THE CEO's REGRET

CHAPTER 29- FACE DOWN

He’d carried a photograph of us for sixteen years. I’d spent those same years trying like hell to stop carrying him. Only one of us had managed it, and it sure as hell wasn’t him.

I picked it up and stared longer than I meant to. No memory of the moment. Just us, caught laughing by whoever snapped the picture. That girl had her whole soul in it, wide open, no walls, convinced the ground was solid, she had no clue.

I slid the photo into my bag. “Thank you,” I said.

Sebastian didn’t push. He watched me with that quiet patience he’d grown into, the kind that wants without demanding. He let the silence stay heavy between us. No questions about why I was taking it. or any talk of next steps. Just space.

We said goodbye on the pavement. Nothing dramatic, two people who’d finally talked honestly for two hours, then stepped back into their separate lives a little more unsettled than before. He waited until I reached my car before turning away. I noticed, but I didn’t let myself think about it.

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At home, I put the photograph in the drawer, face down. On top of the letters, the last one was still exactly where I’d left it. “I just need you to know that I looked.”

I closed the drawer fast. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it mattered too much, and I wasn’t ready to let it pull me under. In the café I’d smiled at something Isla did before I could stop myself. That easy, unguarded warmth? I couldn’t let it run ahead. Not yet, not until I knew where the hell it was going.

I threw myself back into work. The next three days I was perfect. Meetings sharp, emails handled, the gala clicking into place. Sebastian stayed professional. I matched him beat for beat. The distance between us had changed…less armor, more choice. And that choice felt important in a way I couldn’t explain. I kept my eyes forward,I’ve always been good at that.

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Wednesday night I opened the drawer anyway. I hadn’t planned to. My hand moved before my brain could stop it while I was at the wardrobe. I took the photo to the bed, sat on the edge, and stared at it under the lamp.

My head on his shoulder like it belonged there. Him looking down at me with that soft, real expression, the one that used to wreck me. No mask, just quiet warmth because I was in the room. Both of us laughing at something we’d never remember.

So young and so stupidly sure. I sat there until the light hurt. Then I put it back face down, closed the drawer, killed the lamp, and lay in the dark wondering about the woman who’d kept that picture hidden for sixteen years… and what it meant that she was finally looking again. No answers came, but sleep came anyway.

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Marcus appeared in my doorway the next morning, and I knew this wasn’t about work. His face was set, jaw tight, like he’d forced himself through the door before he could change his mind. He closed it behind him and sat down across from my desk, hands flat on his knees.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, voice low and strained. “And I need you to know I’m saying it because I love you. Not to hurt you.” He drew a shaky breath. “I love you Naomi. I love you more than friends. I have for years.”

His eyes stayed locked on mine. “I’ve watched you walking back toward him, telling myself it wasn’t my place, that I could handle it, that I could just keep showing up.” His jaw flexed hard. “I can’t anymore. I needed you to know.”

The silence that followed felt like it could choke me. I looked at Marcus, warm, steady, the best man I’d known in the six years since Sebastian, and felt the weight of everything we’d just broken.

I already knew what I had to say, and I already knew exactly how much it was going to cost us both.