Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 154

Chapter 154 The Photo She Opened

Finished

Mandy kept going. She fired off another dozen messages aimed at Nora and Julian, and she only went quiet once it was clear no answer was coming.

It hardly mattered. Flaunting her own relationship and getting under Nora’s skin was the whole/point, and she had managed both.

Julian glanced over and caught her smiling at her phone. “What’s got you so happy?”

Nora left Mandy on read and put the phone away. “Mandy and Adrian are eating at the Peregrine too. She’s showing off in the family thread, and she’s already put up three posts on Instagram.”

At the Peregrine, Mandy had her phone up the whole time, shooting the room from every angle like she had never set foot in a place like it, and Adrian watched the other diners start to turn and look.

Mandy missed every one of those looks. She stayed hunched over the screen, typing and smiling, and that smile put a knot in his chest he couldn’t explain.

Adrian frowned at her. “Busy?”

Mandy heard the edge in it and set the phone down. “Mom and Dad have been worried about me these last few days. They think something’s wrong between us, so I was letting them know it’s fine.”

Adrian looked at her arm, where the cut had faded to a thin pink line. It still dragged him back to that night, and the disgust came with it.

Adrian talked himself down the way he always did. She saved my life. She helped me win Orion. I like her. She was a victim that night too. Be good to her. The girl who saved me…

A few rounds of that pushed it back under, and when he looked at her again his face was gentle. “I’m sorry. The new project landed and I’ve been buried in it. You’ve had the worst of that.”

Mandy looked at him, soft and wounded. “I know. That’s why I never said anything, even when I missed you, even when I was scared you didn’t want me anymore. I don’t want to hold you back.”

“Mm,” he said, gentler now. “I’ll make time for you from now on. Stop working yourself up over nothing.”

Mandy’s mouth twisted. “I’ve always trusted you. It’s Nora. She keeps stirring things up, telling me you’re sick of me, that you don’t want me, and that’s why I-”

Adrian cut her off, frowning. “Nora isn’t like that. She’s actually decent.”

Mandy stared at him, stung. “She hurt me that day. She said all of those things to me. And now you’re defending her?”

Something in Adrian went tight. He didn’t want to hear another word about Nora out of her. “Drop it. Let’s

eat.”

Mandy wanted the whole thing out in the open, but they hadn’t seen each other in days and she didn’t want a fight, so all she gave him was a flat, “Fine.”

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TX4/ Thu, Oct

Chapter 154 The Photo She Opened

Finished

The food came out, and Adrian took in a table covered in house specialties. His brows drew together again.

ordered all of this.”

Mandy looked at him, thrown. “I didn’t know what you like, so I ordered the specials and the things I like. Why? Is something wrong?”

“No. It’s good. Let’s eat.” Adrian gave her a warm enough smile and went quiet over his plate.

Nothing was wrong, not really. He had only thought back to lunch, where Nora had ordered a full table with nothing on it he liked and even something he was mildly allergic to, as if she knew exactly how he ate.

Adrian’s own girlfriend knew him less well than Nora did.

Mandy still thought it was strange, but he had stopped talking, so she couldn’t push, and it sat heavy on her.

The restaurant, the roses, the designer bag, the piano playing somewhere behind them, all of it added up to a romantic dinner.

What Mandy felt instead was the quiet. Nothing warm ran under it at all, and that wasn’t how an evening with Adrian was supposed to go.

Mandy reached for something to say. “How’s the Orion project going? Is it running smoothly?”

Adrian raised his head. “It’s going well. A lot of companies want in, and the funding is solid so far…”

Work got him talking. Mandy slipped in a few things about her own week here and there.

Little by little, the quiet thawed, until the two of them finally looked like a couple at a romantic dinner.

“Once this stretch is over, I’ll take you somewhere,” Adrian said. “Think about where you want to go and you can plan it out in advance.”

A trip was a good way to get closer. They were together, so they would share a room, and whatever happened after that would happen naturally.

Mandy wanted the same trip to close the gap between them, and if she came home pregnant, better still.

Mandy jumped on it. “I’d love that. How many days off do you have? I’ll…”

She was still talking when the phone on the table lit up with a message from an old classmate.

The first alert was a photo, and she didn’t open it.

The second was a message. “Mandy, I saw Nora having lunch with Adrian Pierce. Is he your boyfriend or

hers?”

The smile went stiff on Mandy’s face. She glanced across the table. “Give me a second. I need to deal with something.”

She opened the photo, and there they were, Adrian and Nora eating lunch together.

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