The same way he'd said no to the board's first offer. Absolute and calm. I spent two years letting other people's perceptions of me determine my life. That was long enough. He looked at her.
I know who I am. And I know who you are. The people who matter know both of those things. The people who don't know them were going to judge us wrong regardless of what we did. She was quiet for a moment.
You make it sound simple. It's not simple, he said. It's just clear. Those are different. She looked at him.
You always do that, she said softly. Do what? Separate the complicated from the unclear, she said. Most people treat them like they're the same thing. They make things complicated and then they say they don't know what to do.
You never do that. Complications don't scare me, he said. I just don't let them become confusion. She nodded slowly. Like she was filing something away.
Then she looked at him across the table. Across the ordinary restaurant in the ordinary evening with the ordinary noise of the world around them. And she said, I'm glad you stayed that night. He held her gaze. So am I, he said.
Not the night in the parking garage. Not the night on her couch. Both of them understood that. All of it. Every night.
Every decision. Every moment of holding the line when holding it was the more expensive choice. All of it. He was glad for all of it because it had brought them here. To a booth in a neighborhood restaurant.
To level ground. To two people who had both been through enough to know that the real thing when it shows up, looks nothing like you expect it to and requires everything you have and is worth every bit of what it costs. Six months after that dinner, the independent governance review was complete. Its findings confirmed everything Marcus had documented and then some, a more extensive pattern of undisclosed conflicts among the three board members than even Marcus's initial heart research had uncovered. Kellner resigned formally.