Chapter 21 #2
On the way to his office, I wrack my brains.
I need to have a strategy for damage control in place.
If I was from any other department, it wouldn’t have been a problem.
But I am the head of human resources. I’ve been doing that job diligently, but with how many people are being let go and the employees needing to blame someone, I’m going to become an easy target.
Clarice takes one look at my face when I open the door and frowns. “What is it?”
“I need to see him. Now.”
“Jake and Cal?—”
I don’t wait for her to finish her sentence.
I push open the door, and Ethan glances up, half-rising out of his seat. “Natalie?”
“I think I messed up.” Seeing him knocks the air out of me, and I grip the edge of the small shelf next to the door. “I think I messed up big time.”
He’s by my side in an instant, and he’s not alone. Jake’s a step behind. “What happened? ”
Both their voices are filled with concern.
They’re both gripping my arms as if to support me, and I try to shake them off. “I’m fine. I?—”
“Give her some breathing room, Jesus Christ.” Caleb pushes Jake away and forces Ethan’s hand from my wrist. “Sit. Want some water?”
I shake my head. “No, thanks.” My eyes flicker towards Ethan. “I think someone might have found out about us.”
Ethan’s expression doesn’t change, and neither does he say anything.
I give him a brief rundown of what happened, and my fingers dig into my arm as I do, something I do when my anxiety is spilling over. “I didn’t mean for anyone to overhear. I didn’t even know someone was inside, and?—”
“I don’t see the problem.” Ethan looks unfazed. “They were going to find out sooner or later. Especially when you started to show.”
My hand curls into a fist on my stomach, and I glare at him, fury bubbling up. “Ethan, this is my career you’re treating so nonchalantly. It’s not a good look for the CEO and the HR head to be together. It’s a conflict of interest, and you know it. If word gets out, then?—”
“One of you will have to leave,” Jake finishes grimly.
I meet Ethan’s gaze, and my heart sinks. Why is he so calm about this? Why doesn’t he care that everything I built is crumbling around me? He seems to be getting what he wants while my needs be damned.
“I’ll quit,” I say, coldly now. “You seem to finally have me cornered, Ethan. But if you think I will let my career go down the drain to play happy family with you, you can dream on. I’ll apply for another job, in this state or elsewhere. But I won’t let you do this to me.”
His eyes narrow fractionally. “You think I’m sabotaging you.”
I scoff, my heart aching, my throat thick with emotion. I don’t want to believe it, but seeing how little he cares about the consequences that only I have to face, can he blame me for thinking along these lines?
I get to my feet. “I shouldn’t have come here. It’s obvious you don’t give a shit. I don’t know why I thought coming to you with my problem would mean anything.”
This time I catch the shift of emotion behind his eyes, and he straightens. “You?—”
Jake intervenes. “Don’t you think you’re being a little hasty here, Natalie? A resignation isn’t going to fix anything. Instead of going down that route, we could just narrow down whoever it was that overheard your conversation with Iris.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Caleb adds. “There are already pictures of the two of you from that event you guys went to.”
Jake scoffs. “Ethan had those pulled as soon as they went into print.”
I go still, glancing at the silent man leaning against his desk, his arms crossed over his chest, and I ask, “Is that true?”
He doesn’t answer me, but Jake does. “Yeah. I was the one who contacted them. They only managed to get out one print of the magazine before I had them make the change. There are only a few copies of the ones with yours and Ethan’s pictures in them.”
Ethan just looks at me, his gaze intense and unreadable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask him.
When he speaks, his voice is cool. “You seem so determined to believe the worst of me that I didn’t see the point.”
My lips part as I try to deny his words, but I find I can’t. “I?—”
Jake looks between the two of us, then moves to the door. “Come on, Caleb.”
Caleb blinks. “What? They were just about to fight. I want to see.”
Sighing, Jake grabs him by the collar and pulls him out of the room. The sound of the door closing makes me flinch .
“You could have said something. You could have told me you had those pictures removed.”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d twist it into proof I was trying to manipulate you in some way,” he says, quieter now, and it hurts because I can hear the pain he’s trying to suppress underneath his words. “Because every time I try to protect you, you act like I’m trying to control you.”
“I never asked for your protection.” Even as I say it, I know it sounds childish.
“No,” he agrees. “But you never trusted me with your vulnerability, either.”
I flinch. It’s like he’s peeled me open without raising his voice.
He steps forward, not close enough to touch, but closer than I want him to be right now. “You’ve already decided who I am. Every move I make just confirms the version of me you’ve built in your head. I can give you everything, but I will never earn your trust, will I?”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s true. ” His voice is taut with tension.
“You think I’m the same man I was five years ago, that I want something from you.
I could give you the world on a platter, and you would think there are strings attached.
I have accepted however little you are willing to give me, but you don’t see that.
Even now your first thought was that I was attempting to sabotage you, that I would gain some pleasure in destroying your career. ”
I feel hot tears rise, and I blink them back furiously, feeling ashamed. “You said it didn’t matter if they found out. You know what the backlash will be?—”
“You are the mother of my unborn child, Natalie, the woman I have loved for five years. You think I will let so much as a whisper hurt you?” His voice is cold and filled with an unrestrained fury that makes my skin prickle. “Do you think so little of me? ”
This is the first time he’s confronted me, forcing me to see my own behavior towards him.
“I-I don’t,” I whisper. “I just—” My breath catches when I look up at him.
He’s watching me like he’s seeing everything. The fears I haven’t said out loud. The trust I keep locked behind every bad memory and worse goodbye. The fact that maybe, just maybe, I don’t trust myself to survive it if I trust him, and he proves me right.
“I think...” My voice cracks. “I think I’ve been waiting for you to leave. And it’s easier to push you away than admit I want you to stay.”
He doesn’t speak. He just steps closer, eyes full of something I don’t deserve.
I’m crying now. Quietly. Stupidly. I kept telling myself I was opening up to him, but all this time I was just keeping him at a distance, waiting.
It’s like a part of me believed that if I waited long enough, he’d show me his true face, the same face that everyone I loved showed me, that I was not worth staying for, that I was simply not worth being loved.
There. It’s out. Bare, trembling, ugly in its honesty.
He goes still.
His eyes hold a devastation in them that makes me feel like a monster. He looks at me like I just broke something sacred between us. I want to take the words back. I want to run. But I don’t. I can’t. Not now.
“I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I say a little louder, even though my throat burns. “Because people like you don’t stay with people like me. Because everything about this—about us—feels like a countdown to disaster.”
“People like me?” His voice is soft but I can hear the hurt underneath.
“Yes. Look at your family. They-They’re so loving and together, and you’re so adored. You’ve been loved your whole life. I don’t—I wasn’t… Nobody’s ever wanted me, even you at one point. I know you claim to love me, but what about when you wake up one day and realize that?—”
“I’m not the kind of man who regrets his decisions. I am not that fickle. I have gone to every possible length to prove myself to you, but—” His eyes flash with an intensity that leaves me breathless. “You think I’m just... what? Biding my time until I get bored?”
I flinch.
He steps closer. “You think I’d walk away from you? From this?” His hand gestures toward me, toward the child I’m carrying. His child. Our child. “Is that really who you think I am?”
“I don’t know!” I snap, blinking back tears. “I don’t know what to believe when every part of me is terrified of being wrong again. I trusted you once. You said all the right things back then, too, and look where it landed me? And now?—”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just watches me like I’ve shattered him. And maybe I have.
I press a hand to my belly, steadying myself, even though nothing about me feels steady. “I’ve spent so long surviving, I don’t know how to believe in someone staying.” I lower my eyes, the tears burning them. “Especially not you.”
The silence that falls is thick, muffling everything but my heartbeat.
When he finally speaks, it’s low. Steady.
“Then let me make it simple.” He closes the space between us with a quiet determination that makes my heart ache. “You come first,” he says, voice like a vow. “You always have. Before board meetings. Before this company, before my wealth, or even my own family. You .”
My breath hitches. He keeps going.