(Sebastian)
I heard the elevator doors close from inside my office.
For a while I didn't move. I stood where she'd left me, in the middle of a room that felt too big now that she was gone, and I made myself sit with the thing I'd just done.
I'd given her what she asked for.
Twenty years of getting exactly what I wanted, of never once letting a no stand between me and a thing I'd decided to have, and I'd looked at a woman with her chin up and her voice shaking and I'd said fine. I'll leave it alone. I'd meant it, too. That was the part I kept turning over. I hadn't said it to move her. I'd said it because she'd been made a liar of for three years by a man who couldn't be honest to save his life, and I refused to be one more person who took from her while telling her it was a gift.
So I
