Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 289

Chapter 276. The Wedding Conversation, Sort Of.

CAMERON

Clam

We were on our way home from the dinner, Dante and Sedona’s small announcement still settling into something warm in my chest, when Lucian said, without much preamble, “Did that feel like a benchmark to you, or am I imagining it?”

Lake was asleep in the back seat, the specific deep collapse of a four-year-old who’d run out of fuel mid-sentence somewhere around the second helping of cobbler. I glanced at him in the mirror before answering, the privacy of his sleep giving us room for a conversation that didn’t need careful editing.

“It felt like a benchmark,” I said.

“For us,” Lucian said. Not quite a question.

“For us,” I agreed.

I had not planned to have this conversation tonight. I wanted to be precise about that, the way I used to be precise about most things. I hadn’t built a version of this this evening in my head, where it ended with anything more significant than driving Lake home and falling asleep early after a long week.

But something about watching Dante simply ask, plainly, without ceremony, do you want to stop calling this figuring it out, something about the easy, unhurried way Sedona had said yes, the way the whole table had absorbed it like the most natural thing in the world had loosened something in me that I usually kept carefully managed.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” I said. “Longer than tonight. I just hadn’t found the right way to bring it up; it felt like forcing a moment that should arrive on its own.”

“You don’t have to force anything,” Lucian said. “I think we’ve both known the shape of this for a while now.”

“What shape?” I said. Not because I didn’t know. Because I wanted to hear him say it.

He was quiet for a moment. The streetlights passed in a steady rhythm across his face

“The shape where this isn’t temporary,” he said. “Where Lake isn’t just someone I’m raising who happens to like you, and you’re not just someone I’m with who happens to be good with him. Where it’s just the three of us. Permanently. However, we eventually decide to make that official, if we decide to make it official at all.”

“I want to make it official,” I said.

I’m not in a hurry. We were not in a hurry. This past year has asked a lot from both of us. But when the timing makes sense, I won’t be the one holding back.”

Lucian glanced at me, brief, warm. “I know that.”

“How do you know that?”

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<The Wedding Conversation Sort Of

Claim

“Because you’ve never once been the one holding back,” he said. “Not since the very beginning. You waited for me to be ready. You waited for Lake to be ready. You’ve spent eighteen months proving, patiently, without ever once needing credit for it, that you’re not going anywhere. I think I’ve known for a long time that whenever I was ready to say the actual words, you’d already be there waiting.”

I reached over and took his hand. We were under the red light. I held his hand for a couple of minutes longer than expected. We weren’t in a hurry. Whenever we were, we should know.

“I think I might be too,” he said quietly. Certain in a specific way, Lucian was certain about things not loud, never performed, just simply, completely true once he’d arrived at it.

In the backseat, Lake stirred. I don’t know how much he heard. Children had a way of surfacing from sleep at exactly the wrong moments, catching fragments without context, building entire structures out of half a conversation. But by the time we pulled into the driveway, he was fully awake, blinking against the porch light, and he looked between the two of us in the front seat with the specific alertness of a four-year-old who has decided something important is happening and does not intend to be left out of it.

“Are you getting married?” he announced. Not a question. A conclusion, already reached, already being acted upon.

“We were just talking,” Lucian said, carefully.

“You were talking about getting married,” Lake said, with total confidence. “I heard the word official. That means wedding.”

“It can mean other things too,” I said.

“Not in this context,” Lake said, with the specific authority of someone who had clearly already decided the matter and was simply waiting for the adults to catch up to his conclusion.

“If you’re getting married, I need to start the guest list.”

“Lake,” Lucian said. The patient warning tone he’d perfected across years of managing his son’s enthusiasm.

Nobody has officially decided anything yet.”

“I’m just being prepared,” Lake said, unbothered, already pulling out his small notebook, the one he’d started carrying everywhere after watching Drew’s example for long enough that the habit had finally taken hold. “Guest list. Me. Drew. Grandma Jennifer and Grandpa Parker, obviously, because they’re basically already family. Sedona, Nick, and Dante. Maybe Catherine, if she’s been good lately, though I don’t actually know if she has been.”

“She has not been,” I said.

“Then not Catherine,” Lake said, crossing something out with visible satisfaction. “And maybe the school gecko.”

I looked at Lucian. Lucian looked at me, the specific shared exhaustion of two parents trying very hard not to laugh in front of a child who was being entirely serious.

“The school gecko,” I said.

“Wendell,” Lake said. “He’s very calming to have at events. Ms. Okafor lets him out sometimes when the

23

The Wedding Conversation Sort Of

class is stressed. I think a wedding could use some calming energy.”

“Lake,” Lucian said, with visible effort. “We are not inviting Wendell the gecko to a wedding that hasn’t been planned yet.”

Clam

“You’re not saying no to the wedding,” Lake said, with the precise legal attention of someone who had clearly inherited several of Cameron’s instincts by extended proximity. “You’re only saying no to Wendell.”

“That’s-” I stopped. Looked at him. “That’s actually correct.” ~

“I knew it,” Lake said, deeply satisfied, and closed his notebook with the specific finality of a man who considered the matter settled. “I’ll keep planning.

“You two can catch up whenever you’re ready.”

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