로그인Eliora's POV "Finally," Kian said, setting two mugs down on the coffee table and dropping onto the sofa beside me, "some peace and quiet.""Don't say that too loud," I said. "The universe is listening.""The universe can wait a day." He pulled my feet into his lap without asking, the way he'd done a thousand times before, and started rubbing the arch of my foot with his thumb. "Drew and Zoey have all three of them until tomorrow. I checked the group chat….they're fine. Mitchell's already 'won' two arguments with Ezra and Noah's been reading the same book since they arrived.""Sounds about right."The house held a kind of silence I'd forgotten existed, not the heavy kind, not the kind we'd lived through during the silent treatment weeks, but the easy, settled kind. No small feet on the stairs. No negotiations happening in another room. Just us, the morning light coming through the kitchen window, and tea going lukewarm because neither of us had the urgency to drink it quickly."I al
Eliora's POV "That's not how you play it," Ezra said, arms crossed, watching Mitchell line up her pieces on the board with what could only be described as reckless confidence."It's exactly how you play it," Mitchell said, not looking up. "You put the pieces where you want them.""You're supposed to put them on your side.""This is my side.""That's my side."Mitchell looked up at him with the particular patience of a four-year-old who believed herself to be entirely reasonable. "I was here first.""You weren't here first, I was setting up the board.""You were setting it up wrong," she said, "so I fixed it."I watched all this from the kitchen doorway, a tea towel in my hands, completely unable to intervene because intervening would have ruined what was, objectively, the funniest argument I'd witnessed in weeks. Zoey appeared beside me, drawn by the noise, and we exchanged a look that said neither of us was getting involved either."He's going to lose this one," Zoey murmured."He'
Kian's POV "You're doing it again," Drew said, watching me over the rim of his coffee cup."Doing what?""That thing where you watch him like he's about to combust." He nodded toward the garden, where Noah and Mitchell were crouched over something in the grass, deep in negotiation about whatever it was. "He's fine, Kian. He's just looking at a bug.""I know he's fine." I didn't look away from the window. "I'm allowed to watch my son look at a bug.""You've been watching for ten minutes.""It's a good bug, apparently."Drew laughed, settling back into his chair, the two of us in my kitchen on a Saturday afternoon while our wives did something neither of us had been invited to and our children conducted serious business in the garden."Mitchell asked me last week if Noah was her brother," Drew said. "I didn't really know what to say.""What did you say?""I said no, but they're family anyway, the kind you get to choose instead of the kind you're born into." He shrugged. "She seemed sat
Eliora's POV "This is our last session," Dr. Stella said, settling into her chair with the same unhurried calm she'd had on the very first day. "How does that feel to say out loud?"I looked around the office, the same plant on the windowsill, somehow still thriving after all this time, the same lamp throwing the same warm light into the corner. "Strange," I said. "Good strange, I think. But it's strange.""Tell me about the good part.""I came in here three years ago not knowing how to put anything down," I said. "Not knowing how to let people carry things with me. I called you because Zoey suggested it, and I almost didn't come back after the first session. I almost stopped last year after a couple of sessions."a laugh escaped my lips, “I just couldn't bring myself to stop tgen.”I paused. "And now I'm sitting here telling you it's time to stop, and I actually believe that.""What changed?"I thought about it for a while. "I think I learned the difference between carrying somethi
Eliora's POV "You don't have to explain yourself to me," I said, setting two cups of tea down on the table between us. "I just wanted to check if you were okay. After the dinner."Lydia wrapped both hands around her cup, the way she always did, like the warmth mattered more than the drinking. "I'm fine," she said. "I've had worse evenings.""You don't seem fine."She looked up at me, and something in her face shifted, not quite a wall coming down, but a crack appearing in it. "She just gets under my skin," she said. "Tonia. Always has.""Can I ask why?"Lydia was quiet for a moment, turning the cup slowly. "Because she had everything I didn't," she said finally. "The marriage that lasted. The money that never disappeared. The ability to walk into a room and have everyone defer to her without question." She paused. "And then she used all of that to hurt my daughter. To take two years away from you and Ezra both. And somehow she still gets to sit at the same table, holding her head u
Eliora's POV "You're early," I said, when the front door opened and Kian walked in still in his work clothes, jacket over one arm, a takeout bag in the other."I said I would be."Ezra appeared at the top of the stairs before either of us could say anything else, peering down with the caution he'd carried for two days now, like he was checking the weather before deciding whether it was safe to come down."Hey, bud," Kian said, looking up at him. "Come down here for a second."Ezra came slowly, one stair at a time, Noah trailing behind him, both of them watching us with the same careful attention."I got dinner," Kian said, holding up the bag. "The place with the noodles you like.""Are you and Mom okay now?" Ezra asked, ignoring the bag entirely.Kian crouched down to his level. "We're going to be," he said. "We had a disagreement, and that's okay sometimes….even grown-ups disagree. But we're not going anywhere. Either of us.""You promise?" Ezra looked between us."I promise," Kian
Eliora's POV “If you don’t let him go, Eliora, I will make sure there isn't a single bookstore in this city that will carry your name on its shelves.”The voice cut through the quiet of my office like a jagged blade. I didn't even have to look up from my laptop to know who it was. The scent of clo
Eliora's POVI pushed through the heavy ICU doors, my heart still hammering against my ribs from the confrontation with Elijah. My mind was a mess of frozen bank accounts and betrayal, but the second I reached room 312, the world outside simply ceased to exist.Ezra was laughing.The sight through
Eliora's POV “You might not want to hear this but I think he still likes you, Eliora.” Zoey whispered, leaning in close, her breath warm against my ear in the freezing hallway. “Come to think of it, you guys never got the closure that you needed. You know Kian just–”“Can we not?” I rubbed my temp
Eliora's POV "What is the meaning of this, Elijah? How dare you steal from me?"The heavy oak door to his office slammed against the wall with a crack that sounded like a gunshot. I didn't wait for him to look up. I marched to his desk and hurled the bank statements, the proof of my financial exe







