Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 215

Chapter 210:A Glimmer Of Hope

Sedona POV

“Adaeze said to keep the call simple,” said. “Just tell him about the tennis. Not the case details.”

Clarm

“Simple is fine,” Dante said. “He’s six. He can receive ‘your mum plays tennis and is going to compete in Chicago in December.’ He’ll do the rest of the work himself.”

“He’s very good at doing the rest of the work himself,” I said.

“Sounds like his mother.”

I sat with that for a moment. Then I said: “Cameron is renting a property for the trip. Something large enough for everyone.”

“Everyone meaning-”

“My parents. Lucian probably. Rachel and Enzo have already said they want to come. You, if you’re—” I stopped. Found the right way to ask. “The competition would have you there regardless. But if you wanted to-if Drew would be alright with-”

“Sedona,” he said, quietly. “Yes.”

“I haven’t finished asking.”

“You’ve been asking for the last thirty seconds,” he said, “The answer is yes. Drew and I will be there. For the competition and for whatever else the month requires.”

I looked at Nick’s card on the nightstand. The orange sun in the corner. The round-headed drawing of the two of us.

“It’s going to be a complicated Christmas,” I said.

“It’s going to be a full one,” Dante said. “That’s different.”

Mrs. Peterson called at three-seventeen.

“He’s ready,” she said. “He’s had his snack and he’s sitting on the window seat in his room. Mr. Hayes left forty minutes ago. Miss Voss is at the facility.” A pause-the particular pause of a woman who had been in that household for seven years and knew exactly what every departure meant. “You have time.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For all of it. Not just today.”

A small sound on her end. Not quite a response-something warmer than a response. “I’ll put him on.”

I was in my room. I had positioned myself on the bed with my back against the headboard and Nick’s card on the nightstand in my eyeline, which was either a grounding mechanism or a sentimental one and possibly both. My notebook was open on the bed beside me with nothing written in it, because I had decided not to script this and then written three lines anyway and then crossed them out.

1:4

Claim

The snick of the phone being passed.

A small breath.

“Mum?”

Nick’s voice. Six years old, slightly hoarse the way it always was in the afternoon,

“Hi, bug,” I said.

A pause. Then: “You called.”

“Mrs. Peterson helped.”

“She said you were going to call today.” His voice had shifted-the cautious quality, the one he used when he was trying not to want something too much in case it didn’t happen. “I thought maybe she got it wrong.”

“She didn’t get it wrong.”

He was quiet for a moment. I heard the small sounds of him settling-the creak of the window seat, what might have been him pulling his knees up, the way he arranged himself when he was going to be somewhere for a while.

“Are you at the house?” he said. “The Seattle one?”

“Yes. I’m in my room.”

“The one with the maple tree outside?”

I looked at the window. I could see the upper branches of the Japanese maple from where I was sitting- bare now, November-stripped, but with the structural honesty that bare trees had. “I can see it from the bed,” I said. “The top of it.”

“Is it the color now? The red one?”

“It’s past the red. It’s gone bare for winter. But it’ll come back in spring.” I paused. “Your grandfather planted it the year I was born.”

A small silence. Then: “That’s old.”

“It is old.”

“Does he go out and look at it?”

“Sometimes. When he’s thinking.” I smiled at the ceiling. “He reads to me sometimes, in the evenings. In the sitting room. He’s been doing it since I came home.”

Nick absorbed this. I could feel him doing it-the careful, deliberate way he took in information about the Preston side of his family, which was still new, still being mapped. He’d been building a picture of them from phone calls and the things I said in passing, assembling it piece by piece the way he did everything.

“I have something to tell you,” I said. “Two things, actually.”

“Good things or bad things?”

24

A Glimmer Orthope

Good things,” I said. “Both good.”

Another pause. The cautious adjustment-recalibrating toward hope. “Okay.”

I took a breath.

“I’m coming to Chicago,” I said. “Soon. In less than a month.”

The silence on the other end had a texture felt against my sternum. Not breathing, not moving-the absolute stillness of a child receiving something too big to respond to immediately.

“Chicago,” he said, finally. Very quietly.

Claim

“Chicago. I’ll be there before Christmas. I’m going to be in the city, bug. Not at the house-we’re working out the details of where and when we can see each other, and my lawyer is helping with that-but in the same city. Close.”

“Before Christmas?” he said.

“Before Christmas.”

“So-” He was working through it. I could hear him doing the arithmetic, lining up what he knew with what I’d just said. “So at Christmas I could-we could-”

“We’re going to figure out how to see each other,” I said. “That’s the plan. My lawyer and the people working on our situation are making sure of it.” I kept my voice steady-not suppressing the feeling but holding it so it didn’t become a wave he had to swim through. “I’m going to see you, Nick. That’s what I want you to hear. I’m coming, and I’m going to see you.”

A sound. Small-not quite a word, not quite a cry. Somewhere between them.

“Nick.”

“I’m here,” he said. Slightly unsteady. “I’m-I’m here.”

“I know you are.”

A moment where neither of us said anything and the line between us held something that didn’t need words.

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