Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 178

Chapter 173: Back in Seattle

LOGAN

Nick ran to me before I’d fully gotten through the door.

I had my bag in one hand and my phone in the other and he hit me at somewhere around waist height with the full commitment of a six-year-old who’d been waiting for something and had finally gotten it. I dropped the bag and caught him, which required some adjustment because he was heavier than the last time I’d picked him up, which was something that happened with children after been away for a while.

“You’re back,” he said, into my shoulder.

“I’m back,” I said.

“You said before the weekend.” he murmured in my suit jacket not raising his head yet.

“It’s Saturday,” I said. “I made it.”

He leaned back to look at me with the checking quality he had, the way he looked at things when he needed to confirm they were actually there. Whatever he found seemed to satisfy him because he relaxed back against my shoulder and stayed there, not in a rush to get down as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, like all the tension on his shoulders have finally been lifted away with just one breath of relief.

“I missed you,” he said.

“I missed you too, buddy,” I said.

I meant it. Standing in my own hallway with my son’s weight against me, I meant it completely. Now that I was back, standing in the house that smelled like itself, with Nick solid and real and pressing into my shoulder, the month away felt like a significant mistake in ways that had nothing to do with Sedona.

My mother appeared from the sitting room.

Sherry looked-better than the last time I’d seen her, which had been a brief and tense visit face call three weeks ago. She’d been carrying something then, a quality of guilt that she had about sedona’s cancer and her role in making her feel horrible and alone. She still had it, I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me, but something had settled around it.

“You look terrible,” she said, which was Sherry’s version of I’m glad you’re home.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Come in properly,” she said. “Catherine made dinner. She’s in the kitchen.”

I set Nick down, who immediately began telling me something about soccer practice that had apparently happened while I was gone and that involved a level of detail that required me to track multiple players, a specific goal post, and something that had happened with a referee that Nick considered deeply unjust.

I followed the story into the sitting room while Nick tracked beside me, still talking.

Catherine had made something with chicken.

She was in the kitchen when came through, and she turned from the stove with an expression that reminded me briefly of Sedona in the early years of our marriage when she would be waiting each day with a home made meal, waiting while i returned home from work.

“You made it,” she said.

“I said I would,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment in the specific way she had, the way that was assessing something she didn’t fully show. “You look exhausted,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Seattle was-” She paused, choosing the word. “Unproductive.”

“That’s one word for it,” I said.

Logan She set her glass down with the specific precision she used when she was going to say something she’d been preparing. Tm going to say this because someone needs to and it should come from me.” She looked at me directly. “Sedona is gone. She left, and she has built a life in Seattle, and you spent a month sitting outside her parents’ house accomplishing nothing except making yourself look desperate.” She paused. That’s done now. You’re home. Nick is happy you’re here. The company needs you present.”

“I know,” I said.

“I want to be sure you know,” she said. “That you’re not planning to-*

‘I’m home,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment longer, doing the thing she’d always done, which was reading past what I said to what I was actually doing.

“Catherine has been here every day,” she said, after a moment. Her voice shifted, becoming something warmer. “Every single day. She came in the mornings to make sure Nick had breakfast when Mrs. Peterson had her appointment days. She stayed late when the soccer program ran long and I couldn’t be here. She learned his- Sherry paused.

“She learned the cream. The one Sedona used to make. She found the formula and she made a version of it. It’s not exactly right, she’ll tell you that herself, but it’s close. Nick uses it.”

I looked at my mother.

“She’s been a faithful friend,” Sherry said. “More than a friend. She’s been present in a way that you have not been present while you were sitting in a motel room in Seattle.” She said it without cruelty, just as fact. “Nick was difficult with her at the beginning. Closed off. But he’s come around. She’s been patient enough to earn that.”