Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 214

Chapter 209: Telling Nick

Sedona POV

I looked at the competition schedule on the counter. My name in the field. *Sedona Preston.* The photograph Maria had approved. The dates that now overlapped with a courtroom and a city and a six-year-old who said goodnight to a constellation called Gerald the Boot.

Clarm

“I know,” I said. And I did know. But knowing and feeling were different instruments, and right now they were playing in different keys and I was doing my best to hold both.

“Call Adaeze,” Cameron said. “I’ll start looking at properties. Something with at least six bedrooms and a kitchen big enough for Mum to feel useful in.”

“She’ll bring her own pots,” I said.

“She’ll bring her own pots,” he agreed. “I’ll get a property with storage.”

I called Adaeze at two o’clock.

She walked me through the hearing structure-what to expect, what they’d argue, what Logan’s side would likely argue back. She spoke the way she wrote: precisely, without waste, with the particular confidence of someone who had sat in a lot of courtrooms and understood how they moved. She told me that the documentation was strong-the stalking complaint, Cameron’s video, the call records between me and Nick, the card, Dr. Mitchell’s medical records showing the trajectory from diagnosis to recovery.

She told me that Logan’s lawyer was going to argue instability. Constructed identity-the Chicago orphan story. Departure from the marital home. Eleven-year absence from the tennis circuit that she would frame

as erratic rather than forced.

“We reframe everything,” Adaeze said. “Constructed identity becomes survival after a coerced family arrangement. Departure from the marital home becomes a medically vulnerable person leaving an emotionally unsafe situation. Absence from the circuit becomes evidence that she prioritized her child’s care over her own career ambitions for eleven years.”

I was quiet for a moment.

“The tennis,” I said. “The competition. Is it-”

r

“It’s good,” she said, without hesitation. “It’s evidence of remission that goes beyond medical documentation. It shows the court a woman who is not dying. It shows recovery that is functional and active. The competition schedule will be used against you by their side-travel, commitments, inconsistency-but we counter it with Catherine Voss’s identical schedule and her presence in the Hayes household.”

I exhaled. Cameron had been right.

“I want to tell Nick about the tennis before the announcement goes public,” I said. “Is that-from a legal standpoint-

Telling Nick

Claim

“Do it through Mrs. Peterson,” Adaeze said. “Same channel you’ve been using. Keep a record of the call. Don’t discuss the case specifics with Nick-he’s six, and anything he says to Logan about the case content could complicate things. Just tell him about the tennis. Let it be a normal thing between a mother and her child.”

“Okay.”

“And Sedona.” Her voice shifted a fraction-still precise, but with something underneath it that was almost warmth. “The fact that he’s been calling you. The card. These are not incidental details. The court is going to hear that a six-year-old has been independently maintaining contact with his mother across months of separation and has written her a letter saying *I didn’t mean it, I love you.* That matters. It matters significantly.”

After I hung up, I sat in my room for a while.

Nick’s card was on my nightstand. Dark blue, with the drawing of the two of us-his rendering of me taller than him by approximately twice the accurate proportion, both of us with large round heads and stick arms and what appeared to be a sun in the upper corner that had been colored orange instead of yellow. *I didn’t mean it. I love you. Nick.*

I picked it up. Read it again. Put it back.

I called Dante in the late afternoon.

He picked up on the third ring, slightly breathless-he’d been on court, he said, working through something with his serve that hadn’t been sitting right all week.

“I have a date,” I said. “For the hearing. December twenty-third.”

A pause. “Chicago.”

“Chicago.”

“That’s four weeks.”

“Yes.” I looked at the competition schedule, still on my nightstand now because I’d brought it upstairs at some point. “And the competition-the first one I’m registered for. It’s also in Chicago. kate December into early January.”

A longer pause. “Maria told me.”

“She told you?”

“Yesterday. She wanted to flag the overlap. She wasn’t sure if you’d want to-she wondered if you’d want to defer to the next bracket.” A pause. “I told her that was your call and she should ask you directly.”

“She hasn’t called me about deferring.”

“No,” he said. “I think she watched you play four sets and decided you weren’t the deferring type.”

Something about this made me want to laugh and cry at the same time, which was a state I’d been in with some frequency lately. “I’m not deferring,” I said. “I’m going to Chicago for the hearing and I’m going to

23

Telling Nick

Claim

Chicago for the competition and they’re going to happen in the same month and I’m going to manage both.

“I know,” Dante said. Simply. Not *are you sure* or *that’s a lot* or any of the other things people said when they were performing caution. Just: *I know.*

“The competitor announcement is in a few days,” I said. “Pictures and everything. It’s going to be on television.”

“Yes.”

“Logan is going to see it.”

A beat. “Yes.”

“And Nick might see it before I can tell him.”

“Then we make sure you tell him first,” Dante said. “Can you call him tonight? Through Mrs. Peterson?”

“I’m trying to set it up. I want to do it before the announcement drops.” I pressed my fingers into the edge of the nightstand. “I want to hear his voice when I tell him. I want to know how he receives it.”

“He’s going to think it’s the best thing he’s ever heard,” Dante said.

I thought about Nick on the phone, his small careful voice, the way he asked questions in a specific order -the thing he wanted to know most always coming last, as if he was working up to it. I thought about telling him *I’m a tennis player, I was a tennis player before you were born, I’m going to be competing in Chicago in December and I might see you there.*

I thought about the sound he would make.

“Dante,” I said.

“Yes.”

“The competition is in Chicago. Catherine’s invitational is in Chicago in January. They’re going to be in the same city at the same time.” I stopped. Let it land. “Nick is going to be watching Catherine’s matches. He might-he doesn’t know I play. He might end up in the stands for my match not knowing.”

The silence on the other end had a specific quality.

“Or he might find out from you first,” Dante said, “and he might ask Logan to take him to your match instead.”

I hadn’t let myself think that far. The version where Nick chose-where he had the information and made a choice and the choice was to watch his mother play.

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