HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 62

Chapter 62

Chapter 62

Adrian

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The office was very quiet, I had taken my jacket off somewhere between the elevator and my desk, tossing it over the back of a chair without much thought, and now I stood by the window with my tie loosened and my sleeves pushed up, looking out at the city.

This city at night never really slept, it just dimmed itself slightly, lights scattered across rooftops and streets in patterns that meant nothing if you stared at them Jong enough. I stared anyway. It gave my eyes somewhere to go while my mind did whatever it wanted, which tonight meant circling back, again and again, to a hallway outside the boardroom and the way Bianca’s fingers had curled into my shirt like she meant it.

I pressed my palm flat against the cool glass and let out a breath, I had been with plenty of women before but no matter how short I stay with her, I wanted more from her.

Something about the way she had pulled back from me afterward got to me. No matter how many times we’ve been together, she still doesn’t see me as someone she should even be doing anything with, always calling me sir and trying her best to put that wall in between us.

I sat down in my chair, leaned back, and let my eyes fall shut for a second. She didn’t want anything from me, that was the part that kept circling back, every woman I had ever let close, every single one, had wanted something specific and nameable.

My name or my money but Bianca had never once asked me for anything. She had looked at me like I was someone to be managed, not someone to be used, and there was something almost insulting about how unbothered she seemed by all the things that usually made people fall over themselves around me.

And that, I realized, sitting there in the dark with the city blinking outside my window, was exactly why I wanted her to want everything. Not because I needed to be wanted. I had enough of that already, more than enough, but because for the first time in longer than I could remember, wanting wasn’t being handed to me on a plate. I had to earn it and some stubborn, hungry part of me liked that more than I was ready to admit out loud.

I opened my eyes and reached for the folder still sitting on the edge of my desk, the one with her contract inside it, the one I had read through more times than necessary in the past few weeks. I flipped it open without really meaning to, my eyes scanning lines I already knew by heart.

I wanted to add a major change to that contract, I thought about how I would even begin to explain that to her. I pictured it a few different ways, none of them landing right in my head. I am not doing this for control anymore, that line sounded ridiculous even in my imagination.

Maybe I didn’t need the perfect sentence. Maybe I just needed to actually say it, however it came out, however messy it sounded leaving my mouth. That thought settled it for me, just slightly, enough that I closed the folder and set it back down on the desk.

My phone buzzed against the wood, the screen lighting up the dim room for a second before going still again. I reached for it expecting one of the usual late notifications, an email that could wait until morning, maybe Felix sending something irrelevant.

It was my mother. I unlocked the phone and the message opened in front of me, her words sitting there in that familiar tone she always used, equal parts concern and warning, the kind of message that managed to sound like care and pressure at the

same time

“Because I let you rest about marriage ave forgotten you actually need one and your father is already disturbing us, don’t let it get to the point where he begins to place you and Julian together.”

I read at once then again slower, my thumb hovering over the screen like rereading it would somehow change what it said.

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13:56 Thu, Jul 23 d đ )

Chapter 62

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Julian Delacroix. My father’s favorite comparison, the measuring stick he had been holding up against me since we were both old enough to be compared at all.

Julian who never even married, Julian who always gave anyone a reason to whisper about him at family gatherings, Julian who was not even close to building the kind of life my father had decided was the correct shape for a son to take.

I had spent years refusing to fit that shape on principle and I didn’t want that comparison resurfacing. Not now, not with everything already sitting unsettled in my chest from the the past.

I set the phone face down on the desk, harder than necessary, I thought about typing something back to my mother, some short reassurance. some line that would buy me a few more weeks of peace before the subject came up again at whatever family dinner I would inevitably be dragged to.

I started typing one out, deleted it, started again, deleted that one too. Nothing felt honest enough to send, and sending something dishonest felt worse than sending nothing at all.

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