Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 92

Chapter 86: He Is In Love

Sedona’s POV

“He has practice every morning and evening commitments with the exhibition organization.” She picked up the empty container from the dessert he’d brought, examined it with theatrical interest that showed that she was implying something but also not implying anything that might complicate her.

“He is specifically using his free afternoon hours to cook food and bring it to your hospital room.”

“He’s being kind.” I pointed out, willing for her to drop the topic, but Rachel was like a predator, once she had gotten hold of her prey, she was never going to let go.

“He’s being-” She set the container down and looked at me directly, deciding to cut through the bullshit and say what has been on her mind since Dante became a permanent visitor.

“Sedona. He looked at you today when you were talking about the markers improving and you weren’t watching him. I was watching him.”

“And?”

“And there was a lot in that look for someone who is simply being kind, and I know that because that was the same way I was looking at Enzo before I even married him or admitted that I may have fallen for him, that look has been present since the first day, which means that he had liked you before now and seeing you in this state was not also a deterrent.”

I felt something in my face doing something I didn’t fully authorize, something warm that I was fairly certain qualified as a flush. “We were rivals on a circuit fifteen years ago. He barely knew me.”

“He knew you enough to come to a hospital when he heard you were sick.” She tilted her head. “He knew you enough to remember what you ate on the circuit. He told you yesterday that he still thought about that match. He-”

“That’s nostalgia. Tennis players are sentimental about-”

“Enzo,” Rachel said.

Enzo, who had been sitting in the corner with Molly and had been very pointedly not participating in this conversation by focusing way hard on playing with his daughter who could not give a flying fuck about his participation as she was fixated on what she was doing, looked up with the expression of a man who had been waiting to be called upon and had been wishing he can be anywhere else but here.

“Tell her,” Rachel said.

“Tell her what, specifically?” He was being careful, I noticed. Choosing words.

“About what you said. When I told you Dante was coming back. What you said.”

Enzo looked at me with the expression of someone deciding how honest to be. “I said that Dante Wells has been very specifically interested in your wellbeing since before he had any real reason to be.”

1/3

(He is in Love-

“What does that mean?”

Claim

It means-” He paused, looked at Rachel, seemed to receive some signal from her as he groaned before continuing,

“It means that when you disappeared from the circuit, there was some conversation going on about it. Among the people who’d been on the junior circuit at the same time, who had known you and suddenly stopped seeing you without any formal reasons being given. Most people were surprised and then moved on, because the circuit moves and you adapt or you fall behind.” He was choosing each word with precision.

“Dante asked about you for approximately two years after you left. I know this because I was on the fringes of those conversations. He asked coaches, he asked other players, he asked people who might have known your family. Quietly. Not obsessively. But consistently.”

I stared at him.

“Two years,” I said.

“At minimum. That’s the period I have direct knowledge of.” Enzo spread his hands. “I’m not saying anything about what it means. I’m just telling you what I observed back then, when we were still searching for you.”

“He had a thing for you,” Rachel said, without Enzo’s diplomatic scaffolding, stating it bluntly.

“Then. On the circuit. He absolutely had a thing for you and neither of us figured it out until about six months after you left and I doubt that we even clocked it, because we all knew you and Enzo were going to be married so it was not even that obvious then, and am just realizing now that back then it was very obvious in retrospect.”

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