HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 63

Chapter 63

Chapter 63

Bianca

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Friday evening had a different kind of light to it, I took a cab to the hospital, my chest doing something between excitement and disbelief, because after everything, after the blackmail threats and the sleepless nights and the version of fear I had carried around Emma was finally being discharged.

The doctor had given his final instructions that morning, nothing too strenuous, plenty of rest, follow up appointments twice a month, and I had nodded along to every single word like my life depended on memorizing them correctly. By the time I got there, Emma was already sitting at the edge of her hospital bed, dressed in regular clothes for the first time in what felt like forever, her bag packed and resting beside her feet, and the sight of her like that, ready and waiting, nearly undid me right there in the doorway.

“You are here,” she said, smiling, like there was ever a version of this where I wouldn’t.

“Obviously,” I said, walking in to help her up, even though she insisted she could manage on her own.

The drive home was quiet but in a comfortable way, Emma looking out the window like she was trying to memorize the streets, commenting on small things that had changed since the last time she had been out and about properly.

I kept glancing at her from the corner of my eye, still not fully believing she was sitting right there beside me, alive and steady and finally out of that hospital room that had started to feel like its own small prison.

It hit me properly only when we got to the apartment and I unlocked the door and stepped aside to let her walk in first. This would be the first time in almost three years that Emma was coming to my place with the actual intention of sleeping over.

Every other visit before now had been quick, in between school runs, in between whatever situation I had going on with Max, never anything that lasted past a few hours.

But tonight she was just here, with nowhere else to rush off to, no Max waiting somewhere to complicate things, and something about that simple fact made my chest feel full in a way I hadn’t expected.

The apartment had felt unbearably empty after Max left, I rearranged the furniture or left music playing in the background just to fill the silence. But the moment Emma stepped through that door, dragging her bag behind her and immediately commenting on how I had repainted one of the walls since she last visited, the whole place seemed to wake up.

She dropped her bag by the couch and turned to hug me, and it wasn’t one of those quick hugs we usually did, the kind that lasted two seconds and ended with a pat on the back. This one stretched on, her arms wrapped tightly around me, her head resting against my shoulder, and I held onto her just as tightly, feeling something in my chest loosen that had been tight for what felt like months.

“I missed this,” she mumbled into my shoulder.

“Me too,” I said, my voice coming out thicker than I intended.

When we finally pulled apart, Emma wasted no time switching into the version of herself I had missed the most, the one who noticed everything and commented on all of it without any filter whatsoever.

“New earrings,” she said, tilting her head and squinting at my ears like she was inspecting evidence. “Since when do you wear gold hoops? You used to say they made you look like you were trying too hard.”

“People change,” I said, walking past her toward the kitchen.

“Mm hmm.” she said, following close behind, clearly not done. “And you look tired. Like, tired tired not regular tired.”

“I run an office. Emma red comes with the job description.”

Chapter 63

10 vouchers

“No, this is a different kind of tired,” she insisted, dropping onto one of the kitchen stools and resting her chin on her hand, studying me the way she used to when we were teenagers and she was trying to figure out if I was lying to her about something. “Your face does this thing. Like you’re thinking about six things at once but pretending you’re only thinking about one.”

I laughed it off, grabbing two glasses from the cabinet and filling them with water, mostly so I would have something to do with my hands other than fidget under her gaze.

That was exactly the moment my phone lit up on the counter, the screen flashing with a name I really did not want Emma seeing right then. I reached for it quickly, flipping it face down before she could get a proper look, but she was too sharp for that, her eyes narrowing immediately.

“Who is that,” she asked, sitting up straighter. “Or he?”

I felt my mouth go a little dry. It was Adrian calling, and the timing could not have been worse, my sister sitting right there, with her detective face fully activated, ready to pull apart anything I said with even the slightest crack in it.

“Oh, my boss.” I said quickly, the words tumbling out before I could properly arrange them into something more convincing.

Her eyebrows shot up immediately. “Your boss is calling you on a Friday night?”

“He does that,” I said, setting my own glass down a little too hard. “He is very, let’s say, dedicated to deadlines.”

“Pick it then,” she said, gesturing at the phone like I was being deliberately difficult. “Don’t let me stop you from your very dedicated boss.”

“No, no,” I said quickly, waving the suggestion away with both hands. “Emma, it’s the weekend. That is enough work for the week. I want time with my sister, not with spreadsheets and emails.”

I reached over and tapped her cheeks softly, the way I used to do when we were kids and I wanted her to stop pestering me about something, and forced out a laugh light enough that I hoped it would distract her from the topic entirely.

It worked, mostly, because Emma rolled her eyes and let out a small laugh, swatting my hand away and muttering something about how dramatic I was being, but I caught the way her gaze lingered on the phone for one extra second before she finally let it go.

We spent the next hour settling into something close to normal, Emma insisting on helping me set the table even though I told her to rest, both of us arguing playfully over what to order for dinner until we landed on pizza because it was the one thing we could both agree on without any back and forth.

I placed the order while Emma changed into something more comfortable, and by the time she came back out in an oversized hoodie that used to be mine, the two of us had settled onto the couch with the television playing something neither of us was really watching.

It felt easy, it felt like the version of us that existed before everything got complicated, before Max, before hospitals, before any of it. We talked about nothing important, old memories, a teacher we both used to dislike, the ridiculous nickname our neighbor’s dog had been given as a puppy. For the first time in a long while, my chest didn’t feel tight with worry every single second.

Then we heard a sharp knock at the door. “That’s probably the pizza,” Emma said, not even bothering to get up, already reaching for the remote to lower the volume.

I stood up, glancing at the time on my phone, doing the quick mental math that confirmed it had indeed been about the right amount of time for the delivery to arrive. My mind wasn’t really on anything else as I walked toward the door, my thoughts still half tangled in the conversation we had just been having, half distracted by the comfortable warmth that had settled into the apartment since Emma arrived.

I unlocked the door and pulled it open without much thought, already reaching one hand out for my wallet on the side

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