Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 26

Chapter 24: Nick’s Sick

LOGAN

The question felt like a punch to the gut as I tried not to show it. “What? No. Why would you think that?”

“Because he was with her at the hospital. And she said she was with him for days and nights. That’s what you did with Aunt Catherine. So I thought maybe Mom found her own Aunt Catherine.”

Jesus. Out of the mouths of babes. He had said what I had been avoiding.

“It’s not… that’s different,” I stammered, trying to think of a way out of this predicament.

“Aunt Catherine is just a friend. What your mom is doing is…” What? What was Sedona doing? I didn’t actually know. I’d assumed, accused, but I didn’t know what she was doing, all I had were assumptions.

“She’s just confused,” I said finally. “And that man is probably just helping her while she’s confused. But she’ll figure it out soon, and she’ll come home. I know she will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she loves you too much to stay away. You’re her whole world, Nick. She gave up everything to take care of you. She wouldn’t just abandon that. She’s just… she’s testing me right now. Trying to make me jealous, trying to get a reaction. But once she realizes I’m not going to play her games, she’ll stop and come back home and she will apologize for hurting you with those words spoken at the hospital.”

Nick seemed satisfied with this explanation, though I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself.

After tucking him in, I returned downstairs to find Catherine waiting in the living room, her purse in hand.

“I should go,” she said. “Give you some space to process everything. I don’t think I should sleep over, it will look improper.”

“You don’t have to rush off.”

“I think I do.” She smiled. “Logan, I need to say something, and I hope you won’t take it the wrong way.”

I tensed. “What?”

“I think maybe… maybe Sedona has a point. But maybe I have been around too much. Maybe my presence in your life has made her feel threatened, unwanted.”

“That’s not your fault-”

“I know. But it’s still happening.’

After Catherine left, I poured myself a scotch and collapsed onto the couch. The house was too quiet, the silence was loud, even when Sedona and I weren’t talking, I could hear her moving around, making some

background noises, doing mundane thi9ngs., it was never quiet with her around and I had gotten used to

But now there was nothing.

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Nick’s Sick

+25 Points

pulled out my phone and stared at my conversation with Sedona. The last message was my accusation of childishness, met with her cold response about being with Cameron. Nothing since then.

She was waiting for me to apologize, probably. Waiting for me to beg her to come home so she could feel important and use this against me, she went all this far, probably spying and seeing that I took Catherine to the hospital, then hiring a hot gigolo and showing up, pretending to be sick and saying all that just to extract promises and concessions from me.

Well, I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to reward her manipulative behavior with attention and apologies.

The scotch burned going down, but it did nothing to quiet the voice in the back of my mind. The voice that whispered that maybe, just maybe, I’d made a terrible mistake. That maybe Sedona wasn’t coming back. That maybe I’d pushed her top far, dismissed her too many times, and now I was going to lose her for good.

But no. No, I was Logan Hayes. People didn’t leave me. Sedona had nowhere else to go, no one else who could give her what I could. She’d realize that soon enough.

I finished the scotch and headed upstairs to bed. The bedroom felt huge without Sedona’s presence. I lay down on my side of the bed, staring at her empty pillow.

Tomorrow, I decided. Tomorrow I’d text her, tell her she’d made her point, that it was time to come home and discuss things like adults. She’d probably jump at the chance, relieved that I was offering her an out.

Tomorrow, everything would go back to normal.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but all I could see was Cameron’s arm around Sedona’s waist, and the cold, final way she’d looked at me when she’d said she was done.

The next morning started badly and got progressively worse.

I woke up to Nick standing beside my bed, holding his stomach and looking miserable. “Dad, my tummy hurts.”

I groaned and checked my phone-5:47 AM. “What kind of hurt, buddy?”

“Like it needs to throw up.”

Great. I stumbled out of bed and helped Nick to the bathroom, where he promptly vomited up what looked like most of last night’s dinner. I held his hair back and tried to remember what Sedona usually did in this kind of situations.

Ginger ale. She always gave him ginger ale and crackers.

Except I had no idea if we had ginger ale, or where she kept the crackers, or what else she did to make Nick feel better when he was sick.

After Nick finished being sick, I got him settled on the couch with a bowl nearby, incase his stomach acted up later and I placed a damp washcloth on his forehead. It was another thing that I had seen Sedona do countless times. Then I called the nanny and asked her to come in early today.

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