Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 129

Chapter 118: Protecting Her From The Truth

JENNIFER POV

Logan nodded. Once, quickly. “Yes.. I’m sorry. For all of it. Please-if you could just-“He stopped. Understood that he wasn’t going to get the sentence finished in a way that helped. “I’m sorry.”

He left.

He walked away down the produce aisle with the gait of a man who was holding himself together through will, turned at the end, and was gone.

Parker and I stood in the produce section with the pears, watching him leave.

“Are you all right?” Parker asked.

“Yes.” I looked at my hand, which felt normal. “He didn’t-it wasn’t aggressive. He was-” I paused. “He’s a man who’s arrived somewhere true about himself and doesn’t know what to do with it.”

“That doesn’t entitle him to access.”

“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”

Parker picked up a Honeycrisp, looked at it, put it back. His hands were steady, which they always were.

“He’s been in Seattle for days,” I said. “He’s been here for days trying to get to her.”

“Cameron knows?”

“Cameron spoke to him by phone. Gave him her answer. He’s-” I paused. “He didn’t accept it.”

Parker was quiet for a moment. I could see him thinking, about what this meant.

“We need to tell Cameron,” he said finally.

“Yes.”

“Today.”

“Yes.” I picked up two more pears, checked them, put one back. “Not Sedona.”

Parker looked at me.

“Not yet,” I said. “She’s having a good week. The markers are down. Frank is cautiously optimistic and she’s been-she’s been herself again, Parker. She’s been eating and she’s been laughing and she’s been-” stopped. “I don’t want to put this in that room. Not this week. Not when she’s fighting so hard.”

He was quiet for a moment, considering, which was what Parker did-he didn’t agree quickly or disagree quickly, he considered and then he decided and when he decided it was with the fullness of someone who’d looked at it properly.

“That’s your call,” he said. “You know her better than I—”

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<Protecting Herem The Truth

Claim

“I don’t know her better than you do. We both lost the same years.” I looked at the apples. “But I’ve been with her every day since she came home, and I know this week. And this week is not the week.”

“All right,” he said. “Not this week.”

“But Cameron needs to know today. In case he-in case Logan approaches again. In case he goes to the hospital and tries-” I stopped, because the thought of Logan Hayes getting past the private ward protocols was something needed to address practically rather than emotionally.

“Cameron can handle the practical side. He can make sure the hospital is aware.”

“I’ll call him,” Parker said.

“He’ll be upset.”

“He’ll handle it.”

“He’s handling enough already.”

“He’ll handle it,” Parker said again, with the certainty he applied to Cameron, which was the certainty of a father who’d watched his son build something from himself over forty years and had no doubt about the structural integrity.

I put the pears in my basket. Added the apples, the too-large Honeycrisps, because cut apples browned but they were still Sedona’s favorites and I could cut them just before she wanted them. Added the ginger, because Dante Wells had been right about the ginger even if I wasn’t going to say that out loud.

“Parker,” I said.

“Mm.”

“He said Nick asked him to tell her he didn’t mean it.” Vlooked at the basket. “The things Nick said at the hospital. He told Logan to tell her he didn’t mean them.”

Parker was very still.

“He’s six years old,” I said. “He’s in Chicago with a nanny and his grandmother and a father who’s been in Seattle for a week, and he sent a message to his mother through his father that he didn’t mean the things he said.” I looked up. “That child needs to know his mother is all right.”

“Sedona will decide when-”

“I know. I know she’ll decide when and how and what contact looks like. I’m not suggesting we-I’m just saying. That child is out there thinking his mother left because of what he said. And whatever Logan Hayes is or isn’t, and whatever our daughter decides about her marriage-that child should not carry that.”

Parker looked at me for a long moment.

“Talk to Sedona,” he said. “When she’s ready. Tell her what you just told me.”

“Yes.” I picked up the basket. “When she’s ready.”

We moved through the rest of the grocery store with the ordinary efficiency of people who’d been shopping together long enough to divide and reconvene, Parker taking the dairy section, me taking the

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Protecting serem The Truth

grains and the specifics of Sedona’s current dietary requirements, meeting at the checkout with the combined contents of a household feeding itself.

Parker called Cameron from the parking lot while I loaded the bags.

Claim

I watched him through the car window. Cameron’s responses were inaudible to me, but I could see them in Parker’s face, the nod that meant he understood.

When he got in the car, he said: “Cameron’s going to contact the hospital. Make sure the ward protocols are reinforced.”

“Good.”

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