DON’T STOP (Lila and Darrell) novel Chapter 115

Chapte

Chapter 115

Norman

A month later…

I had woken up next to Daisy Wright every morning for a month, and it still caught me slightly off guard each time – the way she looked before she was fully awake, hair everywhere, face soft and unguarded, nothing like the woman the rest of the world got to see. I had missed this version of her more than I had allowed myself to admit for three years.

I watched her for exactly three seconds before she opened one eye and looked at re

“Stop staring,” she muttered.

‘I’m not staring.”

‘You’re always staring.” She pushed herself up and reached for her phone on the nightstand. “Come ɔn. We’ll be late.”

We brushed our teeth side by side at the double sink, which had been my favorite thing about mornings for four weeks running. She had a system – ‘face wash first, then brushing, then moisturizer in a specific order that she followed with the same precision she brought to quarterly reviews. I had learned not to disrupt the system.

This morning I disrupted the system.

I reached over and squeezed her toothpaste while she was mid-brush, making the paste shoot dramatically off the brush and onto the mirror, and she turned to look at me with an expression of complete betrayal, mouth full of foam.

I laughed.

She pointed at me with the toothbrush. A clear warning.

I held both hands up in surrender, still laughing.

She rinsed, wiped her mouth with considerably more dignity than the situation required, and walked out of the bathroom. I was still smiling when I finished brushing.

Next, she was in the toilet when I came to lean against the doorframe with my coffee.

“Norman.” She was flat and final.

“What?”

“Get out.”

10 pst starting here

“Get Out

“We were dating. Daisy This lent

“I will end you” She pointed at the doce without looking up titan her phone Clone behind you

I closed it behind me, still smiling, and went back to the cen

Breakfast was simple she made eggs because she was particular above rygs and didn’t trust me with them after one incident I was not going to bring up, and made coffee because she needed at east two cups before she became fully functional, and I had learned that early in our marriage and apparently hadn’t forgotten.

We ate at the kitchen island, shoulders close, talking about the day ahead. She had a board meeting it ten. I had back-to-back calls until noon. She stole a piece of toast from my plate without asking, and I let her because I always let her, and she knew it.

When she kissed me before we left, it tasted like coffee and her and the particular warreth of a morning that had nowhere urgent to be.

We drove separately. Always separately – Daisy Wright did not share commutes; it was simply not now she operated, and I had accepted this about her the same way I accepted all her edges. What I had not expected was that we would end up side by side at the first traffic light, her sleek white car beside my black one, and that she would glance over and find me already looking.

She rolled her window down.

I rolled mine down.

‘Stop following me,” she said.

“Same road, Daisy”

She looked forward. I looked forward. The light stayed red.

I looked back at her.

She was already looking.

The light turned green.

“Have a good day,” I said.

3:48 am

Chapte

M

She smiled small and real and just for ine. Then she blew a kiss across the space between the ca casual as anything, like she hadn’t just rearranged sometfring quietly in my chest, and pulled away.

I watched her car move ahead of mine and then turn right at the next junction.

I turned left.

The office was already running at full pace when I arrived.

‘Good morning, sir.” Daniel was at his desk outside my office, my schedule already pulled up on his screen, coffee waiting on the corner. Twenty-four years old, efficient, completely unflappable, and entirely unbothered by the fact that his predecessor had resigned by phone while his boss was at his ex-wife’s house.

I had made good choices with Daniel.

‘Morning,” I said, picking up the coffee. “What’s first?”

‘Call with the Singapore team at nine. Legal review at ten thirty. The infrastructure board wants a response on the amended proposal before the end of day.” He paused. “Also, you have three interview requests from the press following the initiative coverage.”

‘Decline all three.”

‘Already drafted the responses, sir. Just need your approval.”

I looked at him.

‘Daniel.”

“Sir?”

“Good man.”

He nodded efficiently and turned back to his screen.

The morning moved the way busy mornings moved — one thing becoming the next becoming the next, the hours folding into each other without ceremony. The Singapore call ran long. The legal review threw up two issues that needed immediate attention. By early afternoon I had answered more emails than any hurnan being should be required to answer in a single sitting.

I checked my watch.

Three forty-seven.

I looked at it again like that would change something.

8:48 am

Chapte

fidunt

I leaned back in my chair and pressed two fingers to my temple. A dull, persistent ache had been building there since around midday, the kind that started quietly and got louder the longer you ignored it.

“Daniel.”

He appeared in the doorway in seconds. “Sir?

“Do we have anything for headaches?”

He crossed to the small cabinet by the window without hesitation, opened it, and produced a small box of painkillers which he set on my desk with a glass of water.

“Already in there,” he said simply.

“Thank you.”

He nodded and disappeared.

I swallowed the tablets, took a long sip of water, and looked back at my screen.

Four hours until I could reasonably leave.

I checked my watch again.

Three forty-eight.

I exhaled and opened the next document.

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