Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 111

Chapter 100: Durian Has Opinions

The silence on his end was the silence of a man receiving something he’d known was possible but had been holding at a distance And now hearing it being confirmed was doing things to him that he did not know how to deal with it and was trying to manage it but failing.

“Is she okay?” he asked. His voice had gone quieter. “Just-is she-”

“She’s fighting,” I said. “She’s doing well. She has people with her.” A pause. “That’s all I’m going to tell you.”

I ended the call.

Set the phone face-down on the bar, without giving a second thought about it, there was no need to give Logan false hope when Sedona had been specific about what she thought about Logan returning to her life.

Durian was looking at me.

“You told him she’d found someone new,” he said.

“I implied it.”

“Why?”

I looked at the empty glass. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

I didn’t answer.

“You wanted someone else to be in pain,” Durian said. Not an accusation. Just a description. “You were sitting here hurting and you wanted-”

“I know what I did.” The words came out sharper than I intended. I set the glass down. “I know it was-I just needed-” I stopped. The sentence didn’t have an end that was willing to say out loud. “He hurt my sister for three years,” I said finally. “He doesn’t deserve comfort.

“He doesn’t,” Durian agreed. “But that wasn’t entirely why.”

No. It wasn’t entirely why.

I’d wanted someone else to feel the specific quality of being told that the person they wanted had moved on. Had found something better. Wasn’t available and wasn’t going to be. I’d wanted to give someone else the sentence I’d essentially given myself tonight when I’d stood in my own office and watched what I watched and then made the decision I’d made.

She doesn’t want you. Let her be.

I’d said it to Logan Hayes and I’d meant it for myself.

“I fired him,” I said, to no one particularly.

I know.

“He was the best assistant I’ve ever had.”

“I know that too.”

“He left and made sure the transition was covered.” The thing that had been sitting in my chest since the office shifted, became something more acute, more specifically located. “He got fired and on his way out he reminded me about the Wednesday Meridian call and where to find the temp agency contact.”

Durian was quiet.

I looked at the bar. At the couple by the window, still there, still leaning toward each other.

“You’re not calling my parents,” I said.

“Obviously not. Your mother has enough to manage.” He put a hand briefly on my shoulder-Durian was not, generally, a physical person, which made the gesture something it wouldn’t have been from someone else. “Come on. My driver’s outside.”

I stood. The vision became blurry for a moment and I had to hold steady to the table for a minute without moving, trying to get my bearing.

Durian waited without comment.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said. “Tonight. In the office.”

“You were thinking about the wrong thing to be thinking about clearly,” he said. “It happens.”

“Not to me.”

“Especially to you.” He steered me toward the door with the light directional pressure of someone who’d navigated difficult situations with difficult people before. “People who manage everything very well are particularly vulnerable to the things they can’t manage. Because they’re not practiced at it.”

The night air hit when we pushed through the door, making me feel better than I was inside, giving myself the needed clearheadedness that I needed.

I stopped on the pavement outside the bar, tipped my head back slightly, let the cold air do what cold air did.

“He said the Singapore weather could cause a four-hour delay,” I said. “He looked it up. Last year’s trip, the storm season. He built a buffer into the schedule.”