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Dorothy did not answer him immediately.
She could not.
Sebastian's words remained between them in the foyer, quiet enough that only she heard the full shape of them, heavy enough that the entire house seemed to feel the impact.
Then I realized your feelings for Trevor are still alive.
Outside, beyond the estate doors, the press was still shouting.
Inside, Hale's staff moved quickly through corridors with phones and folders, Victor's voice rose somewhere near the study, and Marianne stood by the far archway speaking in a low voice to someone from Hood's legal team.
The house had become a machine of response, every person inside it working to contain Vanessa's newest fire.
Yet Dorothy and Sebastian stood almost still.
The world could wait.
For one breath, perhaps two, it did.
Dorothy looked at Sebastian's face and saw that he had not said the words to punish her.
That made them harder to bear. He was not accusing her of betrayal.
He was not trying to shame her into denial.
He was not asking for a pretty lie that would soothe his pride for an hour and rot beneath them later.
He was naming what he had seen, and because Dorothy had demanded truth from both men, she could not fault him for giving it.
Her feelings for Trevor were still alive.
Not cleanly. Not romantically in a simple way.
Not in the shape of wanting to return to the Raymond house, to the cold dining table, to the endless waiting, to the version of herself who mistook one rare kindness for a feast.
But alive, yes. Alive as grief was alive.
Alive as anger was alive. Alive as old love could remain in damaged tissue long after the future that belonged to it had been amputated.
She wanted to say all of that.
She wanted the nuance to matter.
Looking at Sebastian's face, she understood that it did matter.
It only did not make the pain disappear.
"I know," she said softly.
Sebastian's mouth tightened at the phrase, but not with irritation this time. With tired recognition. They had all said it too often, and too often it had meant, I understand the reason, but the wound is still open.
Dorothy corrected herself before he could. "I mean, I understand why you would think that."
"No," Sebastian said. "Do not make it smaller for me."
She stopped.
His voice remained calm, though something rough lived beneath it. "I did not say I think it. I said I realized it."
The difference entered her carefully.
Dorothy looked down.
The foyer floor was polished enough to catch a blurred reflection of them standing apart.
She and Sebastian looked almost formal from that angle, two people in expensive clothes standing in the aftermath of a public statement, surrounded by wealth, security, lawyers, and all the emotional wreckage those things could not prevent.
"You are right," she said.
Sebastian drew in a quiet breath.
Dorothy forced herself to look at him. "My feelings for Trevor are still alive. Not in a way I know what to do with. Not in a way that means I want the marriage back. Not in a way that makes any of what he did less real. But alive, yes."
The honesty hurt both of them.
Dorothy saw it strike him and felt the instinct to repair it immediately, to add more explanation, more reassurance, more reasons why alive did not mean chosen, why grief did not mean desire, why defending him did not mean returning to him.
But she had learned something from all these weeks of damage: sometimes too much explanation became its own kind of pressure, a way of asking the other person to make pain easier before it had even been allowed to exist.
So she let Sebastian hear it.
She let him be hurt.
His eyes moved briefly toward the closed estate doors, as if the press outside were easier to face than the truth inside. When he looked back, his expression had settled into a kind of painful clarity.
"Thank you for not denying it."
Dorothy's throat tightened. "I am sorry that there is something to deny."
"That is not how feelings work."
"No," she said. "But it is how pain works."
A faint, humorless breath left him. "Yes. That it does."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Hale approached, hesitated when he saw their faces, and stopped several feet away. "Dorothy, we need you for a review of the follow-up statement when you are ready."
"Give me a few minutes," Dorothy said without looking away from Sebastian.
Hale's gaze moved between them. "Of course."
He left quietly.
That, too, was a choice. Everyone had begun learning when to leave space, and Dorothy did not know whether to be grateful or mourn how late the education had come.
Sebastian looked toward the east corridor. "Not here."
Dorothy understood at once. The foyer had too many ears, too much movement, too much public aftershock. "The library?"
He nodded.
They walked together without touching.
That distance hurt differently now. Before, it had often been chosen out of respect.
Then out of anger. Now it felt like a question neither of them knew how to answer with their bodies.
Dorothy walked beside him through the hallway lined with portraits of Perrys whose lives had probably seemed dignified only because no one had livestreamed their worst decisions.
Sebastian held the library door open for her, waited until she entered, then closed it behind them.
The east library was quiet.
The afternoon light slanted through tall windows, catching dust in the air and turning the old wood shelves amber.
This room had seen too much already: Trevor's late apologies, Sebastian's patience cracking, Victor's warnings, Dorothy's private moments of confusion.
It seemed fitting, perhaps, that another line would be drawn here.
Sebastian did not sit.
Dorothy remained near the center of the room, one hand resting on the back of a leather chair. She felt suddenly tired enough to sink into it, but standing seemed necessary. Sitting might make the conversation too soft, too easy to survive without saying what needed to be said.
Sebastian removed his coat and laid it over the arm of the sofa. His movements were measured. Precise. When he turned back, the composure was there, but so was the strain beneath it.
"I am going to say something," he said, "and I need you to hear the whole of it before deciding I am being unfair."
Dorothy's heart tightened. "All right."
"I cannot keep waiting in a triangle forever."
The sentence landed exactly as he intended it to.
Dorothy's fingers tightened on the chair back.
Sebastian watched the reaction and continued before she could retreat into either guilt or defense.
"I am not saying that to force you to choose me today. I am not asking you to erase Trevor because I am uncomfortable with his existence. I am not asking you to pretend your marriage did not shape you, or that his regret does not move old things in you.
I am not stupid enough to believe love dies on command because another man arrives with better manners."
She gave a faint, pained breath. "Sebastian."
"No. Let me finish."
She nodded.
His voice lowered. "I have tried to be careful. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I failed. I pulled away when I should have told you the truth. I let Vanessa make silence look like protection. I have my own pride, my own fear, my own ugly instincts. I am not standing here claiming moral perfection."
"I know that."
"I need you to know something else." He took a step closer, still leaving space. "I am not an arrangement."
Dorothy went still.
Sebastian's eyes held hers. "I am not a public shield. I am not a corrective narrative. I am not the man who stands beside you in photographs so the world stops pitying you. I am not the polished alternative to Trevor Raymond's regret. I am not proof that you moved on. I am not a punishment for him.
"
The words struck one by one, each one naming a role the world had tried to put on him, and perhaps, in weaker moments, one Dorothy had allowed because it made survival easier.
Her voice came quietly. "I never meant to make you feel like that."
"I believe you."
The answer came immediately.
That was almost worse.
He believed her and still hurt. Meaning had not protected him from impact any more than it had protected her.
Sebastian stepped toward the window, looked out for a moment, then turned back. "But intention is no longer enough for either of us, is it?"
Dorothy closed her eyes briefly.
"No."
"I want a real chance with you," he said.
The words were simple.
They were not safe.
Dorothy looked up.
Sebastian's face had lost some of its polish.
He looked tired, sleepless, wounded by Redvale, by Vanessa, by Trevor, by Dorothy, by himself.
And still he looked like himself. Not the second male lead bleeding beautifully for audience sympathy.
Not the flawless protector. A man asking not to be reduced to what he could provide.
"A real chance," he repeated. "Not a press arrangement. Not a strategic alliance. Not hand-holding because cameras are watching. Not dinners interrupted by Trevor's remorse. Not phone calls where his selflessness becomes the thing that helps you call me.
Not a relationship where every good moment has to share the table with what he should have done three years ago."
Dorothy looked away because the truth had teeth.
Sebastian did not let the silence become escape. "When I ask whether you want me, I need the answer to be about me. Not because Trevor failed. Not because Vanessa attacked. Not because being near me proves you survived. Me."
She swallowed.
"I do want you," she said.
His expression flickered.
Hope moved there, but he did not reach for it too quickly.
"Do you?" he asked.
The softness of the question hurt more than accusation would have.
Dorothy turned back. "Yes."
"Then show me in a way that is not reactive."
Her chest tightened.
Sebastian's voice remained steady, though his eyes were not. "Give me a chance that does not happen in the shadow of his guilt."
Dorothy's first instinct was to say that none of this was fair.