Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 142

Meeting Drew and Lake-2

Drew, through all of this, had said nothing.

He was still watching Lake with the expression I’d been trying to read since we’d arrived-the neutral that wasn’t bad or anything concerning crouched down to be at his level, which was something I’d learned with Nick, that getting down to the actual height of a small person changed the texture of the interaction.

Drew looked at me.

“Is this okay?” I asked. “Me sitting here?”

He considered this with the seriousness of a four-year-old for whom the question was a real one. Then he shifted slightly-the smallest possible movement, just enough to indicate that the available floor space beside him was okay for me to sit.

I sat.

We looked at Lake together for a moment, who had now found something on the shelf that required his full assessment and was providing a detailed report to himself about what it was.

“He talks a lot,” Drew said.

His voice was quiet-not timid, exactly, just small and deliberate, the voice of someone who chose when to use it.

“He does,” I agreed.

“I don’t talk that much,” Drew said.

“That’s okay,” I said.

He looked at his knees. Then, without looking at me: “Daddy said you were sick.”

“I was,” I said. “I’m better now.”

He processed this. “Daddy was worried,” he said. “He thought didn’t know but I heard him.”

I looked up at Dante, who was standing above us with the expression of a parent who has just discovered that a child’s observational capabilities extend further than estimated.

“He’s four,” Dante said, which wasn’t quite an apology and wasn’t quite an explanation but was something between the two.

“He’s four and he was paying attention,” I said.

“Daddy says I’m shy,” Drew said. “I’m not shy. I just-” He stopped, searching. “I just talk when I have something to say.”

“That’s not shy,” I agreed. “That’s just-selective.”

He turned his head and looked at me fully for the first time; the direct look that was his father’s.

“Selective,” he repeated, with the quality of someone storing a word for use.

“It means you choose carefully,” I said. “When to talk and what to say.”

He looked at his knees. Looked at Lake. Looked back at me. “I like that,” he said. “Selective.”

Lake had arrived back.

He materialized in front of us with the momentum of someone who had been elsewhere and had decided elsewhere was complete and now the conversation required his input. He looked at Drew, then at me, then at Drew again.

“Are you friends now?” he asked Drew.