Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 208

Chapter 203: Little Progress

I went to the kitchen.

Lucian was on a call, it seemed to be work related since he was using his low voice he subconscioulsy switched to, when it was work related and he held up one finger at me: *one minute*. I sat at the kitchen table and listened to the flat, which was quiet except for Lucian’s murmur and the occasional sound from Lake’s corner. Page turning. A

Lucian finished his call. Sat down across from me. “Lake knew it was just you tonight,” he said. “I told him this morning.”

“How did he take it?”

“He was quiet.” Lucian looked at his hands briefly. “He asked if Drew was coming next week.”

“Is he?”

“Probably.” He looked at me. “Cameron. He’s-it’s going to take time. He’s not-”

“I know,” I said. “I’m not pushing.”

“I know you’re not.” He paused. “I just-I want you to know I see it. What you’re doing. Showing up and not making it a thing.”

“It shouldn’t be a thing,” I said. “He’s four. He’s working with what he has. I’m just-adding to the data set.”

Lucian looked at me for a moment with the full-register look. Then he nodded.

We made dinner together. This was new-usually Lucían cooked and I sat at the table, but this time he handed me a knife and indicated the onions and I took the instruction without comment. We worked in the parallel quiet of it, and from the living room came Lake’s self-narration, and the flat smelled like oil and onions and whatever Lucian had marinating since that morning.

At six-thirty, Lake appeared in the kitchen doorway.

He looked at the two of us. At the stove, at the counter, at me holding a wooden spoon because Lucian had redirected me from the knife to the stirring.

“What is that?” Lake said. Pointed at what I was stirring.

“Stew,” I said.

“My dad’s stew?”

“I’m stirring your dad’s stew,” I said. “He made it.”

Lake looked at Lucian. Some communication passed between them that I couldn’t read-child and parent shorthand, the compressed language of two people who had been each other’s primary company for four

years.

Then Lake came to the kitchen table and sat down. He didn’t say anything else. He took the small book

1.3

Little Progress

he’d carried from his reading corner and opened it on the table and continued reading.

He was in the room. With me. Without Drew as the reason.

I kept stirring.

–

Claim

We fell into an arrangement.

Not spoken. Arrangements with Lake, I was learning, were never spoken-speaking them created pressure, pressure created resistance, and Lake dug in the way a person digs in when they feel something is being required of them. What worked was simply to let things become normal through repetition, to let Tuesday mean *Cameron comes without anyone making it a declaration.

By the fourth Tuesday, Lake had started talking at dinner. Not to me directly-adjacent, the way he’d done with the puzzle-but the topics broadened. He talked about a nature documentary he’d seen about deep-sea fish that were, in his assessment, *not realistic-looking but apparently real*. He talked about a thing that had happened at school that was clearly significant but that he described it with the intention of just making it known to me that he knew about it. He talked about Drew’s bird notebook, which he had apparently been allowed to look at and which he described as *extremely serious*.

I asked, at one point: “What was the most recent bird Drew catalogued?”

Lake looked at me. The direct look, which he hadn’t been deploying much in my direction. “A varied thrush,” he said. “It’s orange and black. Drew said it’s unusual for this area.”

“Is it?”

“Drew looked it up. It was in the notebook with all the information.” He paused. “I looked it up too. Drew’s information was correct.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“I told him he had good sources,” Lake said. Then he looked back at his dinner.

But the look had happened. The direct, unguarded one. I filed it.

The fifth Tuesday, I arrived and Lucian was on the phone again-longer this time, something that had been escalating since that morning, a contract situation I was aware of, since it was one of the projects we had been working on in the company. He met me at the door with the phone against his shoulder and the apologetic expression and I said *go, I’ll start dinner*, and he looked briefly startled, and then went back to the call.

Lake was at the kitchen table with a worksheet from school.

He looked up when I came in. We looked at each other.

“Your dad’s on a call,” I said.

“I know,” Lake said. “He’s been on it since he picked me up.”

23

<Little Progues

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