Home / Romance / No Way to Win Me Back / Chapter Four Hundred and Sixty-Six

Share

Chapter Four Hundred and Sixty-Six

Author: Anney GW
last update Last Updated: 2026-01-04 11:00:36
Ryan’s POV

I didn’t go to the event with Celeste. That decision alone felt like a fracture.

I told her something important had come up, and that wasn’t a lie. It was just not the truth in the way she deserved it. The truth was heavier. The truth had teeth. The truth had my father’s voice wrapped around it, patient and relentless, waiting for me to stop pretending I could outrun it.

The Edwards’ estate looked exactly the way it always had, immaculate, controlled, designed to make you feel small before you ever stepped inside. Gravel crunched beneath my tires as I pulled up, the sound too loud in the quiet. I sat there for a moment longer than necessary, my hands on the steering wheel, breathing through the pressure in my chest.

This was where decisions got made. Not announced. Not celebrated. Decided.

Maximilian was in his study when I was shown in. Of course he was. He always chose rooms that felt like chessboards: dark wood, sharp angles, walls lined with trophies disguised as legacy.
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • No Way to Win Me Back   Chapter Five Hundred and Thirty

    Celeste’s POVThe next morning, I drove to my mother’s house with Molly humming softly in the back seat, her legs swinging as she watched the city slide past the window. There was something grounding about the routine of it, packing snacks, reminding her to buckle her seatbelt, listening to her narrate clouds like they were characters in a story only she could see.After the night with Ryan, after all the words we hadn’t had time to finish saying, I felt… steadier. Not healed. Not resolved. But less like I was actively coming apart.Ryan had left too soon. Work, obligations, the invisible leash his father still held tight around his wrist. We’d stood in the doorway of my office like two people afraid to say goodbye too honestly. He’d kissed my forehead, promised we’d talk properly soon. I believed him. Or maybe I needed to.Claire opened the door before I even knocked, her smile warm and immediate.“There’s my favorite people,” she said, crouching to Molly’s height. “And my second fav

  • No Way to Win Me Back   Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Nine

    Celeste’s POVI was still at the office long after the building had gone quiet.Rosemary Atelier at night felt different. The overhead lights above the main studio were dimmed, leaving only the lamps over my worktable on. Sketches were spread out in front of me, winter motifs half-finished, lines too sharp, stones set too aggressively. I knew they were wrong, but I hadn’t had the energy to fix them yet.I heard the elevator before I saw him.The doors opened softly, cautiously, as if whoever stepped out didn’t want to be noticed. I didn’t look up right away. People didn’t usually come up here this late unless they were security or Grace, and neither of them moved like that.Then I caught the familiar weight of his presence. The way the air shifted.Ryan was bundled up like a criminal in a bad movie, dark coat zipped all the way up, scarf pulled high, baseball cap low over his eyes. He looked absurd and devastating at the same time.“Jesus,” I said quietly. “Do you think you’re being hu

  • No Way to Win Me Back   Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Eight

    Celeste’s POVI arrived at the courthouse with a steadiness that surprised me.There was no tremor in my hands as I passed through security, no spike of adrenaline when I heard Vanessa’s name murmured by reporters clustered near the steps. I had imagined this day a hundred different ways, me furious, shaking, vindictive; me unraveling; me wanting to flee at the first glimpse of her face. None of that happened.Instead, I felt… distant. As if the version of myself who had been hurt by Vanessa was standing a few feet behind me, watching quietly, no longer in control.Jenny walked beside me, her shoulder brushing mine every so often. She wore a simple navy dress, her hair pulled back neatly, her expression composed but alert.She hadn’t said much since we arrived, but her presence grounded me. It mattered that she was here, not as my employee, not as someone I was protecting, but as someone who had survived the same storm.We took our seats in the gallery. The courtroom smelled faintly of

  • No Way to Win Me Back   Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Seven

    Celeste’s POVVanessa’s sentencing day was tomorrow.The thought settled into me slowly, like something heavy being placed on my chest, not crushing, but impossible to ignore. I sat alone in my office long after most of Rosemary Atelier had emptied out, the city lights outside the windows blurred into soft halos by the rain.I had known this day was coming for months. Depositions, evidence, closed-door meetings with lawyers who spoke in measured tones as if lives were not being dismantled sentence by sentence.Tomorrow, it would end.I surprised myself by deciding to attend.I didn’t announce it. I didn’t dramatize it in my head. I simply closed my laptop, stood up, and knew, with a clarity that felt almost eerie, that I needed to be there. Not for revenge. Not even for closure, if I was honest.But because Vanessa Abrams had carved herself into too many chapters of my life for me to let the final one be told without me in the room.I was locking up when Jenny’s voice floated down the

  • No Way to Win Me Back   Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Six

    Celeste’s POVRyan called three times before noon.I watched the screen light up on my desk, his name blooming there like a bruise I refused to press. I didn’t pick up. I didn’t decline either. I let it ring until the sound dissolved into the hum of the studio, into the clink of metal and the low murmur of voices beyond the glass walls of my office.Ignoring him felt childish. Necessary, but childish all the same. I told myself I needed space. That if I heard his voice, steady, controlled, probably apologetic in that careful way of his, I would fold. Or worse, I would say something sharp enough to lodge between us forever.I turned back to my sketchpad instead.The Beaumont winter collection deadline loomed like a storm cloud, and normally that kind of pressure grounded me. Deadlines had always been my refuge. Work was the one place where I could translate chaos into order, gold into geometry, pain into something precise and beautiful.But that morning, my pencil carved instead of glid

  • No Way to Win Me Back   Chapter Five Hundred and Twenty-Five

    Celeste’s POVI should have been focused. The winter collection sketches were scattered across the table in front of me, delicate drawings of snow-dusted necklaces and frost-inspired earrings, and the fine-tipped pens were still warm with ink in my fingers.But my stomach was twisting, coiling tighter with every passing second as I scrolled through my phone.And then I saw it.I almost choked on the scone I had been trying to eat for breakfast.There it was, splashed across every tabloid I hadn’t even realized I’d opened, the kind I usually avoided like a plague. Ryan Edwards and a new lady love—Crown Luxe heir spotted in downtown brunch rendezvous with socialite.And the picture, oh God, the picture, showed him laughing, leaning into her as if the world had nothing else to offer him. She was polished, poised, perfect.Every bit of her screamed sophistication, elegance, belonging in his orbit. And there I was, sitting in my studio, a half-eaten scone on my plate, hair in a messy bun, s

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status