Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 117

Chapter 106: Broken Hearts

Sedona’s POV

The room went briefly electric.

Cameron opened his eyes and looked at Durian with an expression that contained several layers of communication, the topmost of which was a clear and specific instruction to stop talking, and the layers underneath which were more complicated and which Durian received with complete equanimity and absolutely no intention of following.

“A broken heart,” I repeated.

“It’s not-” Cameron started.

“Who is she?” I asked immediately, sitting up straighter. The fruit argument was gone, the blood orange was forgotten, Dante’s careful taxonomy of citrus varieties had been completely displaced by the far more interesting fact that Cameron Preston, who had been deflecting questions about his personal life since approximately age nineteen, had apparently experienced something significant enough to drink about. “Cameron. Who is she? How long has this been going on? Why haven’t you told me-you know I’ve been here for weeks and you could have-”

Durian made a sound.

It started as a contained sound, the sound of someone suppressing something, and then it became less contained, and then it became not contained at all-full, genuine laughter, the kind that arrived before you’d had time to decide whether to let it out, the kind that had something surprised in it like even the person laughing hadn’t expected the volume of it.

He laughed for a solid five seconds, which in a hospital room was a significant amount of time.

Cameron looked at him with an expression that had moved past the instruction to stop talking and into something that more closely resembled a specific and detailed threat.

“Sorry,” Durian said, not sounding sorry. “Sorry, it’s just-the she-” He pressed his lips together, visibly working to contain something that clearly did not want to be contained. “The assumption. It’s-” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

I looked at him. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing,” he said, in the tone of someone for whom nothing was definitively something. “Just-I appreciate your enthusiasm for Cameron’s love life. It’s very-sibling of you.”

“Why is that funny?”

“It’s not funny,” he said, with an expression that said it was extremely funny to him specifically and that the reason he wasn’t sharing was one he’d made a deliberate decision about. “I was just-smiling. At the enthusiasm.”

I looked at Cameron.

Cameron was looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man who was calculating the structural Integrity of the hospital ceiling and wondering if it could be persuaded to fall on him.

“Cameron,” I said.

“I don’t want to talk about it

“You never want to talk about it. You haven’t wanted to talk about it for twenty years. I am your sister and I am in a hospital and I have been through-gestured at myself, at the room, at the general situation, “-a significant amount, and I am telling you that whatever this is, I want to know.”

He looked at me from the ceiling.

“I’m not talking about it,” he said.

“Durian,” I said. “Who is she?”

Durian opened his mouth.

“Durian,” Cameron said, in a tone that was approximately at the geological level of a tectonic plate-slow and massive and containing the specific promise of consequences.

Durian closed his mouth.

“Dante Wells,” Durian said. “I thought I recognized you. You played Enzo Marchetti about three years ago in the quarterfinals in Montreal.”

Dante looked at him with interest. “You follow tennis?”

“My Partner does. He made me watch the highlights.” Durian tilted his head. “You won.”

“I did.”

“He was not happy about it. He had a significant investment in Marchetti winning.”

“Most people who watch that match did,” Dante said, with the specific self-awareness of someone who understood they were not always the crowd favorite. “I was not the sentimental choice.”

“You rarely are,” Durian said, with what seemed like approval rather than criticism. “It’s a coherent strategy.”

“It’s just how I play.”

“Same thing.”

Cameron, who had been recovering quietly through this exchange, looked at Dante with the expression he’d been developing over the past week-the one that was still assessment but had the edge of assessment softened by something that was grudgingly close to approval. He’d told me Dante was all right. For Cameron, all right was a significant endorsement.

“How’s the shoulder?” Cameron asked.

Dante looked at him, mildly surprised. “Fine. It was fine three years ago. You follow tennis?”

“My sister played competitively.” Cameron said it simply, the way he said most things that contained something he was proud of but wasn’t performing pride about. “I paid attention.”