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2026-09-10 00:42:33
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After the Divorce, My Ex Husband Came Crawling Back 185
MAXWELLWe walk away from the front of the house, away from the noise of the party, and Jonathan doesn't say anything until we're clear of it."You look like a man who's had a bad afternoon," he says."You have no idea." I slip my hand into my pocket."I might have some idea." He glances sideways at me, that same faint, knowing amusement he's carried around me for years. Ever since Theodore. Ever since I stopped trusting whatever's actually going on behind his eyes.He lights a cigarette, takes a slow drag, and exhales before he speaks again. "Eleanor doesn't usually invite outsiders to family events, Maxwell. Did that occur to you at any point today?"Something cold settles low in my stomach, and I stare at him. Jonathan Chase. A man I've resented for years. A man who watched me fall apart after my divorce from his sister, with something closer to curiosity than sympathy. A man I've always suspected of things I could never prove. And now he's standing in the middle of a Bindy gathe
After the Divorce, My Ex Husband Came Crawling Back 184
MAXWELLI walk back out into the garden with Eleanor's words sitting in my chest like a stone I swallowed whole.I find Ariana near the drinks table, and beside her, close enough that it means something, Mason Grant.“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Of course it's him.I move closer to her. "Ariana." I keep my voice low and levelled.She turns, surprise flickering across her face before it settles into something guarded. "Max. I didn't realize you'd be here.""Neither did I, until this morning." I look at Mason. "Small world."Mason barely glances at me. “Not particularly.” His tone is calm, almost bored. “I’m here because I belong here.” Then he turns his attention back to Ariana.Ariana looks between us, seemingly unaffected by the tension tightening around her.Mason takes a drink from the glass in his hand. “Besides, I know most of the people here.”Ariana actually laughs at that, a short, easy sound that used to belong to me and clearly doesn't anymore, and something in me
After the Divorce, My Ex Husband Came Crawling Back 183
MAXWELLI hear the word and my mind refuses it for a full second, and Eleanor does not say anything, but watch me closely.My brain refuses to let it sit next to the woman I married, the woman I filed custody paperwork against, the woman I kissed in my own doorway and thought I understood the shape of. Eleanor Bindy. The Bindy Syndicate matron. The woman who effectively owns more than half of Blackbridge in every way that matters, and whose name alone ends conversations in rooms full of men who don't scare easily.And Ariana is hers, by blood. Not adjacent to this world, not connected to it through some business arrangement or convenient marriage. But born into it.My hands go cold first, then my whole chest, a slow spreading numbness that has nothing to do with the temperature of the room. I can feel my own pulse in my ears. Somewhere behind my ribs something drops away entirely, the floor of every assumption I've built for the last two years giving out at once.I open my mouth and
After the Divorce, My Ex Husband Came Crawling Back 182
MAXWELLThe invitation comes through the usual channel in a plain envelope with no return address.The kind of quiet delivery that means it never touched a mail carrier who wasn't already vetted three times over.I open it expecting business, instead I find gold script on cream cardstock. It’s about a garden party at the Bindy estate, and it says attendance is expected, not requested. Expected.I turn it over once, like there might be something on the back explaining why I'm being summoned to a garden party through Syndicate channels instead of a normal invitation. Being a low-level member, low enough on the ladder to know that I don't ask questions but just comply. I fold the card, put it in my jacket, and tell myself it's nothing worth thinking too hard about.I've spent the last week planning something else entirely, sketching out cake flavors with Mrs. Patricia over the phone.Arguing gently with her about whether Ethan's dinosaur obsession warranted an actual dinosaur cake or ju
After the Divorce, My Ex Husband Came Crawling Back 181
ARIANAEleanor looks satisfied in the way only she manages to look satisfied, entirely without triumph on the surface, all of it underneath, though there's warmth threaded through this particular satisfaction that I don't remember from a year ago. We've built something here, slowly, without either of us quite naming it. I find myself glad of it more than I expected to be.I tell her about Maxwell then, because it seems necessary, the custody arrangement, the overnights, the fact that any change to the twins' schedule technically needs to go through him."I already know," she says, before I've finished."You know about the custody agreement?""I know rather more about Maxwell Cox than I'd like to." Something flickers across her face, brief and cold. "I've never cared for him. Not as a boy, and certainly not now.""He'll want to know why the twins are here for two weeks instead of the usual schedule.""I'll send him a notice of my own." She waves a hand like the matter is already resol
After the Divorce, My Ex Husband Came Crawling Back 180
ARIANAI haven't fully landed since the penthouse.Durrell is alive. That fact keeps circling back through me at strange moments: folding laundry, watching the twins argue over the same crayon they always argue over, and standing in the shower longer than I need to. He’s alive, and bound, and further away than an ocean can measure. I've been carrying it around like something too large to set down and too fragile to hold properly either.So when the notice comes through from the Bindy estate, formal as always, requesting my presence at my earliest convenience, I almost let it slide another day before I remember that Eleanor doesn't send notices that wait.I go the same afternoon.Her study smells the way it always does, old paper and something floral I've never identified, and something is steadying in that familiarity now, a year in, that I didn't expect when I first walked through these doors a stranger with her blood and none of her history. She's seated behind her desk when I arr
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