Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 194

Chapter 189: Dating Life Exposed

Sedona’s POV

Later, when the food had been packed away and Rachel and Enzo had gone home with a sleeping Molly, and Lucian had taken Lake inside to wash cake off his hands and stay for the rest of the evening, and my parents had retreated to their separate rooms with the satisfied quiet of people who’d done something good-later, Dante and I ended up in the back garden, just the two of us.

We did this sometimes. Not by arrangement. We’d just both drift toward the garden in the evenings like the same magnetic pull was operating on both of us and we needed to process something while still in each other presence.

The garden was my father’s territory in the daylight, but at night it became neutral ground.

Dante was leaning against the garden wall, watching the sky. Drew had stayed inside with Lake-some game of Lake’s invention that Drew was participating in as well.

We’d been talking for a while. About Maria’s plan, about the circuit timeline, about the practical questions -travel, training schedules, how it would intersect with Dr. Mitchell’s appointments and the custody proceedings. Dante had thought about all of it already, which didn’t surprise me. He had a way of thinking ahead that didn’t feel like pressure, just like someone who had cleared a path and was waiting to see if you wanted to walk it.

There was a pause in the conversation. One of those pauses that isn’t uncomfortable but the kind that happened when two people have been together long enough the silence was now comfortable.

I don’t know exactly when I decided but it seemed my body went ahead to do what my brain had been screaming at me to do for weeks now.

I reached out and kissed him for a few seconds and then I pulled back and I could feel the warmth in my own face, the particular embarrassment of having done something without rehearsing it.

I looked at him. He was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t immediately name, shock was present on his face and I could see his face also was red so i wasn’t the only one embarrassed by this development.

“Thank you,” I said, and it came out shy and a little ridiculous given what I’d just done, but it was true. Thank you for the soup. Thank you for the walks. Thank you for opening the door, and not asking to come through it until I was ready.

He started to say something.

A sound from the garden doorway.

We both turned. Drew was standing in the door, still wearing his jacket from the afternoon, with the meticulous posture he always had, his mouth dropped open as he looked between the two of us.

“Wait,” Drew said.

His tone was precise. Analytical. The tone he used when he was organizing information.

“You and Aunt Sedona are together?”

Dante blinked. “Drew-”

“But.” Drew held up one small-hand. “I thought it was you and Uncle bucian.”

A beat of silence filled the space as I blinked again, trying to understand what I just heard.

“What?” Dante said.

Drew looked at him with the patience of someone explaining something obvious to him.

“Lake said his dad was seeing a man friend. And his dad is Uncle Lucian. And you and Uncle Lucian spend a lot of time together. And Lake said they would get another dad.” He paused, consulting the internal record. “And Lake said we would be brothers. He told everyone at school.”

I pressed my hand to my mouth. I could not laugh. I refused to laugh.

Then the garden door opened wider and Lake appeared, propelling himself through with his customary authority-four years old and built like a small chairman of the board.

“DREW,” Lake announced loudly, “I just had the greatest idea-“.

“Lake,” Drew said, with older-sibling authority as he told to face Lake, “you told everyone at school that our fathers were together.”

Lake stopped. Considered this. “They ARE together,” he said, with conviction. “They went to that restaurant.”

“Dante,” I said, very carefully, “did you know your son was telling his classmates you were in a relationship with Lucian?”

“I did not know that,” Dante said, with a dignity that was also crumbling.

“I was going to get two dads,” Lake explained, to no one and everyone, with the tone of someone announcing a cancelled holiday. “And now Aunt Sedona is getting in the way.”

And that was it. I laughed-out loud, head back carefree. Dante laughed. Cameron made a noise that he would later describe as a cough. Lucian looked at the sky with the expression of a man reassessing multiple life choices. Lake watched all of us with enormous satisfaction, apparently deciding that laughter meant he’d made his point.

Drew looked at me. Then at his father. Then back at me.

“So you’re together?” he asked. Still precise. Still organizing the data.

Dante looked at me. That look again-the one I couldn’t name, between surprise and certainty.

“We’re figuring it out,” I said.

Drew considered this with great seriousness. Then he nodded, with the gravitas of a four-year-old who had decided to accept an outcome he didn’t fully understand.

“Okay,” he said. “But Lake and I already decided to be brothers.”

“BROTHERS,” Lake confirmed, loudly.

Lucian put his hand over his eyes.

Cameron, very quietly, made kissing noises in my direction.

I pointed at him without looking. “Don’t.”