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Chapter 29: Claire
Date de publication:
2026-04-02 23:50:42
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EYES OPEN Chapter 43: Derek Makes His Move
He is waiting outside my office building on a Tuesday.Not Stanley. Not a lawyer. Not a phone call or a message or a carefully managed interaction with distance and legal language between us.Derek. In person.With the particular expression of a man who has rehearsed something and is not entirely confident it survived contact with reality.I stop walking."No flowers this time," I say."You put the last ones in the conference room," he says. "I heard.""They were nice flowers," I say. "The conference room deserved them."He almost smiles. Almost. "Can we walk?" he says. "Just walk. Ten minutes."I look at him.He looks back.There is something different about him today. Not the hospital rawness and not the performance either. Something in between that feels more like the actual man underneath both of those versions, quieter, more certain of very little, which paradoxically makes him seem more trustworthy than he ever did when he was certain of everything."Ten minutes," I say.We walk
EYES OPEN Chapter 42: Sunday
Sundays used to feel like waiting.Waiting for Monday, waiting for Derek to get off his phone, waiting for the week to start so the hollow performance of the weekend could stop. I did not even realize I was waiting until I stopped.Now Sundays feel like this.Rhys's leg over mine under the duvet. Coffee going cold on the nightstand because neither of us moved fast enough. His hand drawing absent patterns on my back while he reads something on his phone and I stare at the ceiling doing absolutely nothing, which turns out to be one of the most underrated activities available to a human being."Stop thinking," he says without looking up."I am not thinking," I say."Your not thinking is very loud," he says.I roll over and take his phone out of his hand and put it face down on the nightstand and he looks at me with that expression, the one that is half amusement and half something that makes my stomach do things it has no business doing at ten in the morning."Hi," I say."Hi," he says b
EYES OPEN Chapter 41: The Dinner
The restaurant is on the fourteenth floor of a building that Rhys helped restore six years ago, which he mentions with the quiet particular pride of someone pointing out a thing they made better, and I file it alongside everything else I am collecting about him, the novel at twenty three, the early arrivals, the way he reads buildings like people.We are shown to a table by the window.The city is spread below us like something deliberate, all light and movement, and I sit across from him in the green dress and he is wearing the grey shirt and we look at each other across a table that has candles and good stemware and absolutely no agenda beyond this."Martin Raymond asked me not to make Vivienne the public villain," I say. "I told him I had already made that choice."Rhys looks at me across the candles. "You protected her.""I protected her child," I say. "Different motivation."He is quiet for a moment. "She sent me a message today," he says. "First time she has contacted me directl
EYES OPEN Chapter 40: Martin Raymond
He is smaller than I imagined.Not physically... he is a substantial man, broad shouldered, silver haired, the kind of presence that fills a room through habit rather than effort. But something about seeing him in person, standing in my office doorway in a coat that announces money without trying, makes him smaller than the version I constructed across months of documents and wire transfers and coordinated campaigns.He looks like a man who has spent his whole life being the most powerful person available and has recently discovered that the category was smaller than he thought.I gesture to the chair across from my desk.He sits.We look at each other."You are not surprised to see me," he says."I am not surprised by much anymore," I say. "What do you want Mr. Raymond?"He studies me the way powerful men study people they underestimated, with the specific focus of someone recalibrating. "I want to understand what you intend to do," he says. "With what you have.""Graham filed everyt
EYES OPEN Chapter 39: Sophie
She is younger than I expected.Mid twenties, slight, with the careful composed energy of someone who has spent several years managing something alone and has learned to carry it without showing the weight. She is pretty in an understated way, dark circles under her eyes that concealer has not fully addressed, wearing a jacket that is good quality but older.She sits across from my desk and looks at me with the direct gaze of someone who practiced this on the drive over."I know this is unexpected," she says."It is," I agree. "But you are here so tell me why."She exhales. "Derek called me last week. About formalizing things legally. He was... different... from the last time we spoke. More present. Like something had shifted in him." She pauses. "He mentioned you. Not in detail but enough. He said you were the one who told him about Evan needing a father who shows up."I say nothing."I wanted to meet you," she says simply. "I know that probably sounds strange. You are his ex wife an
EYES OPEN Chapter 38: Verified
Derek calls on a Wednesday morning with the kind of voice that means something has shifted."The pregnancy is real," he says.I am standing at my office window with my coffee and I stay very still for a moment."Verified how?" I ask."I hired a private medical consultant," he says. "Independent, nothing to do with Vivienne's doctor. She agreed to the verification, which surprised me. Eight weeks."Eight weeks.I do the math without wanting to. Eight weeks takes it back to approximately the hotel trip. The one he told me was a work commitment. The one where he came home with peonies and guilt and I smiled at him across the dinner table knowing everything."Okay," I say."Camille, I need to tell you something and I need you to hear it properly," he says. "I am not going back to her. I want that completely clear. Whatever this baby means for logistics and legal arrangements, it does not change anything about where I am standing.""Does she know that?""I told her yesterday," he says. "In
EYES OPEN Chapter 15: The Sister
Her name is Nora Callahan.I know this because Rhys says it under his breath like a man bracing for weather he has been watching approach from a distance and hoped would change direction.She walks in ahead of whoever is with her, small and sharp-eyed with dark hair cut blunt at the jaw and the spe
EYES OPEN Chapter 14: What Vivienne Said
I do not call Derek back that night.I sit with his message for exactly as long as it takes me to get to my car, start the engine, and decide that whatever Vivienne told him was designed to be delivered at night when I am tired and off-guard and more likely to react emotionally.So I drive home. I
EYES OPEN Chapter 12: The Mistake She Made
I figure out Vivienne's mistake at seven the next morning.I am standing at the kitchen counter with my coffee, scrolling back through every message she has sent from every number, laying them out in chronological order in my notes app like a timeline, and that is when I see it.She tipped her hand
EYES OPEN Chapter 11: Photos
I read the message three times.Then I screenshot it, forward it to my personal email, and save the number.Then I sit down on the couch because my legs have made a unilateral decision about standing.Photos. Someone has photos of me and Rhys at Archer's and they are threatening to hand them to Der
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