Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 72

Chapter 67: Catherine & Not Sedona

Logan’s POV

This was the first that Nick was hostile to Catherine, normally he would be over her, but now he was refusing to eat her food, i ‘did not want to read too much into it. Nick was not in a good headspace, being sick and uncomfortable would do that to anymore.

I let it go, or I set it aside-I wasn’t sure which. There was something in his face that was asking me not to push this, not right now, not here. Something that was asking me to let him have this small quiet refusal without turning it into a lesson about gratitude. He was a well behaved child, if he was acting out, then that meant that there was something causing it, and i would find out the reason, but not when he is in this headspace.

He was six, and he was in a hospital bed, and the woman he actually wanted to take care of him because she was aware of what he needed and everyone else was taking a guess work, making his suffering a lot worse than it was supposed to be.

He was probably angry that Sedona wasn’t here and taking it out on Catherine who was trying her best.

Catherine came back with crackers from the nurse’s station and a cup of apple juice, and set them on Nick’s bedside table without ceremony or making a deal out of it, she arranged it in a way that it was closer for him to reach it.

Nick said thank you, clearly and correctly, and ate three crackers with focused concentration, looking at the television.

“Better?” she asked.

“Mm.”

She returned to her chair.

The three of us occupied the room with the particular awkwardness of people who had different reasons to be there and different amounts of entitlement to the space. Nick eating crackers. Catherine on her phone again, giving us quiet. Me watching my son and trying to calculate what I owed Kim, what I’d failed to give him, what could still be repaired.

“Logan.” Catherine’s voice, low. Nick had dozed off again, the crackers half-finished, the apple juice untouched. “Can I say something?”

“Go ahead, what is it?” i replied giving her the nod as she spoke.

“The soup is on the counter. If Nick decides he wants it, it’ll still be warm for another hour in the container. She picked up her coat from the back of the chair and looked at Nick sleeping one more time, and her expression had something in it that I recognized as genuine-not performed.

Whatever else, Catherine had genuinely wanted to be good to him. Had tried, in the ways she knew how. But Nick was not taking it from her at the moment and she knew when she was overstaying.

“I will be checking in, and maybe when he is better and back home, i will come again. i don’t think me

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Catherine Is Not Sedona

being here is productive for Nick’s health at the moment.”

“It’s not you, he is just not comfortable because he has been in pain.”

“I know i am not Sedona, you do not need to cover up, it was clear, that Nick did not want me here, he wanted Sedona and took out his frustration on me.”

“I am sorry.” i said because it was the polite thing to say, when nothing else could fit.

It just hadn’t been what he needed from her.

Clam

“I hope you find her,” she said. “I mean that, Logan. I hope she’s okay and I hope you find her. Nick needs to talk to her, i think he will feel better.”

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“Tell Nick I said feel better.”

She left the way she’d arrived. I watched the doorway for a moment after she’d gone, then looked back at my son.

Nick’s eyes were open.

He’d been awake. Or had woken up, or had never entirely been asleep-hard to tell with him sometimes. He watched the empty doorway for a moment, then looked at me.

“Is she gone?”

“Yes.”

He considered this. “She made the soup herself,” he said. “I know. That was nice.”

“You didn’t want it.”

“I know.” He looked at the container Catherine had left on the counter, its careful clasp, its hovering steam. “It’s not wrong soup. It’s probably good soup.” He reached for another cracker, thought about it, put it back. “I just don’t want soup from her. I want-” He stopped.

“What do you want?”

۴

He looked at the ceiling for a moment. “The soup Mom used to make when I was sick. The one with the little stars.” He said it quietly, not dramatically, just stating a fact. “She called it astronaut soup because of the stars. She made it different every time but she always put the little star pasta in because she said it reminded her of something.” He pulled the blanket up again. “I don’t know what it reminded her of. I never asked.”

The astronaut soup. I’d had it before, eaten a bowl once when I’d been home with a cold and Sedona had wordlessly set it in front of me. I hadn’t asked either. I’d eaten it and said it was good and gone back to my emails and hadn’t thought about it again until this moment.

“I should have asked more questions,” Nick said. He sounded older than six when he said it, or maybe exactly six, which was sometimes older than I thought.

“About stuff she did. Why she did it and what was her purpose for doing it, i didn’t bother to ask or take any

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