Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 198

Chapter 193: Siblings Teases

Cameron’s POV

I got in the car and started the car.

Lucian had said: *He’ll come around.*

And I believed him. Because Lake was his sonhe received information and worked with it, arrived at conclusions through logic rather than feeling, and logic could be updated when the inputs changed. I simply needed to become a different input so he could update his knowledge on what he knew about me.to something nicer than being polite to the man….monster who took his dad job.

Clam

I could not believe that was his impression of me. And I had not bothered to spend time with Lake at all, knowing he existed but did not do the picnic dates with him as Dante was doing and I realized that to love Lucian meant loving Lake and seeing him as mine as well, rather than someone to be managed.

I could do that.

I pulled out onto the road. The city moved past in the quiet, amber-lit way it did late on a weekday evening -streets emptying, November cold pressing against the windows, the particular stillness of a world that had decided to stop for the night.

My phone lit up on the passenger seat.

*Sedona.*

I picked up on speaker.

“You left without saying goodbye,” she said.

“You were being serenaded by Rachel. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“She was not serenading me, she was explaining the sign she’s going to make.”

“The large one.”

“The one Enzo is going to carry.”

“That one, yes.” I took the turn toward the house. “Lake’s asleep. I dropped them home.”

A pause. I could hear her breathing, the particular quality of someone who was about to say something they’d been holding. “How was the car?” she asked.

I kept my voice even. “Educational.”

“He’s four, Cameron.”

“I know.”

“He made a completely logical assessment based on-”

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Siblings Tease

Claim

“+know.” I let that sit for a moment. “He’s right that I fired Lucian. He’s right that I haven’t been around him and had not spend anytime with him. I cannot be upset He wished Dante was going to be his second dad. He made a reasonable call.”

Sedona was quiet. Tknew that quiet-it was the quiet she used when she was deciding whether to say the thing she actually thought or the diplomatic version. With me, she usually went with the actual thing.

“You’re going to be weird about this,” she said. “Aren’t you.”

“I’m not going to be weird about it.”

“You have the voice.”

“I don’t have a voice.”

“Cameron. You have a voice. It’s the voice you get when something has gotten to you and you’re deciding how to not let it have gotten to you.”

I said nothing.

“He’s going to come around,” Sedona said. “Lucian’s going to explain it, and Lake is going to have approximately forty-seven follow-up questions, and then he’s going to want to see what a CEO actually does, and you’re going to have to spend an afternoon with a four-year-old who will tell all your employees things you’d rather they didn’t know.”

“He’s going to announce himself.”

“He absolutely is.”

“Lucian said the same thing.”

“Because it’s true.” I heard her shift, the sound of the garden-she was still outside. “Tell me you kissed him before you left.”

“Sedona.”

“Cameron.”

“That’s-yes. I did.”

“Good.” A pause. “Tell me you’re not going to make it weird.”

“I’m not going to make it weird.”

“Tell me you understand that a four-year-old saying he likes Dante is not a competition.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

“There it is,” she said.

“It’s not a competition.”

“Good.”

“I just-Lake had a narrative he liked. The narrative featured Dante. I wasn’t in it.”

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Siblings Teases

“You’re in it now.”

“I’m the late addition who fired his father.”

Claim

“You’re the late addition who reinstated his father the next morning, who has been doing the actual work of being here for the past month, who his father is in something real with” A pause. “Also you gave him cake. He had two and a half pieces. That’s worth something.”

“He was going to take a third.”

“I know, Lucian stopped him.” Another pause, warmer. “You’re going to be fine. Lake is going to come around. And when he does, he’s going to announce you to literally everyone he meets, and you’re going to have to decide if that’s a problem.”

“He can announce me,” I said. Heard the echo of what I’d said to Lucian. “Let him.”

A moment.

“Good,” Sedona said.

I pulled into the Preston driveway. Cut the engine. The house was mostly dark-living room light still on, the warm amber of it through the curtains.

“Sedona.”

“Yeah.”

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