Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 204

Chapter 204

Chapter 204

FAKE BIANCA

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Louis had been watching the exchange with the quiet attention he brought to things he found significant. There was something in his eyes that I had been watching for five days and still couldn’t fully categorize not suspicion in the way that would read as operational threat, but something that lived in the same neighborhood as suspicion and had not yet decided whether to move in.

“I think I just need to rest,” Louis said. “I don’t need the healing. I’ve been taking my medication and that helps.” He looked at his father rather than at me. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to go to school tomorrow if you’re not feeling well,” Rivera said.

Louis’s expression changed immediately and completely, the way children’s expressions changed when something threatened something they cared about. “I have to go,” he said. “I’ve missed too much already. If I miss any more I’m going to have to repeat the class.”

Rivera looked at him with the slight smile of someone who recognized that this was probably not how school progression worked but understood that this was how Louis experienced it. “You’re not going to repeat the class.”

“I feel like I might,” Louis said, with complete seriousness. “I’ve been on a very long break and I need to go

back.”

“You were sick,” Rivera said.

“I know. But I’m better now. Mostly better. And I need to see my friends.” He paused. “Daniel is saving a book for me.”

whether I thought Louis was well enough, whether the medical assessment supported what Louis was claiming about being mostly

better.

Rivera looked at me over Louis’s head. The look was asking me something

I did the calculation quickly.

Louis going to school served the operation. Louis at home all day, with Rivera present and attentive, watching both of us, was a more complex environment to manage. Louis at school meant six hours of the day where the primary variable was reduced, where I had more room to continue the work without the specific pressure of Rivera’s full–attention face directed at the situation.

“He’s not running a fever,” I said. “His energy is low but stable.” I paused, adding the appropriate medical qualifier. “If he goes, it should be a lighter day. I’d want you to talk to the teacher so she knows he’s been unwell and shouldn’t be pushed too hard.”

Rivera nodded slowly. The nod of someone making a decision they weren’t entirely comfortable with but could accept. “I’ll call the school in the morning,” he said. “And if you feel worse during the day. looked at Louis directly. “You tell your teacher immediately. You don’t wait. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Louis said, with the seriousness of someone signing a tormal document.

Chapter 204

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“And you come straight home,” Rivera continued. “No side trips, no staying late, no deciding you feel bette and playing outside.”

“I don’t play outside when I feel bad,” Louis said, with the tone of someone correcting a factual error.

“Good,” Rivera sa

n we have a deal.”

Louis settle

outcom

curre

ala

is pillow with the small satisfaction of someone who had negotiated a good eady getting heavy again, which told me the compound was doing its job at the ng the specific quality of tired that fel

ad expected him to get up, to leave I he stayed, sitting on the edge of th way parents sat with sleeping chi

because leaving would read as wro erned, watchful. I produced that e

was quiet.

breathing slowed into the heat ther sign of the compound as actually happening ra

watched him.

hed Rivera watch

smaller than

e kind of

1. it.

tural recovery rather than anything

go back to whatever he had been doing

d near Louis’s shoulder but not quite ot intervening.

on her face in this situation would be

ne sleep, faster than it usually took him to drop ce relaxed in the specific way faces relaxed when ted.

Rivera said quietly. It wasn’t directed at me specifically. It they were thinking rather than speaking to an audience.

at the room required.

Sometimes I forget how much he’s been through. He manages it so hen he’s like this and I remember.”

useful to say here that the performance required.

all–attention face, redirected.

bration. Too much no and he would focus on me rather than on the situation !

oo much yes and he would stop monitoring closely enough to be satisfied, which mething shifted in ways I needed

n,” I said. “But I think he

Jis system is resilient

a moment

Chapter 204

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I let that sit for a moment, doing the thing I had done in the dark on the third night – giving him the silence that felt like honesty because the real woman used silence the way other people used words, as a form of communication rather than an absence of it.

“I’m working through some things,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

He nodded. Didn’t push. The particular not–pushing of a man who had learned, over months of being with someone who needed room to process, that pushing produced walls rather than openings.

He looked back at Louis.

“I’ll sit with him for a bit,” he said. “You should eat something. You haven’t eaten much today.”

The observation was accurate. I had eaten less today because eating with them the specific ritual of it, the way meals worked in this house – required a level of sustained performance that I was managing carefully in terms of energy expenditure. Fewer meals meant fewer sustained performance sessions, which was operationally efficient.

But Rivera noticing that I hadn’t eaten was a sign that he was monitoring more closely than was ideal.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll make something.”

I got up, slowly, the specific slowness of someone who has been sitting still for a while and whose body is reminding them of it. I looked at Louis one more time–performing the maternal gaze, the one that held and then released.

Then I went downstairs.

In the kitchen, I made food that I did no

particularly want and ate most of it standing at the counter

because sitting at the table felt like committing to a longer stay in the room than I needed.

I checked the phone while I ate.

Voss: *Status update on the subject.*

Me: *Progressing on schedule. Slightly ahead of projected rate due to baseline factors. Dosage reduced. Still effective. He’ll be at school tomorrow which reduces monitoring pressure.

*

Her response was quick: *Good. Three days. Maintain current approach. Do not accelerate.*

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