Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 122

Chapter 111: Lily Is My

Cameron’s POV

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. I 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?”

“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.”

He called me a monster.”

“He calls his pediatrician a vampire. It’s a phase.” He glanced at the kitchen door, where his son was with his wife and continued speaking.

“I told him a story last night. About work. I-” He stopped. “I was upset more than I let on, and he was awake, and he wanted a story, and I modified the details.”

“He knew who I was immédiately.”

“He’s four, not oblivious.” Lucian looked back at me. “He also knows every make and model of emergency vehicle by sound, can identify seventeen species of bird by their calls, and remembers everything anyone has ever said to him with photographic accuracy. He was always going to know who you were.”

I looked at the kitchen doorway, from which I could hear Lake’s voice providing ongoing commentary on something he found fascinating to his mum.

“How long has Lily been-is she-” I was making a mess of the sentence and I knew it.

“She’s my sister,” Lucian said.

I stopped.