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홈 / Romance / The Unexpected Affair / Chapter Twenty Eight - To Get What You Want, Lie and Lie Again

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Chapter Twenty Eight - To Get What You Want, Lie and Lie Again

작가: NtombekhayaZibi
last update 게시일: 2026-01-18 18:14:23

I shut the door slowly, leaning against it for a second longer than necessary, hoping it would somehow buy me time to figure out what to say. My mind was a whirlpool of emotions, a chaos of guilt, confusion, and longing. If I opened my mouth, I knew I’d either say too much or not enough, and both felt terrifying.

I should have known that after today, after the funeral, my mom would come to check on me. I knew it, deep down, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. That’s why I’d agreed to mee
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  • The Unexpected Affair    Final Chapter - Thank you For Choosing Me

    We chose a Tuesday in December, the kind of gray day that makes indoor spaces feel like shelter. Alex drove me to the café my mother had suggested, neutral ground, public enough to prevent scenes, quiet enough for conversation. She parked but didn't turn off the engine."I'll be here," she said. "However long you need. If you want me to come in, text. If you want to leave alone, text. If you want to walk and think, I'll follow at a distance. Whatever you need."I looked at her, this woman who had learned, finally, to ask instead of assume, to support instead of decide. To communicate instead of thinking for herself only. "What if I don't know what I need? In this case.""Then you'll figure it out while I wait." She smiled, small and certain. "I'm not going anywhere, Darling. That's the promise. Not that I'll always know what to do, but that I'll always be here while we figure it out."I kissed her, brief and grounding, and stepped into the gray day.My mother was already inside, at a

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Sixty-One - I Miss You

    The letter arrived on Saturday, slipped under my door while Alex and I were grocery shopping, returned to find it waiting like a small bomb.She and I were moving around from apartments. Hers was closer to my work but mine was my home. So whenever I said I wanted to see what was up back at my place she never refused, she agreed and moved with me. She was cuteSo back to the letter at my door.No envelope. Just folded paper, my name in my mother's handwriting, that familiar slant, the way she crossed her t's with small flourishes, the handwriting of grocery lists and birthday cards and notes left on kitchen counters.I stood in the doorway, holding it, feeling Alex's presence behind me, her hand on my lower back, ready to support whatever I needed."Do you want me to read it first?" she offered and walked past me to put the groceries on the counter. She came back and took my plastic bags."No." I unfolded it with fingers that trembled slightly. "I need to know what she has to say. Even

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Sixty - Move In With me

    The second week was easier than the first, and harder.Easier because the rhythms returned, Alex's hand finding mine in the dark, her voice in the morning, the particular weight of her head on my shoulder as we watched something mindless on television. The language of us, which I had thought forgotten, proved to be only dormant, rising to my lips like a mother tongue I hadn't realized I still spoke.Harder because the rhythms returned. Because each time she reached for me, some part of me flinched backward, remembering the months of empty space where that hand had been. Because trust is not a switch to be flipped but a bridge to be rebuilt, plank by plank, and I was still testing each step before I put my weight on it.She knew. She always knew. She would feel my hesitation in the tension of my shoulder, the fractional pause before I leaned into her touch, and she would pull back, give space, wait for me to bridge the distance myself. Never pushing. Never demanding. Simply present, pa

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Fifty-Nine - Third Time is a Charm

    I woke to the smell of coffee and something else, clean cotton, warm bread, the particular scent of a morning that had been prepared by hands other than my own. For a moment, I lay still in the half-dark, my bedroom curtains filtering the early light into something soft and gray, and I couldn't remember what day it was. Couldn't remember why my chest felt both hollow and full, why my eyes were sticky with tears I'd cried in sleep, why the space beside me in the bed was empty but still warm.Then memory returned. Not in a rush, but in pieces. My mother's face crumpled in confession. The bath water cooling while Alex held my hand. The way she'd helped me to bed, pulled the covers to my chin, kissed my forehead with a tenderness that felt borrowed from a future we hadn't earned yet.Friday. It was Friday. I had to work.I sat up, and that's when I saw them, clothes laid out on my chair, my navy blazer and the gray slacks that always made me feel capable, the silk blouse that didn't wrink

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Fifty-Eight - Bare

    The pizza box lay on my floor like a fallen bird, cheese and sauce seeping into the wood, and none of us moved to save it.My mother's face had gone the color of old ash. She stood frozen in my on the middle of my room, her keys still clutched in one hand, her mouth opening and closing like she was trying to remember how air worked. "Miranda," Alex said again, and her voice had changed. It wasn't angry anymore. It was tired. It was finished. "Tell her the truth, please."My mother's eyes found mine, and I saw something break in them. Something I'd never seen before, not in all my years of knowing her. Not when my father died. Not when she talked about losing Alex. Not even when she'd caught me sneaking home drunk at sixteen and sat me down for the talk that lasted three hours.This was different. This was a crack running through the foundation of everything."Elizabeth," she whispered. Not Lizzy like she used to. My full name. This made my heart skip a bit."Mom!!!" The word ca

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Fifty Seven - Heartbreak All Round

    I stared at Alex until the silence between us grew teeth.I waited for her to laugh.I kept looking at her face, waiting for that little smile she gets when she's about to make a joke. The one that means she's playing with me, that everything is okay, that the world hasn't just turned upside down.But the smile didn't come.Her face stayed serious. Too serious. Like she was carrying something heavy and didn't know how to put it down.Something inside me broke.I laughed.It erupted from somewhere deep and broken, a sound like glass shattering against concrete, sharp, jagged, utterly without humor. The noise bounced off the walls, too loud, too wild, feeding on the hysteria that had begun threading through my veins. "Funny, Alex," I managed, my voice cracking around the edges. "You're really funny."She didn't move. Didn't blink. The stillness of her was somehow worse than any reaction, worse than anger, worse than tears. It was the stillness of someone who had already crossed some th

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Thirty Seven - You Were Gone

    Four weeks had passed since I’d seen or heard from Alex or my mom and it has been two weeks and a few days since Sophia found me laying on the floor because of alcohol. I had started going back to work. Of course, no one at the office knew the real reason for my sudden disappearance. To them, it wa

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-27

  • The Unexpected Affair    Thirty Eight - Shared Pain

    It had been a week since the conversation with my mother, and somehow, I felt even more confused than before. I had an answer, at least one that was supposed to make sense, but it only twisted the knife deeper. I kept replaying it in my mind like a scene that refused to end.She needed to fix thin

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-27

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Seven - You Made Me Feel Like a Fool

    The cold water ran over me in the shower, steady and unforgiving. I let it fall as my thoughts spun out of control. Tears mixed with the water, slipping down my face as I tried to understand the mess inside me. Seeing Alex standing there, so calm and so beautiful, tore open wounds I believed were f

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-17

  • The Unexpected Affair    Chapter Nine - With You I Felt Whole

    On Monday, I was grateful to be back at work. I needed to focus on something, anything, that wasn't Alex or Paris. The weekend felt like an awful nightmare, with the disturbing realization that my mother's ex was the same woman who had taken a piece of me in Paris. And despite everything, I still f

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-17
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