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.

Bark in alle

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.

“Apparently that’s the consensus,” I said.

She turned back to the stove. “Another twenty minutes,” she said. “Go sit down.”

I went and sat down.

Nick came and sat next to me at the kitchen table and continued the soccer story, which had developed an additional subplot involving Marcus and a misunderstanding about the offside rule. I listened and asked questions and let the ordinary texture of it settle around me.

This was what I’d been missing. Not Sedona specifically-or not only Sedona-but this. The house working. Nick fed and happy and talking at speed. The smell of food being made, the whole sense of homely feel;ing wrapped around me like a quilt.

It had been functioning without me.

That was both reassuring and something else.

After dinner, Nick went to bed.

He was asleep before I’d finished saying goodnight, which told me he’d been staying up too late in the weeks I was away and was now catching up. I stood in his doorway for a moment looking at him, making sure he was breathing properly.

I went back downstairs.

r

Catherine was cleaning up. My mother was in the sitting room with a glass of wine, which meant she wanted to talk.

I sat across from her.

“Better that you’re back,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

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

“That’s one word for it,” I said.

Clem

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