve learned not to argue with Summer about gifts.
The coffee is good. Strong and dark and exactly what I need after a sleepless night of staring at shadows.
My apartment is quiet in the morning light.
The boxes cast long shadows across the hardwood floors: clothes I still need to hang, books I still need to shelve, pieces of the life I’m trying to rebuild.
I moved in two weeks ago and I’ve unpacked maybe half of it.
The kitchen is functional. The bedroom is livable. Everything else can wait.
This is mine. This small space with its morning light and its street noise and its boxes of possibility. I paid for it with money I earned from a company I built. No Jasper name on the lease. A salary I work for, every dollar of it. Just me.
The TV plays in the background, some morning show I’m not really watching, hosts chattering about celebrity gossip and weather forecasts and all the small dramas that fill the space between actual news.
I half-listen while I drink my coffee, scrolling through emails on my phone, trying to focus on work instead of the man who sat outside my window for an hour last night.
Then Cameron’s face fills the screen.
I freeze with the coffee cup halfway to my lips.
“…shocking resignation from his family’s company, which Cameron Jasper has run for the past eight years.
Sources close to the family say the decision comes amid ongoing personal difficulties and the recent photo scandal that has dominated headlines, with everyone asking the same question: what would make a man walk away from an empire… ”
He quit.
I muted every news alert after the photos hit because I couldn’t stomach our names in one more headline. So this is how I find out. A day late, from a morning show I wasn’t even watching.
The words don’t make sense. I hear them, understand them individually, but they don’t add up to anything real.
Cameron walked away from his billion-dollar empire. The company his grandfather founded, his father built, the legacy he was raised from birth to inherit and protect. The thing his mother holds more sacred than her own children. The thing that was always, always more important than me.
For me.
I set the coffee cup down before I drop it.
The knock comes at noon.
I’ve spent the morning in a daze, oscillating between hope and terror, refreshing news sites for updates, reading analysis of what the resignation means, looking for some explanation that isn’t the obvious one.
Maybe he was forced out. Maybe the board demanded it.
Maybe the photo scandal was worse than I realized, bad enough to end careers.
But every article says the same thing: Cameron Jasper resigned voluntarily, effective immediately, citing personal reasons and a desire to “focus on what matters most.”
By the time I hear his knock, three sharp raps, the same pattern he’s always used, the one I can identify even in my sleep, my nerves are so frayed I nearly don’t answer.
But I do. Because I’ve never been good at not answering when Cameron calls.
He looks terrible. His suit is rumpled and creased like he’s been in it since yesterday, and I’d bet everything he never went home, never changed, never slept.
Dark circles shadow his eyes, and there’s a gray tinge to his skin that wasn’t there yesterday.
His hair is disheveled, like he’s been running his hands through it for hours.
He looks like a man who’s burned down his whole life and isn’t sure yet if it was worth it.
“Before you say anything-”
“You quit?”
“Yes.”
“Your company. Your legacy. Everything your family spent three generations building.”
“Yes.”
“Cameron.” I hear my own voice like it’s coming from far away. “Are you insane?”
“Hannah.” He steps forward, and I step back, and somehow we end up inside my apartment with the door closing behind us.
The space feels smaller with him in it, his presence filling the room the way it always has, overwhelming and magnetic and impossible to ignore.
“I don’t care about any of that. I never did, not really. ”
“That’s bullshit. You cared. You cared more about that company than you ever cared about me.”
“No.” He shakes his head, and I see the exhaustion in every line of his body, the slump of his shoulders, the heaviness in his limbs. “The company was my parents’ dream, not mine. It was the thing I was supposed to want, the person I was supposed to be. But it was never what made me happy.”
“And what makes you happy?”
“You.” He says it simply, without hesitation, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Like it doesn’t cost him anything to admit.
“Dancing with you in the kitchen with the smoke alarm going off. Watching you laugh at my terrible jokes. Falling asleep with your head on my chest and waking up to find you’ve stolen all the blankets.
” His voice cracks. “That’s what made me happy.
The company was just what I did while I waited to come home to you. ”
“Then why did you choose it over me?” The question comes out sharper than I intend, all the hurt I’ve been carrying finally finding words. “For years, Cam. Years of late nights and missed dinners and empty promises. Years of me waiting for you to remember I existed.”
“Because I was stupid.” He runs his hand through his hair, that familiar gesture that’s always made me want to smooth it back down, and I hate that I still want that even now.
“Because I thought I had to earn the right to be happy. Because my mother spent my whole life telling me that the company came first, that love was a luxury, that real men sacrifice everything personal for professional success.”
“And what changed?”
“You left.” His voice breaks on the words, cracks right down the middle, and I see the tears gathering in his eyes before he blinks them back.
“You left, and I came home to an empty house and your ring on the kitchen counter, and I realized I’d been sacrificing the only thing that actually mattered.
I took you for granted, Hannah. I thought your love was unconditional, that it would hold no matter how much I neglected it. I tested that theory until it broke.”
I’m crying. I don’t know when I started, but tears are streaming down my face and I can’t seem to stop them. We’re both standing in my tiny kitchen, surrounded by moving boxes I haven’t unpacked, falling apart together.
“You’ll resent me,” I whisper. “Even if we got back together. You’ll wake up one day and realize what you gave up, and you’ll hate me for it.”
“I won’t.” He moves closer, close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to, but he doesn’t close the final distance.
He’s letting me choose. “I regret a lot of things, Hannah. The hand-squeezes I returned without listening. The forehead kisses instead of real conversations. Every time you reached for me and I was too distracted to reach back.” His eyes are wet now too, tears tracking down his cheeks, and I’ve never seen him cry like this.
Real crying, not something-in-my-eye crying.
“But I won’t regret this. Because choosing you is the first thing I’ve done in years that actually feels right. ”
“How can you know that?”
“Because you’re my whole world.” He reaches up, slowly, giving me time to pull away, and cups my face in his hands.
His palms are warm against my cheeks, his thumbs brushing away my tears.
“I lost sight of that for a while, but I see it clearly now. I’m not giving up on anything.
I’m choosing what’s most important. It’s you. It was always you.”
I want to believe him. I want it so badly it feels like a physical ache, like hunger, like thirst, like something essential that I’ve been denying myself for too long.
But I’ve believed him before.
“I can’t trust this,” I say. “Every time I start to hope-”
“I know.” He doesn’t let go of my face. Just holds me there, his eyes locked on mine, letting me see everything he’s feeling. “So let me prove it. Not with words. With actions.”
“How?”
“Turn on the TV tomorrow night. Eight o’clock.”
I blink. “What?”
“Just trust me. One more time.” He reaches into his jacket with one hand, keeping the other on my face, and pulls out the divorce papers, the ones I signed, the ones he took.
His signature line is still blank, a white space where our marriage hangs in the balance.
“Your signature’s already on these. Mine’s the only thing missing.
After tomorrow night, if you still want this over, I’ll sign. That night. I promise.”
I stare at the papers in his hands. My signature drying on every page. His line empty.
“One more chance,” he says. “That’s all I’m asking.”
One more chance. After everything. After the years of neglect and the interview and the photos and every small betrayal that added up to something unsurvivable.
But he quit his company. Walked away from everything his family built, everything they valued, everything they’d threatened to take from him if he didn’t fall in line. He’s standing in my kitchen with tears on his face, asking for one more night to prove he’s changed.
Maybe people can change. Maybe love is worth one more risk. Maybe I’m a fool for even considering it.
But I’ve always been a fool for Cameron Jasper.
“Okay,” I whisper. “One more chance.”
Something like relief flickers across his face, but he doesn’t push his luck. Doesn’t try to hug me or kiss me or capitalize on the crack in my armor. He just nods, once, and lets his hands drop from my face.
He leaves.
That evening, Summer texts to check in. You okay? Saw the news about Cameron.
I don’t know, I text back. Ask me tomorrow.
What happens tomorrow?
I have no idea. But apparently I’m supposed to watch TV at eight.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. Finally: Do you want me to come over?
No. I think I need to do this alone.
Call me if you need me. Any hour. I mean it.
I know. Thank you.
I sit with my hands wrapped around my cold coffee, staring at the TV across the room. The screen is dark now, the morning shows long over, but tomorrow it will light up with whatever Cameron has planned.
Tomorrow. 8 p.m. Whatever he’s planning, it changes everything.