Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 239

The Return-2

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He absorbed this without arguing, which was, in itself, a kind of growth. I took it to mean that at six years old, he showed some sense of trusting a process.

His eyes were bright, and his face was equally bright. He turned and said, smiling at me.

“I hope you do that,” he said

Catherine would always say that expressing yes is always the wrong answer in cases like this. I have taken note of Catherine’s views on the issues. “She is right about that,” I said.

Near the end, when the light had moved across the window, and the supervisor had checked her watch twice. She tried to hide that she was checking it. Nick went quiet.

た

“Is it time for us to go?” Nick asked very quietly. He was not looking at me. He was looking at his hands, but the question seemed too large to ask while making eye contact.

I felt the full weight of the 1uestion. “I’m working on it. And that’s what all of this is for. The lawyer, the court, everything happening behind the scenes that I can’t always explain to you, yet. All of it is aimed at that,” I said.

He nodded slightly. The nod of someone who had decided to trust a process he couldn’t see the inside of yet. the same trust he’d extended to a phone call three months ago, the same trust that had grown a little more solid with every call since.

“Okay,” he said.

The supervisor stood. “Two minutes,” she said gently

Nick’s hand went to his jacket pocket. He pulled out a folded piece of paper, which he had come prepared, and it was so entirely him, so exactly the kind of advance planning Drew would have approved of. He unfolded it carefully and handed it to me.

A new drawing. Both of us, round-headed, stick-armed, except now I was holding something in my drawn hand. A tennis racket, slightly too large for the proportions, unmistakable.

Stars were drawn above our heads. They were connected with careful pencil lines into a shape that took me a second to place. At the top of the page, in his small, deliberate handwriting, a name.

“The Return.”

I looked at it for almost a minute and shook my head.

“You named it already,” I said.

“I told you I had options,” he said. “I picked the best one.”

“It’s the best one,” I agreed. My voice didn’t entirely hold steady on the second word, and I let it not hold steady, because some things didn’t need to be managed.

“We can still make a real one,” he said. “On the ceiling. With actual stars. This is just so you’d have it until then.”

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The Return 2

Hooked at him and said, “I’m going to keep this next to the other one.”

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He nodded, satisfied, the deal done. The supervisor said it was time. He hugged me again just as he did before. He stepped back when he remembered the rules, even when he didn’t like them. And he walked toward the door at his fast pace. It was like one look back at me would have changed a lot. So, he barely guided against

“On the twenty-eight, I’m going to ask Dad about the competition. Just to ask and nothing else.”

“Just ask,” I said.

He passed through the door as I sat in the chair with the drawing in my hands. I looked at the careful pencil lines of a constellation. I shook my head and forced a smile.

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