Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 215

Chapter 215

Chapter 215

RIVERA

Louis pressed a hand flat against his sternum. “Here,” he said. “And here.” He moved his hand to his solar plexus.“Like something is pulling from the inside.”

James made another note in the way that was not writing anything down. Then he said, “I need to take a small blood sample Very small. Have you had one before?”

“Yes,” Louis said. He had had more than one. His medical history was longer than most five–year–olds and he had made his peace with the procedures in the pragmatic way of someone who had decided that being difficult about necessary things was waste of energy. Another quality he shared with Bianca.

I helped hold his arm steady while James took the sample, small and quick, and Louis looked at the ceiling the way he did during blood draws. The sample went into a sealed tube that James labeled with a pen from his pocket and then wrapped in a cloth that went into a side pocket of the bag, and the whole sequence was smooth and professional and took under two minutes.

Louis flexed his hand afterward and looked at the small cotton pad taped to the inside of his elbow. “Is that it?”

“That’s it,” James said. “You can go back to the Cretaceous situation.”

Louis stood up. He looked at me with the look he had been developing for the past two weeks, the one I couldn’t fully interpret. Then he went back to the living room without saying what he had decided not to say, which I was becoming familiar with as a

pattern.

James zipped his bag.

J

The front door opened at eleven forty–seven.

I heard the familiar sound of it and the specific sequence of movements that followed – keys on the hook, bag set down, the brief pause that meant checking something before continuing. The sounds of someone returning to a space they knew well.

I was in the hallway before I had fully decided to move.

James was beside me with his bag and his blood sample in his pocket and an expression that had shifted very quickly into something relaxed and social, the adjustment happening in under two seconds. I had not specifically briefed him on what to do if Bianca came back early. I had not thought I needed to.

She came around the hallway corner and stopped when she saw James.

the genuine small arrest of someone who had not

The surprise on her face was the right kind. Not performed, not delayed expected to find a colleague in their house on a Tuesday morning. She looked at James and then at me and then back at James.

“James,” she said.

warm, two hands, the greeting of someone

“Bianca.” James moved forward and took her hand in the specific way he had genuinely pleased rather than formally polite. “I have been standing in that hospital for a week and a half looking at the space where you usually are and trying to explain to myself why everything feels slightly more tedious. It turns out you are load- bearing architecture.”

Something shifted in her face. Not quite a smile. Something more careful.

“I took some time,” she said. “Something happened that needed my attention.”

“I know,” James said. He still had her hand. “I’m not here officially. I was in the area and Rivera owes me a conversation we’ve been postponing, and I thought if you were home you might tell me when I’m getting my colleague back because Dr. Patel has

It was at her throat

a thin chain with a pendant I didn’t recognize, something with a dark sto

The kind of piece that had age to it. I looked at it and could not immediately say whether I had seen it before.

“Thank you,” she said. Her hand went to it briefly. Not touching, exactly. The gesture of someone admowledging a thing had been noticed. “It’s from my previous marriage. I kept a few things. It felt

I don’t know. Somethi to hold onto from

time

“It suits you.” James said.

“I rarely wear it,” she said. “I found it recently and decided to put it on.”

James let go of her hand. “Come back to us soon,” he said. “The hospital misses you. I miss you. The patients who have not yet met you are missing out on something they don’t know they’re missing, which is arguably the worst kind of loss.”

She almost smiled at that. The expression was close.

Then she moved past us toward the kitchen, and James looked at me, and I looked at James, and nothing passed between us that could have been intercepted.

I walked James to the door.

On the front step, with the door not quite closed behind us, he looked at me with the professional face set aside and said, very quietly, “I’ll run the sample today. I’ll have results by tomorrow morning at the latest.” He paused. “Rivera.”

“Tell me what you find,” I said,

He nodded and left.

BIG SALE:3500 BONUS FREE FOR YOU!

Click to get it

T