Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 183

Chapter 178: A Child’s Innocent Request

Sedona’s POV

He’d thought about this. Nick had been thinking about this for a very long time..he knew that coming back was going to be a no, so he planned dates where he could meet me and still have Catherine and in his mind it was simple like that, that he can run to one end to the other. He was enamoured with Catherine because she was a tennis player, well known. He didn’t know I was one either. But then again, I hadn’t told him so I couldn’t be angry at a child for being awed by someone who was cool when all I gave him was the stay at him, strict mother personnel.

He’d sat somewhere and worked out the geometry of it-how to have his mother at the same location as his father without requiring them to occupy the same space. And couldn’t find fault in his words because I wasn’t going to tell him about how complicated it was for them adults. And she didn’t want to ruin anything or paint anyone as the bad guy.

“I’ll think about it,” I said which was a neutral answer to give him, not giving him promises and at the same time not shutting it down completely.

“Okay,” he said, satisfied. “Aunt Catherine is really good,” he added. “I watched some of her old matches on the tablet when she was playing against her opponents last year She was number three in the world.”

“She was,” I said.

“She’s going to be good again, because of the break she had,” he said. “She said her shoulder is all the way better now.”

“I’m glad her shoulder is better,” I said, which was technically true and required no further comment from

“Do you like tennis?” he asked.

I stopped.

The question sat in the air between us for a moment.

I thought about what to say to him. This was an opening, to tell Nick things he didn’t know about me.

The simple version: yes, I played when I was younger. The complete version: I was regionally competitive, I gave it up when I left my family and tried to start over, I’m on a court three times a week right now with a former junior rival who is top fourteen in the world and who thinks there might still be something worth returning to.

And if he didn’t believe me or feel that I was saying all this to look more cooler he was not going to be happy, no this would sound all incredulous to his ears. Especially all he knew was that I just got out of the hospital and would be extremely careful and still tired.

And not just that, I had other things to consider and that was Nick loved Catherine. Nick was going to his first live tennis match with his father to watch Catherine play. If I told Nick I was a player, he would tell Logan immediately with no ability to keep it contained, because he was six and this was the kind of thing

A Child’s lonecent Request

Clam

you told people. Logan would know. Logan would have months before any tournament appearance to use This reputation and his connections and his anger to make things difficult.

Catherine Voss was ranked number three in the world before her injury.

Whatever I was returning to, wasn’t ranked yet. I was a ghost on the circuit, a player who’d left at seventeen and stayed gone. I didn’t have protection yet. I didn’t have ranking points, tournament results, I didn’t have the backing of a professional career on my side which would make it more difficult for him to lay a hand on me.

I needed time to build that before Logan knew that.

“I like watching it,” I said. “I think it’s a beautiful game.”

“Catherine said it’s the most demanding individual sport,” Nick said, with the authority of someone quoting a source he found credible and was going to stick by it.

“Catherine’s right about that,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll play,” he said. “When I’m older. If my asthma is better.”

“Your asthma might be better,” I said. “You can play with asthma if you manage it well. There have been great players who had asthma.”

“Really?” The interest in his voice was genuine. “Like who?”

I told him about a few-names from tennis history who’d competed at the highest level while managing respiratory conditions. He listened with the careful attention that he had been given my words lately, knowing that his time with me was limited and he was going to cherish every moment.

He remembered some of the names either against people Catherine went up against or pictured of people he had seen or in events when Logan would take him to a convention or something

“Maybe,” he said again, after I’d finished. “I’ll think about it. I am not yet sure because Dad said I will take over his company and I still want to go to space as an astronaut as well.”

“You’ve got time to decide,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll do all three. I don’t need to play everyday and I don’t need to be in the company every day as well, then I can have time to go to space and see everything”

We talked for a while longer after this, not too eager to end the call.

When we said goodbye, he said: “February. Think about February.”

“I’m thinking,” I said.

“Good,” he said, and hung up with the satisfaction of someone who’d moved something forward.

I sat with the phone in my hand after the call ended.

February.

23

A Child & lopetent Request

Gatherine at a Chicago invitational, Logan in his box watching the love of his life play like always, Nick wanting both his parents in the same location even if in different parts of it.

Cham

And me, in Seattle, on a court three times a week trying to remember what my body had once known completely and strive to return to a better life than the one that I had been living before where j was barely surviving.

I thought about what the attorney had said. *Courts look at the full picture of what a parent can offer.*

A mother who was rebuilding. Not just her health, not just the legal case, but herself-the self that had existed before Chicago, that had been good at something and given it up and was finding out what

remained.

I wanted Nick to know that version of me eventually.

Not now. Not while Logan could use it.

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