Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 122

Chapter 111: Lily Is My

Cameron’s POV

Claim

I did not expect that from the kid’s mouth, but then again, I did not expect there to be a kid either, it was already certain that today had not been going in a way that I expected and it would continue to surprise

me even more.

I looked at Lucian.

Lucian was looking at the ceiling with an expression that I recognized as a man who was deciding whether to laugh or to disappear through the floor out of mortification, and who had concluded that neither option was immediately available to him, so he was going to stand still and deal with this with much dignity that he could muster up at the moment.

“Lake,” he said, with the patience of someone who’d been parenting this specific person for four years and had made peace with the fact that Lake’s relationship with social filtering was aspirational rather than functional, but he was going to remain hopeful that one day, he would be able to filter his words, or know that some things are not meant to be said out loud regardless if they were true or not. “Why don’t you go help Mama finish in the kitchen?”

“But I want to see the monster.” He insisted, his voice certain as he looked at to his father.

“He’s not a monster.” Lucian said trying to explain that yes he had said it, but his words were also greatly exaggerated.

“You said-”

“I know what I said.” Lucian shifted him slightly on his hip, the adjustment of someone buying time. “Go help Mama.”

Lake considered this. Looked at me one more time, the long look of a child conducting a final assessment on something he considered important.

“You look sad,” he said to me. “Not monster-sad. Just regular sad.”

He then slid down from his father’s hip and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen with the total commitment he apparently brought to everything he did.

Lucian and I stood in the living room of his apartment looking at each other.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was the first sentence I had that was both available and true, and I needed to begin somewhere.

“For which part,” he said. Not a question. The flat version of a question, the version that showed he was just going through the motions and had no actual hope of this conversation being fruitful.

“All of it,” I said. “The firing. The way I-the reason I-” I stopped, was because the reason was the part I couldn’t complete without saying the thing I hadn’t said in eighteen months, and I was standing in his living room with his wife in the kitchen and his son who looked exactly like him who had called me a

monster.

173

Lily Is My

+made a bad decision.”

“You told me my professional judgment was compromised.”

“I know.”

“Was it?” He asked it directly, not skipping a beat, looking at me in the eyes as he continued.

“Objectively. Was my judgment compromised?”

I looked at him. “Someone came to my office after hours and-”

Carm

“And I didn’t ask her to leave,” he said concluding the sentence as he crossed his hands across his chest like a defensive posture as he continued. “Which I should have done. I know that. I’ve known that since the moment the door opened and she walked in, flirting with me.”

His expression didn’t change as he continued speaking. “But compromised judgment is a significant professional charge. I’ve worked for you for eighteen months. One lapse in after-hours judgment is-” He stopped. “Was that actually the reason?”

The honest answer was no.

The honest answer was that his professional judgment had been compromised had been a reason I could say out loud, and the actual reason was one I’d been not-saying for eighteen months, and his wife was in the kitchen with their son, and this was the worst possible configuration of a conversation I hadn’t prepared for. Because there was no way I was going to blurt out my feelings to a married man.

“I came to reinstate you,” I said, which was the practical truth and which was at least something that I could say, at this moment. “If you’re willing. I’d like to formally withdraw the termination and-”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you’re the best assistant I’ve had. Because the decision was-” I chose the word carefully. “Reactive. Made in circumstances that weren’t-I wasn’t in the right state to be making personnel decisions at that moment and it was clear after I had done it. I did not intend to let it influence my decision that night but it did and I am sorry.”

He looked at me for a moment. His hair was a disaster. His shirt was wrinkled. He was standing in his living room in sweatpants looking at me with those eyes that had been sitting across a desk from me for eighteen months, and he looked-he looked like a person, which was something I’d known intellectually, and still a bit taken back, because Lucian at work was a persona that was entirely different from Lucian here as a person with a child who called people monsters and a wife who offered tea to unannounced visitors and furniture that was old but kept because it was good.

“Your son,” I said, because I was apparently incapable of staying on the productive path. “I didn’t know you had a son.”

Something shifted in his expression-not softening exactly, but changing to the look a parent held when his child was being talked about. “Lake. He’s four.”

“He looks like you.”

“Everyone says that.” A pause, and in the pause something that was not quite a smile but had the shape of one. “He’s better with people than I am.”

213

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify