Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 201

Chapter 196: Complicated Situation

Lake’s POV

Drew picked up the leaf again. Turned over. “Did he give the job back?”

“The next day.”

“So he fixed it?”

“He broke it first.”

Drew tilted his head slightly. “That’s true.”

“If you break something and then fix it, it was still broken,” I said. “You don’t get to just fix things and then everything is okay. You have to not break them in the first place.”

Drew absorbed this. I could tell he was thinking it through. “That’s fair,” he said, eventually.

“Thank you.”

“But.” He said it carefully. “My dad has broken things. He was late to things when he was practicing for tournaments and I had programs at school and he missed them. And then he came and said sorry and came to the next one. And I was still upset for a bit and then I wasn’t.”

“This is different from a school program,” I said.

“I know. I’m just saying.” He set the leaf down again. “People fix things sometimes. And the fixing matters, even if the breaking still happened.”

I looked at him. Drew was frustrating sometimes because he was very fair about things even when I wanted him to be on my side. He was on my side-I knew that-but he was also the kind of person who tried to see all the shapes of something before he decided. I didn’t always do that. I decided first and then found the shapes that matched.

“I know the fixing happened,” I said. “I’m still upset about the breaking.”

“That’s okay,” Drew said. “You’re allowed to be upset.”

“My dad said to leave some space.”

“That seems right.”

“I told him I would leave some space.” I looked at my hands. “I left very small space.”

Drew made a sound that was almost a laugh.

“Do you know why they are together?” he asked. “Not why your dad decided. Just-do you know what your dad sees in him?”

I thought about this properly, the way my dad would want me to. Not just with the feeling, but with the other part.

< Complicated Feelings

Claim

“My dad said Cameron is a complex person,” I said. The word complex felt important. It was one of the words that meant something was more than one thing at once. “He said I would understand more later.”

“Maybe later you will

“Maybe.” I kicked my feet against the base of the bench. “But right now understand that Dante is good and Cameron is not good and my dad is choosing the not good one and I don’t know why.”

Drew looked at the yard. Someone had started playing à chasing game near the fence. He watched it with mild interest. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “they became friends. Cameron and your dad. Before the other thing.”

I looked at him. “What other thing?”

“Before whatever they are now.” He seemed to be working something out as he said it. “My dad and Sedona were friends first. For a long time. The soup was friendship soup first, I think. And then it was- other soup.” He paused. “That sounds strange.”

“It does sound strange.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “But even if they were friends-even if my dad liked Cameron first and Cameron was good to him-Cameron still did the thing with the job. Which means he can do bad things when he wants to.”

Drew considered this. “Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

“So how does my dad know he won’t do it again?”

Drew opened his mouth. Closed it. This was unusual-Drew usually had an answer queued, even if it was a small one. He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Neither do I,” I said.

And that was the actual thing. Not just the job. Not just the crying. Not just the suits or the way people went quiet when Cameron walked into rooms. The actual thing was that Cameron had done something bad when he had the power to, and now he had the power again-he still had all the power, he was still my dad’s boss, he could still do it-and my dad was just trusting that he wouldn’t.

ľ

My dad trusted people. That was one of my dad’s qualities. He believed people when they said they were going to do better. He believed in the fixing. He said to me once, when I was upset about something at school, that you had to give people the chance to show you who they really were-not just look at one thing they did and decide the whole story from that.

I thought that was good advice for some things.

I did not think it was good advice for people who made your dad cry.

“Do you like him?” Drew asked. “Cameron. Have you spent time with him?”

“I have seen him,” I said. “At the office when my dad brings me sometimes. He is very tall and he wears suits and everyone watches him when he walks and he speaks in a way that makes people write things down.”

Complicated Peelings

“That’s not spending time with him.”

“It is time that I spent.”

“It’s observing him.”

I thought about this. Drew was right. I had observed Cameron Preston. I had not spent time with him.

“He drove us home last night,” I said. “That’s time.”

“Were you awake?”

I paused. “I was awake at the beginning.”

“What happened at the beginning?”

Clam

I tried to remember the beginning of the car ride. My dad and Cameron were talking. I was looking out the window. Then my dad was explaining things to me about the man friend situation and I was processing this and then-

I had fallen asleep.

I didn’t say this.

“He drove carefully,” I said. “I did not feel any bad driving.”

Drew made the almost-laugh sound again. This time it was more of an actual laugh. He pressed his mouth together quickly.

“It is not funny,” I said.

“I know.”

“You laughed.”

“I almost laughed.”

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