Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 207

Chapter 202: Playdates

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Claim

Lake was in the living room when we arrived, on the floor with what appeared to be every single piece of a large puzzle spread across the carpet in deliberate, organized rows. He looked up when we came in. Looked at Drew first-his face doing the immediate open thing it did for Drew, the uncomplicated warmth.

Then he looked at me.

“Hello,” he said. Polite. Precise. The exact register of someone who had been raised well and was deploying that raising as a form of controlled distance.

“Hello, Lake,” I said.

He looked at the puzzle. “Drew, do you want to help? I’m sorting the edge pieces.”

Drew sat down on the carpet with the focused willingness he brought to most things. I set my bag by the door and went to find Lucian in the kitchen.

He was at the stove, back to me, and he turned when I came in with the expression he had when something was going better than expected. He tilted his head toward the living room-*they’re both there?*

I nodded.

He turned back to the stove.

I sat at the kitchen table and we existed in the same space in the easy way we were learning-the companionable quiet of two people who didn’t need to fill every moment. From the living room, Lake’s voice carried: *these are all sky pieces, they go here, the rule is you don’t mix sections-* and Drew’s quieter response, and then Lake again, narrating the sorting system with the thoroughness of someone who had opinions about puzzle methodology.

“He looked at me,” I said, quietly.

“He saw you,” Lucian said.

“He said hello.”

“He has manners.” Lucian stirred something. “It’s more than last week.”

Last week had been the first Tuesday, which had gone approximately as follows: Lake acknowledged my presence, spoke to Drew, ate dinner in the conversational orbit of everyone except me, and went to his room at seven-thirty without saying goodnight. He hadn’t been rude. He had been the opposite of rude- VERY polite, carefully neutral, the politeness of someone who had decided that they were going to withhold rather than attack.

I had found the withholding harder than an argument would have been.

At least an argument would have been engagement.

1:3

PlayDates

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The Tuesdays continued.

Claim

I learned, over those evenings, the specific non spoken rules about how things work in Lucian’s house- which drawer the good spoons were in, which light in the hallway buzzed slightly if left on too long, the way the kitchen window needed an extra push to close properly. Small things that i had not bothered paying attention before but felt very happy to learn.

I also learned Lake’s systems.

He had systems for everything. The puzzle sorting was one. There was also a system for his shoes by the door-by color, not by pair-and a system for which shows were weekday shows versus weekend shows, and a system for snacks that involved a hierarchy I had not yet fully decoded but which Lucian seemed to navigate without thinking.

He was, I was beginning to understand, a child who found order deeply reassuring and something to live by, especially when faced with unexpected situations and had no way of going about it

I understood this instinct completely.

I kept showing up. Each Tuesday, and sometimes a Thursday when Dante needed Drew picked up from the facility again, or a Saturday afternoon when the group gathered at the Prestons’ and Lake came too. I brought the jollof chips on the second Tuesday. Lake looked at the bag on the kitchen counter and then at me and then at the bag again, and said nothing, but later I noticed the bag had been moved closer to where he was sitting and approximately half of it was gone.

I filed this.

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