Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 124

Chapter 113: The Catt

Cameron’s POV

I didn’t sleep well, but I slept.

That was something. After the night before-the bar, Durian’s guest roorn, the drive to Lucian’s apartment and everything that had happened inside it-I’d returned to my own apartment at four in the afternoon and sat in the chair by the window and looked at Seattle in the rain and done something I didn’t usually do, which was nothing. Not productive nothing, not the kind of not-doing-things that was actually doing things internally, organizing and planning and running calculations. Just nothing. The rain on the glass and the city below and the particular exhaustion of a person who’d been managing something for eighteen months and had, in the space of twenty-four hours, made it significantly more complicated.

I woke at six.

Lay in bed for eleven minutes, which I knew because I watched the clock, which was a habit I’d apparently developed at some point without noticing. Counted through everything that was true: it was Tuesday. Lucian had said he’d call in the morning. The Meridian call was Wednesday. Sedona was in the hospital doing well. I had gone to a man’s apartment yesterday in sweatpants and his sister had answered the door and his four-year-old had called him a monster.

I got up.

Made coffee with the intensity of someone not thinking about something.

I drank the coffee standing at the window, looking at the city turning bright, making people get ready for the day.

He’d said he’d call.

He hadn’t specified when in the morning. Morning could mean eight or it could mean eleven-thirty, and I had no basis for knowing which part of the spectrum, his personal life worked at because I had spent 18 months focused on his work life and had blinded me to other things. I also knew that staying at home, waiting for a call that may or may not happen today was counterproductive.

I went to the office.

Not because there was something urgent that I needed to do, but it gave me the illusion of dignity, that I was not putting my life on pause. The office at least gave me the appearance of purpose.

My assistant for the day was a temporary assistant from the agency Lucian had mentioned, she was a woman named Caroline who was good at her job, competent and organized and had been given Lucian’s workload to go through and sort out. She greeted me professionally when I came in, had coffee waiting, had printed the morning briefing.

She was fine.

She was completely fine, and nothing about her work was wrong, and I sat at my desk reading the briefing she’d prepared and thought about the note in the margin of Lucian’s Singapore file.

Put the briefing down.

Picked it back up.

My phone was on the desk, face up, screen dark.

At nine-fourteen, it lit up with a buzzing noise.

Unknown number. Seattle area code, different prefix from the one I had memorized Lucian’s number to be. I looked at it for exactly one second before I picked it up.

“Preston.”

“It’s Lucian.” His voice was calm, collected as he continued speaking, like he had a good reason for calling. “I said I’d call.”

“You did.” I kept my voice the same way his was, which required some effort on my end because I was freaking out internally and didn’t want to say anything that would make him decide to not return. “Thank you.’

A brief pause. “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.” Another pause, shorter. “The reinstatement.”

“Lucian.” I said his name and then stopped, because the next sentence required something I had been suppressing for 18 months and I needed a moment to find it.

“If this is-” he started.

“I’m trying to find the right words,” I said. “Give me a moment.”

He gave me a moment.

“When I came into my office on Monday night,” I said, “and I saw-Lyra Cheng, and your-the situation.” I paused. “My reaction was not proportionate to a professional judgment concern.”

“I gathered that.”

“It was disproportionate because-” I stopped, and started again. “I’ve been working with you for eighteen months. In that time I’ve-I’ve noticed-” I stopped again.

“Cameron.” His voice had changed slightly. Barely. “Just say it.”

“I find it difficult to watch other people-I find it-” I pressed my hand flat on the desk.

“When I saw her hand on your chest I broke something. In my office. I put too much pressure on something and it broke, and I realized after that it wasn’t the first time that this kind of situation had elicited this kind of uncalled response in me. There was an event, eight months ago, and someone kissed your cheek and I broke a glass. I am aware that this is not a proportionate professional response. I am aware that what I’m describing is not something an employer should be experiencing in relation to an employee, and I want to be clear that nothing I did or said or decided in the past eighteen months was motivated by-I never acted on it. I never intended to. I managed it. Until Monday night, when I didn’t manage it correctly, and you were the one who-you paid the consequence of that, which is not something I can justify or adequately apologize for.”

Silence.

I waited.

a/n; sorry guys, I skipped an update yesterday, due to a shitty week. I’ll work on mass release this week. note Cameron has a fear of being seen differently, hence his resistance to being open with what he wants. hopefully this ends well for him. don’t worry Logan is still coming, I will enter his arc soon.