His Loss: My Ex Husband Wants Me Back

Cassian’s POVThe very second she opened the door to get out, I thought that was it. But then the door creaked open a little wider, and she collided with someone.“Sorry again, Mrs. Hale” my lawyer, Davis, apologized and just had to change the topic. “Elara. Do you have a moment?” I almost rolled my eyes. He had a fancy for always having the wrong timing.Elara paused for a moment and then nodded once and as she moved out of the way, stepping back into the office with him. She didn’t even glance back at me.Davis entered with the folders I’d told him to get ready a week ago. The folder contained every asset broken down, the complete settlement offer and the goddamn penthouse I hated anyway but still bought it for her, because she said it was the right kind of light or some shit she could breathe in. She had no idea about the private account. It was an account I had created and hid away from her, years ago in her own name.Just in case.“Here’s the full agreement,” Davis said, sett

Elara’s POVAnd here it was again, that feeling that comes, just after sunrise. At first, I figured it was due to the remnants of the leftover croissant that I had eaten only a little of the day before. But then again, I thought of it as it wasn’t the first time this was happening. It began three days ago, and it came only in the mornings and just after I would wake up, and it didn’t linger. And yet I could not overlook the pattern.I sat on the edge of the guest bed in the small Parisian apartment I’d rented, with my hand on my stomach. The room was gloomy, and the curtains were still drawn. My skin felt funny and I felt a sour taste in my mouth.Needing some calm, I stood, went to the bathroom, and splashed cold water on my face. Once I had finished, I stared at my face in the mirror. I looked pale and had a bit of sleepy eyes. But it was difficult to tell if I was actually sick. My phone buzzed and Adrian's name flashed on the screen.“Are you still up for that coffee? I was a

Elara's POV Paris did not care who I was. That was the first thing I learned about it. Nobody on the Rue de Rivoli knew my name. The woman at the boulangerie downstairs didn't know I had once stood in a Vera Wang gown at the Met Gala. The elderly man who walked his dog past my window every morning at seven didn't know I had been Cassian Hale's wife, the one he had traded in without blinking. Here, I was simply the quiet American in apartment 4B who paid her rent on time and smiled politely and ordered her coffee with two sugars. It was, I decided, exactly what I needed. My apartment was small. Smaller than the walk-in wardrobe at the penthouse. The walls were the colour of old cream, and the radiator clicked and hissed at odd hours of the night, but the window above the kitchen sink looked out onto a narrow cobbled street and caught the light just right in the late afternoon. That mattered. Light had always mattered to me, even when nothing else did. Weeks into her Paris li

Elara's POV I almost said no. That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward. I had been standing at my kitchen window with my tea going cold in my hand, looking at the street below and feeling the particular weight of a Tuesday with nothing scheduled, when Adrian's message arrived.'Street market on Rue Mouffetard this morning. Come. I'll buy you something unnecessary.' I read it twice. Set the phone down. Picked it up again. The honest answer was that I didn't want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay in the apartment where it was warm and quiet and no one needed anything from me. I had been doing that a lot lately — finding reasons to stay inside, to keep the world at one remove, to exist in the small manageable radius of my desk and my kitchen and my window. But the apartment had been feeling smaller all week. And I had been inside my own head for three days straight, which was, by any measure, three days too many. I typed back: Give me twenty minutes. Rue Mouffetard on a w

Elara's POV I didn't sleep well that night. Not because of the radiator, which had been clicking and hissing since October and which I had long since made my peace with. Not because of the street noise either, though a group of students had passed beneath my window at midnight singing something that might have been a French folk song or might have been entirely improvised — it was difficult to tell. I didn't sleep because of the way he had said my name. Hello, Elara. Two words. That was all. And yet I had spent the hours between midnight and four in the morning turning them over like stones, examining what was underneath them. The tone of it. The way his voice had done something careful and controlled that I recognised as the sound of Cassian Hale refusing to show his hand. I knew that sound. I had lived inside it for two years. I got up at half past four and made tea and sat at my desk and opened the green notebook and stared at the blank page for a long time. Then I wrote: