Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 142

Meeting Drew and Lake-2

Drew, through all of this, had said nothing.

Claim

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.

Drew looked at me from the corner of his eye. “He made soup every day,” he said. “For a long time. And he was on the phone a lot and he looked-” A pause in which he searched for the word. “Worried. He looked worried.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry he was worried.”

Drew thought about this. “Are you going to be okay now?” he asked.

12

Meeting Draw and Lake-2

“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to be okay.”

Claim

He nodded once, with the gravity of someone who had asked a serious question and received a satisfactory answer. Then he returned his attention to Lake, who had moved on from the bookshelf and was now investigating the table near the window with the same comprehensive focus.

“That’s Lake,” Drew said, to me, as if I might not have been introduced

“I know,” I said.

“He talks a lot,” Drew said again.

“Is that okay?” I asked. “That he talks a lot?”

Drew was quiet for a moment. Then, with the particular precision of someone who had considered a thing properly: “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t have to talk when he’s talking.

I had the feeling of someone who had just been given a window into a very complete four-year-old logic.

“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.

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