تسجيل الدخولمشاركة
Chapter 61: Almost Normal
تاريخ النشر:
2026-07-14 21:30:09
أحدث فصل
Scent of Obsession Chapter 61.2 : Almost Norml
She drank her tea.The kitchen settled back into comfortable quiet.Then Elias set his mug down.Looked at the table.The quality of his silence changed.She felt it change."You said you'd tell me," she said quietly. "About the week. Four years ago."He looked up.She held his gaze."I know," he said."You called me yesterday specifically to say tonight," she said. "Zara's asleep. It's tonight."He looked at his hands.She waited.He'd always needed the full minute before the difficult things and she gave it to him the same way she always had. Completely. Without filling it.He exhaled slowly."When I disappeared," he said. "It wasn't random. It wasn't connected to Briggs or Raymond or Victor or any of the things that were happening at the time."She went still."Someone took me specifically," he said. "Not because of you directly. Not because of Damien." He looked at her. "Because of the research."She looked at him."V7," he said quietly.The kitchen was very quiet."Someone knew a
Scent of Obsession Chapter 61: Almost Normal
Chapter 61: Almost NormalLiora's POVZara went down at eight thirty.Three stories. Two glasses of water. One negotiation about Gerald the rabbit needing his own pillow that Liora lost completely and without dignity.She came out of her bedroom and pulled the door halfway closed and stood in the hallway for a moment just listening to the apartment.Quiet.The settled quiet of a child properly asleep.She went to the kitchen.Elias was already there with two mugs of tea and cookies.She sat across from him.Picked up her mug.They sat in the comfortable silence of people who had shared enough small spaces over enough years that silence between them had never needed filling."She asked me today," Elias said eventually. "If New York had more pigeons than the ones back home.""What did you tell her.""Significantly more." He turned his mug in his hands. "She seemed satisfied with that."Liora looked at her tea."She's going to want to go to every park," she said."Obviously.""Alphabetic
Scent of Obsession Chapter 60: The Morning After
Chapter 60: The Morning AfterLiora's POVShe woke up at five forty three.She woke up because she'd been dreaming about a handshake.She lay on her back and looked at the ceiling of the west side apartment and thought about that for a moment. Four years of careful distance. Four years of rebuilding and moving on or what mostly felt like it too. Four years of Zara and the research and Elias and the city that wasn't New York.And one handshake undid approximately sixty percent of it.She pressed both palms flat against the mattress.Thought about his face.Nothing in it. That was the thing she kept coming back to. Completely blank in the way that still hurt even though she'd known it would be blank. She'd prepared for blank. She'd rehearsed blank in the mirror of the west side apartment bathroom three times in the week before Thursday.She hadn't prepared for the handshake.For the way his hand had held hers one second longer than necessary and the specific quality of that second. Like
Scent of Obsession Chapter 59: First Sight
Chapter 59: First Sight Liora's POV She almost didn't go. She'd stood in the apartment at six fifteen with Zara on her hip eating the last of her dinner and Elias already dressed and ready by the door and had seriously considered calling Dr. Osei with a reasonable excuse about her daughter and the new city and settling in. Then Zara had looked at her with those grey eyes and said "go mama" with the authority of someone twice her age and Liora had put her down and finished getting ready. She wore navy. Simple. Professional. Nothing that said anything beyond competent researcher attending a work function. Liam had texted at six forty five. 'Save me a seat.' She hadn't responded. The institute's event space was on the top floor. Floor to ceiling windows. The city spread below doing its evening thing. The specific hum of a professional gathering in its early stages, people finding their positions, the careful social geometry of new colleagues working out who was worth talking to
Scent of Obsession Chapter 58: Arrival
Chapter 58: ArrivalLiora's POV New York looked exactly the same. That was the first thing she noticed from the back of the cab with Zara asleep against her shoulder and Elias in the front seat looking at his phone with the expression he'd been wearing for four years that she'd stopped asking about. The city moved past the window in the same way it always had. Loud and indifferent and continuous. The kind of place that didn't register your absence or your return and kept moving regardless of what either meant to you. She'd been gone four years. New York had not noticed. She looked at it anyway. At the skyline doing its evening thing, gold and amber bleeding into the dark, and felt something she hadn't expected to feel which was nothing dramatic. No grief. No terror. Just the complicated warmth of someone returning to a place that held things they'd put down and never fully stopped carrying. Zara stirred against her shoulder. Made a small sound. Settled again. Liora looked a
Scent of Obsession Chapter 57: Four years later
Four Years Later The toddler's name was Zara. She had her mother's jaw and her father's eyes and absolutely nobody's patience for sitting still on a park bench when there were pigeons to chase and Liora had given up on the bench approximately four minutes ago and was standing with her hands in her jacket pockets watching her run across the grass with the focused intensity of someone who had decided the pigeons were going to be caught today regardless of their own opinions on the matter. "Zara," she called. "Don't go past the fountain." Zara looked back at her over her shoulder. Grey eyes. The same grey eyes that Liora had been looking at for four years without being able to look away from them and would probably be looking at for the rest of her life with the same complicated warmth. "Mama the birds," Zara said. Like this explained everything. "I see the birds," Liora said. "Don't go past the fountain." Zara considered this seriously. Then she turned back to the pig
Scent of Obsession Chapter 8: Exposure
Chapter 8: ExposureThe lotion bottle had about three weeks left.Liora thought as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror at 8AM, pressing the pump slowly, watching the pale cream curl into her palm. Lavender and strawberry. She'd been using it for a while. had Bought it from a small vendor at a
Scent of Obsession Chapter 7: Withdrawal
Chapter 7: Withdrawal Damien Voss was exhausted. Not the dull kind of exhaustion coffee could fix. Not the manageable sort that came after long meetings and longer nights. This was sharper. More dangerous. The kind that sat behind his eyes and made every sound in the room feel like pressure ag
Scent of Obsession Chapter 6: Patterns
Chapter 6: Patterns By the fifth night, Damien Voss had developed habits. Liora notice because she was beginning to develop some too The car arrived outside the bookstore at exactly 10:15 every evening now. Marcus never needed to come inside anymore; he simply waited near the curb while she close
Scent of Obsession Chapter 5: Routine
Chapter 5: RoutineLiora was starting to hate elevators.Specifically private elevators.The silent one's.The kind that carried you to a specific penthouse. Namely Damien Voss's penthouseShe stared at her
قد تعجبك أيضًا
The Trap Of Ace
Eva Zahan1.0M وجهات النظرTriplets on Secret Mission
Lamour Toujours1.3M وجهات النظرI Want You Back
Meminger534.7K وجهات النظرOn Her Daddy’s Bed!
Xee write677.3K وجهات النظرTempting Playboy
mr_dutta78 وجهات النظرSurrender To Unhinged Psychopaths
Raven's sister137 وجهات النظرRuined by Desire
Tessa Marlowe129 وجهات النظرHis Unchosen bride
Odella88 وجهات النظر
