Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 91

Chapter 85: Don’t Imply Things That Are Not True

Sedona’s POV

That, I realized with Dante Wells, was a specific skill, one that he was extremely good at.

Clarm

When Cameron arrived at noon and found Dante in the chair by the door and the empty soup container on the table, that showed that I had eaten quite a considerable amount without being prompted, he stopped in the doorway and looked at the scene with the particular expression Cameron used when he was processing something and hadn’t decided what he thought about it yet. But his mind was definitely running his calculation because he had that suspicious look on his face, the same he had when I tried to sneak Travis up my bedroom, for some ‘biology’ lessons when I was 16.

I resisted the tuge to flush red, reminding myself that I was an adult, and soon in my thirties as I cleared my throat and spoke first.

“Cameron,” I said. “You remember Dante Wells. From yesterday.”

“I remember,” Cameron said, crossing the room, extending his hand towards Dante for a handshake. His voice was pleasant, his face composed. His eyes were doing the assessment thing, as he kept them on me, questions running through them. “You came back.”

“I brought soup,” Dante said, shaking his hand with the easy confidence of someone who’d navigated a great many protective older brothers and coaches and was aware that being direct was more authentic than being polite. “She ate most of it.”

Cameron looked at me. I could see him recalibrating. The eating was significant-Cameron had been tracking my appetite with the careful attention he gave to all the data points of my recovery, and I hadn’t eaten well in days and seeing the empty dishes, he could not push on the fact that Dante being here was doing wonderful things for my health.

“Good,” Cameron said, after a moment. He settled into the other chair, the one across from Dante, and the two of them occupied the room with the specific energy of men who were sizing each other up without being obvious about it. “How long are you in Seattle?”

“Another week. Exhibition series at the arena.” Dante leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be around if she’ll have the company.”

Cameron looked at me again, a different kind of look this time, the raised eyebrow kind. I met it with the expression I’d been perfecting since childhood for exactly this type of Cameron look, which communicated clearly that whatever he was thinking, he should think it quietly and keep it to himself.

He pressed his lips together in the way he did when he was suppressing something, and looked back at the tennis player sitting calmly in the chair by the door, and said, “I’m sure the company is welcome.”

Dante stayed for another hour, until a call from his coach required him to leave for the afternoon.

He packed up the containers with the same carefulness he’d unpacked them with, said he’d be back tomorrow if that was all right, and left after confirming a new meal he was going to prepare for me.

1:3

Don’t imply Pings That Are Not True

Cameron waited until the sound of his footsteps had faded down the corridor before he looked at me.

Don’t, I said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to say that you ate.” He kept his face entirely neutral. “Which is good. The soup clearly helped.” A pause that was a fraction too long. Whatever the reason.”

“Cameron.”

Clar

“Whatever *reason*,” he repeated, with the specific innocence of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and was enjoying it, “the eating is the important thing. Medically speaking.”

“Get out of my hospital room.”

He laughed, which was the first time I’d heard him laugh properly in weeks, and it was enough to make me not actually want him to get out.

Dante came back the next day, and the day after that.

By the fourth visit, he’d established a routine that seemed to work well without it obstructing my daily routine in the hospital-he arrived mid-morning, after his practice session, with food he’d made in whatever kitchen he’d arranged access to at the hotel or at the arena facility, and he stayed for two to

three hours.

He brought different things each time. A rice dish with ginger on the second day, which settled my stomach better than anything the hospital had offered. Something with soft poached eggs on the third day, which I was skeptical of and then ate almost entirely.

“You’re feeding me your grandmother’s sick food,” I said.

“It works,” he said simply. “She was a practical woman.”

He told me about her-his grandmother, who had raised him for several years when his parents’ schedules had made it necessary, and not possible for his parents to raise him themselves and had depended on his grandmum.

“She would have liked you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you don’t make things more complicated than they need to be.” He tilted his head slightly. “When you’re being yourself. You do sometimes make things more complicated than they need to be when you’re trying to protect people from something, but that’s different.”

I looked at him. “You’ve known me for a week.”

“I’ve known you since you were sixteen,” he said. “We just didn’t talk much.”

That was true in a way that was also somehow not entirely true, we had known the other existed, but did

2/3

Don’t imply Things That Are Not True

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