Divorce and Freedom No More Homemaker for Him novel Chapter 696

Chapter 696 My Girl

Finis

None of them had ever lost someone they truly loved. They didn’t know what that kind of pain felt like.

One had shot the other. The other had stabbed back.

Ayla didn’t even want to waste words on them.

Troy hadn’t expected her silence. His composure, always a point of pride, began coming apart at the seams. “Ayla, after everything, you’d still want someone like him? If you can forgive Draven for all of thi why couldn’t you ever forgive me? Why?”

Ayla looked at his unraveling face and asked, simply, “Why were you having me watched?”

The question stopped him cold.

The honest answer was that he wanted her contained, wanted her inside the boundaries of his reach. permanently.

He’d told himself for a long time that a cleaner, harder approach would have prevented all of this. He wouldn’t be standing here bleeding if he’d just acted sooner. He’d lost every advantage, one piece at a tin

“You can’t answer that,” Ayla said. “Then don’t.”

She turned to Draven.

It had only been three weeks since the full moon celebration. Three weeks since she’d last seen him, and even then he’d felt slightly unfamiliar. Twenty–some days, and now she was looking at a stranger.

“Draven.” Her voice was flat and cold. “I’m taking back what I said about you. After what you did with my children, you don’t deserve to be called that anymore.”

Troy blinked. He had assumed she’d come back to Draven because of the children. The way she was speaking, it sounded more like severance.

He turned it over in his mind and began to understand how wrong he’d been about almost everything

He had thought the IVF would bind her to him. He had assumed that with the children as leverage in Draven’s hands, Ayla would naturally gravitate back toward Draven. He’d bath his entire calculation around her being predictable.

Ayla had never been predictable. She was clear–eyed and steady, and she had been watching baths if theirt

of the whole time, measuring what they’d each dune, deciding what she suht live with and what she

couldn’t

Troy suddenly understond the full weight of what he’d done

what he’d don

The IVF. She might never forgive luin for that. He had told himself he could manage her. The trucks was she had been quietly watching both of them for a long time, dobur the math on what is best for her children, and somewhere along the way she had stopped loving fun withous wither of thenemarking the moment it happened

1:57 pm

Chapter 696 My Girl

Finis

She wasn’t going to play along like some spineless fool, following whoever held the children as though

had no mind of her own.

She hadn’t stayed for him. The Winston name, the title, the security it gave Floyd and Esme, that was w she’d stayed for. Their father being present was good for the children. Troy himself had nothing to do it.

He saw it all now. He and Draven had both been fools, each convinced he was playing the smarter gam

The wound in his leg sent a fresh wave of pain through him. Ayla wasn’t leaving with Draven. And somehow Troy felt like he’d lost worse than ever.

Draven couldn’t hold her gaze. The disappointment in her eyes was precise and merciless, and it went through him like something sharp finding the right place.

‘Ayla, I-

She didn’t want to hear it. Her eyes stayed fixed on his face, and this time, there was anger underneath t cold. “And you. Why were you watching me? If I hadn’t found out on my own, how long were you going keep it up?”

Troy turned to Draven, genuinely stunned. “You were surveilling her?”

Ayla glanced at Troy. “Have you thought of an explanation yet?”

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