91 #2
"No," he said. "But I am the oldest one."
The sentence landed with devastating gentleness.
Dorothy lowered her gaze.
Trevor's hand moved slightly on the blanket, as if he wanted to reach for her and remembered in time that wanting was not permission. He let the hand rest where it was.
"You should go after him," he said.
Her head lifted.
"What?"
His voice weakened, but the words remained clear. "If that is what you want, go after Sebastian."
Dorothy stared at him.
Trevor held her gaze. The effort cost him physically. She could see it in the tension around his mouth, in the shallow rhythm of his breathing, in the way the monitor ticked slightly faster before settling again.
"Do not stay here because I woke up and said your name," he said. "Do not stay because I almost died and that makes the past louder. Do not stay because I finally know how to let go and you feel responsible for the hurt it causes me."
"Stop."
He did not.
"Do not let my injury become the thing that wins you back to my bedside."
Her eyes filled. "You are in a hospital bed, and you are talking about winning?"
"I am talking about refusing to benefit from an accident that dragged you away from someone you were trying to choose."
The sentence broke something in the room.
Dorothy stood abruptly, turning away from him because if she looked at his face for another second, she would either cry or say something she did not understand.
Trevor's voice followed her, soft but relentless.
"Dorothy, if you want Sebastian, go."
She closed her eyes.
The door behind her remained closed. The monitor continued its steady proof of life. Rain pressed softly against the hospital window. Everything in the room felt too fragile for the force of what he was offering.
Release.
Again.
But this release was not clean. It was not noble in a way she could simply admire from a distance. It was painful, human, uneven, made by a man who admitted part of him wanted to keep her there and chose, with effort, not to feed it.
That made it harder to reject.
It also made it harder to accept.
"You keep telling me to go to him," she said without turning.
"Yes."
"Do you know what that does to me?"
A pause.
"No," he said. "Tell me."
The answer disarmed her.
Once, Trevor would have assumed. Now he asked.
Dorothy turned slowly.
"It makes me hurt for you," she said.
Trevor's expression changed.
She hated that the words were true.
"It makes me see you trying," she continued.
"It makes me remember every version of you that did not try, and then it makes me grieve the version in front of me because he is too late and still real. It makes me angry. It makes me grateful. It makes me want to run away from both of you because everyone's pain is suddenly mine to understand."
Trevor's eyes filled.
"I do not want my pain to be yours," he said.
"But it is," she whispered. "Some of it is. That is the problem."
The confession sat between them, dangerous and unfinished.
Trevor looked as if he wanted to close his eyes but forced himself to remain with her.
"Then let me carry mine properly," he said. "Do not stay to manage it."
"I am not managing it."
"Are you sure?"
Dorothy opened her mouth.
No answer came quickly.
Trevor's face softened with grief. "That is why I am saying go if you want to go."
Dorothy sat again, slowly this time, because her legs no longer felt steady.
"He ended it," she said.
"Almost-relationship," Trevor said quietly.
The words sounded wrong in his mouth. Not mocking. Careful.
"Yes."
"And you want to chase him?"
Dorothy pressed her hands together.
She pictured Sebastian's car disappearing into rain. Sebastian asking her to choose him openly. Sebastian saying he could not be almost anymore. Sebastian telling her that not being second did not mean being chosen.
"I wanted to stop him," she said.
"That is not the same as wanting him back."
"I know."
"Is it?"
She looked at Trevor sharply.
He held her gaze, not cruelly, not cleverly, but with the painful honesty of someone trying to help her find a truth that might hurt him.
Dorothy's voice came low. "I do not know."
Trevor absorbed it.
The answer should have given him hope.
It did not seem to.
Perhaps he had finally learned that Dorothy's uncertainty was not a gift to him.
He looked toward the window, then back at her. "When you stood on the estate steps and defended me, Sebastian saw what I saw."
"What did you see?"
"That you are fair even when fairness costs you."
Dorothy looked down.
"That is beautiful," Trevor said. "It is also dangerous for you. Because people like me can mistake your fairness for an open door."
She looked back at him.
"I am trying not to," he said.
Her tears came then, quiet and exhausted. "You are making this impossible."
His mouth twisted in pain. "I think I made it impossible a long time ago."
"No." She shook her head. "That is too easy."
"Easy?"
"Yes," she said. "If this is only your fault, then I can hate you and choose someone else and call it healing. If this is only Sebastian's timing, then I can chase him and call it courage. If this is only Vanessa's cruelty, then I can defeat her and call the rest of it damage."
Trevor watched her, silent.
Dorothy's voice trembled. "But it is not only anything. It is me too. My fear. My grief. My want. My confusion. My inability to make love die where it should, or grow where it would be safer."
The room went still.
Trevor's eyes searched her face.
He did not ask which love she meant.
That was his mercy.
Or his fear.
Dorothy wiped beneath one eye. "Sebastian asked me to choose him."
Trevor's hand tightened on the blanket.
"And I could not," she said.
His face tightened further.
"Not because I chose you."
The words struck him too, but he nodded.
"I know."
"But because I could not stand there and say something I was not sure I could keep."
"That is not cruelty," Trevor said.
"It felt cruel."
"To him, yes."
Dorothy closed her eyes.
Trevor's voice softened. "But a lie would have been worse."
She opened her eyes and looked at him.
Trevor Raymond, of all people, telling her not to lie to another man for comfort.
The irony should have been bitter.
It was.
It was also true.
"Go after him if you want to," Trevor said again.
This time, the sentence held less urgency and more surrender. "Not because I am releasing you like I own the key. I do not. Not because he deserves you more. That is not mine to judge. Go if your heart is already moving toward him and fear is the only thing keeping you here."
Dorothy stared at him.
"And if it is not?" she asked.
Trevor's breath caught slightly.
He took a moment before answering.
"Then do not use him to escape this room."
The words landed cleanly.
Dorothy felt them all the way through.
Trevor's eyes held hers, kind and devastated. "And do not use me to escape choosing yourself."
The monitor hummed.
Beyond the door, voices moved softly in the hall. Hale. Elise. A nurse. Life continuing with papers, scans, legal calls, police updates, all of it waiting to rush back in the moment this conversation ended.
Dorothy felt suspended above every possible path.
Sebastian leaving because he refused to be almost.
Trevor releasing her because he refused to be a beneficiary of injury.
Vanessa somewhere in the dark, still turning wounds into weapons.
And Dorothy at the center, exhausted by choice and terrified that the truth might be that she was not ready for either kind of love.
Trevor looked at her with everything he could not ask.
"Dorothy," he said quietly. "What do you want?"
The question had followed her through every chapter of this new life.
Victor had asked it when she returned to the Perry estate.
Sebastian had asked it in restaurants, corridors, rain, and coastal rooms.
Trevor had asked it too late, then again differently, trying to understand without claiming the answer.
Dorothy looked at Trevor's bruised face, then toward the glass where Sebastian had stood, then down at her own hands.
Her voice came out barely above a whisper.
"What if I do not know what I want?"