Hired a Gigolo Got a Billionaire (Zoey and Christian) novel Chapter 665

Chapter 665

Gwen’s POV

I waited.

Not because I was too much of a coward to be in there. But because I heard Bella crying and recognized,

from a distance, the kind of storm that doesn’t need an audience.

A child’s storm.

Fear.

I stood outside her bedroom, leaning against the hallway wall, my hand pressed over my mouth like that could keep any sound from escaping me. Like even the smallest noise from me could become another

reason for her to hate me.

When she screamed that I wasn’t her mother, I felt the words slice through skin.

I knew I wasn’t.

I had never pretended to be.

But there was a quiet, foolish place inside me that believed love, given enough time, became family.

Bella had given me that place.

From the very beginning, she hadn’t looked at me like an intruder. She had looked at me like… someone.

A safe adult. A harbor.

And now, suddenly, she looked at me like a threat.

I went to our bedroom so I wouldn’t fall apart in the middle of the house. I closed the door carefully and sat on the edge of the bed. The air felt heavier than it had an hour ago.

I don’t know how long I stayed in the exact same position before I heard footsteps in the hallway. Then the doorknob turning.

Nick came in slowly and shut the door behind him. He stood there for a second, shoulders slumped, like a father exhausted from holding a child through a breakdown.

I lifted my eyes. I couldn’t smile.

“She asleep?” I asked.

He nodded once.

“She cried herself out,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I stayed until her breathing settled. She just… passed out from exhaustion.”

I swallowed. The tightness in my chest pulled tighter.

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“She loved me from the first minute,” I said before I could stop myself. It came out like a confession, like I was speaking to the only man in the world who could understand that particular cut. “Nick, she loved me. She followed me around the house. Showed me her drawings. Asked me questions. She trusted me.”

My throat burned.

“And now… Renee manages to undo that in one day.”

He crossed the room and sat beside me. He didn’t press his body against mine right away. He just sat there, present, like he was giving my heart room to decide whether it wanted to be touched.

“Gwen,” he said quietly. “This isn’t about you.”

I let out a short laugh. No humor in it.

“Of course it is.” I stared at my hands. At my ring. At the skin that suddenly didn’t feel like it fit. “She screamed, ‘I don’t want you.””

Nick exhaled slowly.

“She screamed because she was terrified,” he said. “And because Renee did what she always does. She put adult fears into a child’s mouth and called it ‘concern.”

He finally reached for my hand.

“Bella didn’t reject you,” he continued. “She rejected the idea that she might lose her place. And right now, in her head, you represent the change.”

That hurt in a different way.

I closed my eyes.

“I never wanted to take anything from her,” I whispered. “I just wanted to add to her world. Not replace it.”

“You haven’t replaced anything,” he said firmly. “You’ve built something with her. That doesn’t disappear because of one ugly afternoon.”

I opened my eyes again.

“She asked for her mom,” I said. “Her real mom.”

He didn’t flinch.

“She needed the person who felt safest in that second,” he replied. “Fear makes kids run backward. Not forward.”

Silence settled between us. Not cold. Just heavy.

I looked down at my stomach.

“She’s going to hate this baby,” I said softly. “She’s going to think it stole something from her.”

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Nick turned toward me fully now, his hand sliding from mine to rest gently over my belly.

“Then we make sure she knows it didn’t,” he said. “Every day. In a hundred small ways.”

I let out a shaky breath.

“I don’t know how to compete with the story Renee planted.”

“You don’t compete,” he said. “You stay. You stay steady. You don’t flinch when Bella pushes. You don’t disappear when she says she doesn’t want you. You prove her wrong by being exactly who you’ve always been.”

My eyes burned again.

“That sounds heroic,” I murmured.

“It’s not heroic,” he said. “It’s parenting.”

That word settled between us.

I leaned into him then. Finally. Letting my forehead rest against his shoulder.

“I’m scared,” I admitted.

“Me too,” he said.

His hand tightened over mine.

“But we don’t let Renee raise our child through fear,” he added quietly. “Not Bella. Not this one.”

I breathed him in. Dust, soap, something that was just Nick.

Outside the bedroom, the house was quiet again.

But it wasn’t peaceful.

And we both knew this wasn’t the last wave.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to erase the image of Bella pointing at me like I had committed a

crime.

“I can’t…” I started, then stopped. The whole sentence was too big to say out loud.

Nick shifted closer and finally pulled me in, his arm firm and warm around my shoulders.

I rested my forehead against him and breathed.

“I just wanted her to be happy,” I said. “I just wanted her to feel safe Loved. And I thought she did. I thought we had built that.”

“We did,” he said immediately. “Bella didn’t erase what she feels for you. She panicked.”

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I lifted my head.

“And if it sticks?” I asked, my voice trembling now. “What if she wakes up tomorrow and still looks at me like that? Like I’m… guilty?”

He held my gaze. Not hard. Just tired.

“Then we deal with it,” he said calmly, even though I could tell he was building that calm from scratch.” The right way. With help.”

I drew in a breath.

“What kind of help?” I asked. “A child psychologist? Family therapy? Someone who talks to her? To us? | don’t even know what the right thing is.”

He nodded slowly.

“I don’t know everything either,” he admitted. “But I know Renee won’t stop. She’ll try again and again. So we can’t keep improvising while Bella stands in the middle of the fire.”

He paused, choosing his words carefully.

“We need someone who can help her understand, in a way that makes sense to a kid, that she’s not being replaced. That this is a lie.”

His jaw tightened for a second.

I felt my eyes sting.

“And what if she doesn’t want to listen?” I whispered. “What if, for her, I become the reason everything changed?”

He was quiet for a moment. I saw the exhaustion. But I also saw the decision.

“Then I’ll be the bridge,” he said. “I’ll hold her hand and yours. Even when she yells. Even if she hates me for a day. I can take it. I’m her dad.”

The sweetness of that hurt.

I nodded, but inside me another truth shifted-one I didn’t want to say out loud.

This was terrible timing.

The custody hearing was coming. Renee was looking for cracks. And now we had one. A visible one.

It felt like life had decided to speed everything up at once.

And the worst part?

I couldn’t hate it completely.

Because in the middle of all this chaos, there was a baby growing inside me.

Chapter 865

And I was already ashamed of being afraid of what that joy might cost.

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