Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 174

Chapter 169: Telling Drew About Nick

Drew POV

The different face was the good one.

Dad had different faces for different things and I’d catalogued them across my whole life the way I catalogued birds, the way I catalogued leaves.

I’d thought about how to name it and the best I could do was: like he was somewhere else.

Not physically. Dad was always physically where he was supposed to be-school pickup, dinner, bedtime, the Thursday hot chocolate. But the somewhere-else face meant that even when he was present he was also thinking about something he wasn’t saying, which was different from the kind of not-saying I did, because when I didn’t say things it was because I was sorting them, but when Dad didn’t say things it was more like he had them locked up.

The new face wasn’t like that.

The new face was more here.

I’d first noticed it around the time he started going to Sedona’s house more, or she started coming to ours, or they started going on the walks together. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when the face changed because faces didn’t change all at once, they changed in small steps that you only noticed when you looked back and compared the before and the after.

But it was different now.

At dinner he asked me more questions and listened to the answers differently, the kind of listening where he was actually thinking about what I said rather than waiting to say the next thing. He laughed more, the real laugh, which Sedona had told me once was different from the polite laugh and she was right, I’d always known they were different but I hadn’t told anyone in case they thought I was weird for knowing.

Also there was Lucian.

Lucian came to our house more now.

Before, Lucian was Dad’s work person. He met him at work or through Sedona, i wasnt sure of that but i knew the day i met Sedona was the same time i met Lucian and Lake..and soon enough Lucian came all the time.

Now he came over not for work.

This was different.

He came over on Wednesday evenings sometimes and they cooked, which was strange because Dad usually cooked alone or ordered things and didn’t cook with other people. When Lucian came to cook they talked the whole time and there was a different sound to the kitchen, the kind of sound that meant two people were comfortable rather than one person and a guest.

Telling Drew About Nick

Lake had explained it to me with the directness he brought to everything.

“Our dads like each other,” he’d said, at school, like he was reporting the weather.

“I know,” I’d said, because I did know, I’d known for a while

“Not like how you like a friend,” Lake had said, making sure I understood the type of liking.

“I know,” I’d said again.

“Is that okay?” he’d asked.

This was a Lake question, which meant it came fast and direct and without a lot of warning. Lake asked questions the way he reported things-because they were thère and needed to be addressed.

“Yes,” I’d said. “It’s okay.”

And it was. I’d thought about it properly before I said it, the way I thought about things I wanted to answer correctly. Dad having Lucian be someone he liked in that way was-it was good. Dad’s face was the new face now. And Lake came over more, which meant I had someone to give my leaf identifications to and to correct when he got bird species wrong.

The addition was a good thing, normally it was just me, my dad and a lot of hotels, always moving to another city.

That was a phrase I’d heard Dad use on the phone and I’d looked it up.

Sedona had shown me Nick.

We’d been in the garden on a Saturday when it happened-not a walk day, just an afternoon, and she’d been sitting on the bench under the tree that still had some of its shape even without most of the leaves, and I’d been looking at the bare branches trying to identify the exact structure of them.

She’d said: “Drew, can I show you something?”

‘You’d like him,” she said. “I think.”

looked at the picture again. The face that was thinking even when standing still.

‘Selective,” I said.

She’d made the sound that was almost a laugh. “Exactly,” she said. “Very selective.”

‘d liked knowing about Nick. It made the picture in my head of Sedona’s life more complete, which was something I found satisfying-when things that had gaps in them got the gaps filled in.

The third time with the shadow was different.

t was a Sunday, which was a home day, no school and no specific schedule. Dad was inside with Lucian. I was in the front garden.

had my leaf book with me. I was trying to record the last of the autumn specimens before they got too broken down to press properly.

had the back-of-the-neck feeling again.

Didn’t look up right away. I’d been learning, across the three times, that looking up immediately was not the best approach-it gave away that I’d noticed, and I wasn’t sure yet whether I wanted whoever was watching to know I’d noticed.

Kept looking at the leaf.

Turned it over. Examined the underside.

Then I looked up, casually, the way you looked up when you were just looking around and not looking at anything specific.

There was a car on the street.

Gray this time. Not the same car as either of the others. But the man-I was more sure now that it was the same man, the same shape of person, the same way of sitting-was in it, and he was looking at the house.