Beranda / Romance / Secrets of a Hidden Marriage / Chapter 114: The Reckoning

Share

Chapter 114: The Reckoning

Penulis: Raven
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2025-07-09 13:46:54

The conference room buzzed with restless energy, cameras flashing as reporters murmured among themselves.

Everyone was waiting for the moment to pounce.

Allie Brooks arrived fashionably late, stepping through the doors with a calm that masked the storm within. Every pair of eyes turned to her, judgment laced in their stares. The room smelled of coffee and heated gossip, the tension thick enough to choke on.

“Where’s Mia Stone?” someone whispered near the front. “Isn’t she supposed to be here?”
Lanjutkan membaca buku ini secara gratis
Pindai kode untuk mengunduh Aplikasi
Bab Terkunci

Bab terbaru

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 178: He Kissed Her Cheek — and Liam Saw Every Second of It

    Liam stops walking.He's at the top of the stairs, heading toward the balcony, the house quiet around him — and he stops because the two figures he can see through the glass panels of the sunroom door are not what he expected, and the thing tightening in his chest right now is not something he has a clean name for.Allie is asleep.She's folded over the small marble table on the balcony, head resting on her crossed arms, script still splayed open beneath her cheek, completely, utterly unconscious in the way she sleeps when she's genuinely exhausted — deep and boneless and unguarded, her dark hair spilling across the table, her breathing slow.Adam is beside her.He hasn't moved. He's sitting with his own script in his hands, but he's not reading it. He's looking at her — and Liam has known this boy for twenty-one years, has watched him be cold and precise and deliberately removed from everything that might require him to feel some

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 177: He Came Back Early — and Saw Everything

    ---By day eight of the exposure sessions, Adam doesn't flinch.The cameras fire — six of them, from three angles — and he stands center stage with his shoulders level and his jaw set and his eyes open, and he keeps running his lines without losing a single word. The flash hits his face like a slap and he absorbs it the way a person absorbs cold water: fully, without pleasure, but without breaking.The team watches him the way people watch something they don't entirely believe is real.I watch him and feel something sharp and warm and complicated move through my chest that I have gotten very good at pushing back down."Good," I say. Even. Professional. "Again."He runs it again.And again.The cameras don't stop him anymore.Three days before the Showcase, the rehearsals follow us home.It starts practically — the blocking has specifics we keep second-guessing, dialogue rhythms that only work at full run-through spee

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 176: He Cooked. Adam Said No. And Something Shifted Anyway.

    The smell hits me before I even reach the kitchen.Rich, slow-cooked broth, the kind that takes hours and patience and a person who actually knows what they're doing — which, it turns out, Liam Hart does. He's standing at the stove in a white henley with his sleeves pushed up, and I stop in the kitchen doorway and just watch him for a second, because there is something deeply disorienting about the most controlled man I've ever met reducing a wild chicken to something that smells like the best thing I've ever stood near."You made broth," I say."You said you were starving." He doesn't look up from the pot. "Noodles are almost ready."My stomach makes a sound that is not dignified.He glances back. The corner of his mouth moves."Go get Adam," he says. "Tell him there's enough."I hesitate — remember the closed door, the one syllable, the click of the latch — and then I go anyway, because Liam made three portions and

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 175: Don't Go — and He Didn't Let Me

    I start to stand.His hand shoots out and catches mine.He doesn't look up. Doesn't lift his head from his knees. Doesn't say a word. He just — grabs my hand with both of his and holds on, the way a person holds on when they're out at sea and have found the only thing left that's solid.I stop moving.I sit back down."I'm not going anywhere," I say softly. "I'm right here."The auditorium breathes around us — dim and gray, the ghost light throwing its pale circle over the empty stage — and Adam Hart, who has kept every wall up and every door locked since the day I met him, sits curled on the floor of Aldridge Auditorium holding my hand like it's the only thing keeping him inside his own body.So I stay.I don't talk. Don't fill the silence with reassurances that would ring false, don't perform comfort at him the way people do when they're scared of the quiet. I just stay — shoulder close to his, hand in

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 174: Fight the Fear — Even If It Breaks You

    Liam's voice, when he talks about that day, drops to somewhere barely above silence."He was a different kid before it happened." He doesn't look at me. He looks at his hands, at the space between us, at something I can't see. "Loud. Ridiculously curious about everything. He used to chase the dogs around this yard laughing so hard he'd fall over." A pause. Long. Heavy. "I took him to the amusement park. I was thirteen. I thought I was old enough to be responsible for a six-year-old for one afternoon." His jaw tightens. "I wasn't."I don't say anything.I don't try to fix it, because you can't fix twenty years of a guilt that has calcified into something structural — something a person builds their sense of obligation around, quietly, without naming it. I just sit close and hold his hand and let the silence be what it is.After a while, he exhales.I lean my head against his shoulder."He came back," I say softly. "He's here. That matte

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 173: The Camera. The Kidnapping. The Thing Nobody Talks About.

    He steps through the auditorium doors like the sunset itself sent him.White shirt. Black backpack slung over one shoulder. The last amber light of the evening following him in through the gap, catching the sharp angles of his face as he moves down the aisle — unhurried, self-contained, carrying that particular quality of stillness that makes every room he enters feel like it's been waiting for him.Three girls in the second row audibly stop breathing.I feel my own heartbeat do something I choose to ignore."You're here," I say.Adam stops at the foot of the stage and looks up at me. "Didn't you say rehearsal starts today?"Not good to see you. Not sorry I'm late. Just that — blunt, clean, matter-of-fact — as if showing up was never in question even though every part of me spent the last forty-eight hours convinced he wouldn't."Yeah," I manage. "Welcome to the cast."Rehearsal begins

  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 66: The Puppet Strings

    Liam Hart and Julian were two completely different forces of nature.Julian, with his sharp features and mischievous smirk, radiated an allure that seemed to straddle the line between mischief and danger. His piercing blue eyes carried an almost hypnotic glint, as if they held a thousand secrets an

    last updateTerakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-26
  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 68: A Show of Secrets

    Allison Brooks just wanted to have a quiet meal, staying out of the spotlight and blending into the background. But that plan quickly unraveled when George Smith leaned back in his chair, a sly smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His eyes glinted with mischief as he spoke loudly enough for e

    last updateTerakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-26
  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 63: Ghosts of a Proposal

    Allie Brooks’ thoughts were racing as something clicked in her mind. A flash of memory surfaced, vivid and startling.She turned abruptly to George Smith, seated next to her in the car. “The person we’re picking up... it’s not Julian Ford, is it?” she asked, a hint of apprehension in her voice.Geo

    last updateTerakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-26
  • Secrets of a Hidden Marriage   Chapter 67: A Toast to Liam Hart

    Allie’s survival instincts screamed at her. Sitting anywhere near Liam Hart tonight would be asking for trouble. She quickly scanned the room and chose the seat farthest from him, sliding into it with quiet determination.From across the table, Julian Ford chuckled loudly, his deep voice carrying o

    last updateTerakhir Diperbarui : 2026-03-26
Bab Lainnya
Jelajahi dan baca novel bagus secara gratis
Akses gratis ke berbagai novel bagus di aplikasi GoodNovel. Unduh buku yang kamu suka dan baca di mana saja & kapan saja.
Baca buku gratis di Aplikasi
Pindai kode untuk membaca di Aplikasi
DMCA.com Protection Status