THE CEO's REGRET

CHAPTER 8: THE MAN WAITING OUTSIDE

I told myself I was only calling Ethan for the truth.

The white peonies still sitting on my desk like they owned the place told me I was full of s**t.

He answered on the second ring, like he’d been staring at his phone, waiting for this exact moment.

“Ms. Reed,” he said, calm as ever.

“You said you weren’t hard to find,” I answered, my voice tighter than I wanted. “I guess I’m ready to test that.”

A short pause. Then, “There’s a quiet little coffee spot on Aldine Street. Corner booths. Nobody listens in. Eleven works for you?”

“Yeah. Eleven’s fine.”

---

The café smelled like burnt coffee and old wood. It was the kind of place where people talked low because the walls had ears.

Ethan was already tucked into the corner booth, hands wrapped around his mug, looking relaxed on purpose, like he was trying to make me feel safe enough to fall apart a little.

I slid into the seat across from him and ordered a coffee I didn’t even want.

“You said sixteen years,” I jumped in. “You’ve been waiting sixteen years to have this talk with me.”

“Yeah,” he said simply.

“Why now?”

Ethan looked at me with those steady brown eyes. “Because you came back to the city, and because Sebastian… he’s not okay. Hasn’t been for a long time. He just finally stopped pretending he is.”

My stomach twisted. I kept my face blank, but my fingers tightened around the edge of the table. “That’s not my problem anymore.”

“I know you want to believe that,” he said, soft but direct. “I’m not here to tell you differently.”

I waited, jaw tight.

He turned the mug slowly between his palms. “Look, I’m gonna give you some of it. Not all of it, some stuff isn’t mine to hand over. But enough.”

He met my eyes. “The marriage to Claire. It wasn’t love. Not even close. It was a business deal. Family pressure, old money, boardroom bullshit dressed up pretty for the photos. Sebastian didn’t choose her. They put him there when they made him think he had no other options left.”

Something sharp and hot stabbed through my chest. I thought about that cold bathroom floor, the pregnancy test shaking in my hands, and that stupid bright joy that had filled me up thinking “he’s going to be so happy”. I swallowed hard, the memory burning like acid.

“He had options,” I said, voice rough. “He had me.”

“He was told he didn’t.” Ethan’s voice stayed even, but his eyes carried a quiet sadness. “They fed him lies, Naomi. Ugly ones. About you, what you wanted, and the choices you were making. That’s as far as I go today. The rest… you gotta hear it from him.”

I leaned forward, heart banging against my ribs. “Ethan, come on—”

“Not yet.” His tone was gentle but locked down tight. “If I screw up the order or leave anything out, it’ll mess you up worse. But listen to this part, okay? Really listen.”

I didn’t say anything. He took it as a yes.

“The guy you knew at twenty? He’s still in there somewhere. Buried under sixteen years of punishing himself for a decision he made in twenty-four hours.” Ethan paused, his voice dropping lower. “He looks like a man who’s been carrying hell every single day since. Because he has.”

The café noise faded into the background, the murmur of someone ordering at the counter, the hiss of the coffee machine, cars passing outside like the world didn’t give a damn.

My throat felt thick. I thought about that sharp church wind cutting through my coat, the bump under it no one could see yet, and how I stood there watching him marry someone else while our baby kicked for the first time.

The joy I’d felt on that bathroom floor had turned into something that still cut me open every time I remembered it.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice cracking just a little. “What the hell do you get out of it?”

Ethan was quiet for a second. Then he said, “I was there the night before the wedding. I knew s**t was wrong and I didn’t push hard enough to stop it.”

He looked down at his mug. “I’ve carried that guilt for sixteen years. This is the only thing I can do about it now.”

I studied him. He wasn’t faking the guilt. He was just living with it, same as me.

I picked up my coffee, hands shaky. “I’ll… I’ll think about what you said.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” he replied.

---

The drive home felt longer. Maybe it was traffic. Maybe I was just driving slow on purpose, replaying every single word. “He was told lies about you.” “The rest you need to hear from him.”

I pulled up outside my building and sat there with the engine running, my mind spinning. Then I looked up and everything stopped.

Sebastian Hale was standing right there on the sidewalk.

Not pacing. Not on his phone. Just standing in his dark coat, hands hanging at his sides like he’d run out of every other choice and this was the last one left.

He saw me the second I looked up. He didn’t move closer, he just waited. I killed the engine and got out.

We stood ten feet apart on the pavement. The evening air felt cold and sharp against my skin. He looked at me with those tired grey eyes that weren’t hiding anything anymore, and his voice came out low and raw.

“I sent the flowers.”

I couldn’t speak.

“I know I shouldn’t have,” he went on, the words stumbling a little. “I know it was too much. I just… I needed you to know I remember it all.” His throat worked. “I remember everything.”

The cold pressed in between us. My chest hurt so bad I could barely breathe.

I looked at him, this man I’d spent sixteen years hating from far away,now standing right outside my home like he’d finally broken.

My voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.

“You’ve got five minutes.”