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Chapter 19: Blooming desire
Last Updated:
2025-05-18 19:58:04
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Winning Her Back Chapter 88: Midnight Sun
Six months. Half a year painted in the stark, beautiful contrasts of Finnish light and shadow. Six months since I walked out of Ethan Blackwell’s gilded cage and learned to breathe air that didn’t taste like judgment and disappointment. Standing in my sun-drenched studio, the scent of turpentine and linseed oil thick and comforting in the air, I finally felt it: the deep, unburdened expansion of my lungs. Freedom wasn’t just a location; it was the absence of constantly bracing for impact, of feeling perpetually less than.The large canvas before me was alive with colour, bold strokes of cerulean and emerald capturing the wild spirit of a Lapland forest under the summer’s midnight sun. This was my lifeblood now. My art. The passion I’d carefully packed away, like fragile china, when I became Mrs. Ethan Blackwell, because serious wives of serious men didn't dabble in such frivolities. Or so the unspoken rule, reinforced by Ethan’s dismissive glances and the subtle pressure to conform, h
Winning Her Back Chapter 87: The Reckoning
Ethan's POVTwo months. Sixty days. A lifetime measured in the suffocating silence of this mausoleum I used to call home. The divorce papers still sit on my desk, a perpetual accusation gathering dust beside Lila’s abandoned wedding ring. I haven’t signed them. I can’t. The finality of it feels like signing my own death warrant.I thought I craved this silence. I told myself I didn’t need her, that the constant, low hum of her presence was an irritant, a distraction from the cold efficiency of my world. I convinced myself I didn’t love her. That the sharp, unfamiliar feelings she provoked were weakness, not affection. That I could function perfectly well, better even, without the complication of Lila Blackwell.God, I was a fool. A blind, arrogant fool.Her absence isn't just silence, it's a void. A sucking vacuum where the air itself feels thin and lifeless. The meticulously ordered house is now a testament to my unraveling. Dust gathers on surfaces Lila would never have allowed. E
Winning Her Back Chapter 86: The Ashes of Victory
Ethan's POVThe divorce papers lay on my desk like an accusation. I hadn’t moved them. Couldn’t. They dominated the polished mahogany, a stark, white monument to my supposed liberation. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage. Lila Blackwell v. Ethan Blackwell. Her neat, final signature. That note. I'm finally giving you the divorce you badly wanted. Consider yourself free.Free. The word echoed in the suffocating silence of the study. It tasted like dust. Like the ashes of something I hadn’t realized was burning until it was gone. The vast emptiness of the house pressed in, a physical weight. It wasn't just quiet, it was dead. The life, the tentative, hopeful presence I'd barely acknowledged, had been extinguished. By me.The cold fury hit first. A familiar, icy wave. Control. I needed control. I snatched my phone, fingers stabbing at the screen. My lawyeranswered on the first ring, his voice smooth, professional."Ethan. I saw the filing come through. Standard petition for irreconci
Winning Her Back Chapter 85: The Echo in the Silence
Ethan's POVThe tires of the Bentley crunched on the gravel drive, the sound unnaturally loud in the pre dawn stillness. Today was a blur of damage control, a necessary purge, but the drive back had been a different kind of battle. Claire’s perfume still seemed to cling to the inside of the car, a cloying phantom scent that refused to dissipate, no matter how much chilled air I blasted through the vents. Her unexpected arrival last night, timed with surgical precision to exploit the chaos I’d created with Lila, had been a masterstroke of manipulation. I’d dealt with her, of course. Coldly, efficiently, burying her veiled threats and smug assumptions beneath layers of glacial indifference until she retreated before dawn. Yet, her presence lingered, an unwelcome residue.Stepping out into the chill air, the mansion loomed before me. My fortress. My domain. But something felt off. Different. The pre dawn light made it look less imposing, more skeletal. An emptiness radiated from it that
Winning Her Back Chapter 84: Breaking free
Dawn crept into the room like a hesitant intruder, painting pale grey streaks across the ceiling. I hadn’t truly slept. Hours had passed in a strange, suspended state between the icy numbness that had descended last night and a new, sharp-edged awareness. My body ached, a deep, bone-weary ache that had little to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the emotional evisceration of the past twelve hours. My eyes felt gritty, swollen from the silent storm of tears that had finally ceased, leaving behind a desert of resolve.I lay perfectly still for a long moment, listening. The mansion was unnervingly silent. No muffled voices through the wall. No footsteps in the hall. No low hum of Ethan’s presence elsewhere in the vast, cold space. Just the heavy, oppressive quiet of aftermath. The quiet of abandonment. Again. The thought flickered, but the icy shield around my heart snuffed it out before it could ignite fresh pain.Enough.The word resonated within the hollow space wher
Winning Her Back Chapter 83: The Final Fracture
A choked sob ripped from my throat, raw and ugly. I stumbled back into the room, slamming my own door shut and twisting the lock with trembling fingers. The click echoed with finality. Leaning against the solid wood, I slid down to the cold floor, my back pressed against it, as if it could shield me from the world outside, from the woman in his room, from the man who had just annihilated me.The tears came then, not the furious torrent of moments before, but a deep, wracking, silent weeping that shook my entire body. I buried my face in my knees, the rough terrycloth of the towel scratching my cheek. Images flashed behind my closed eyelids, not just of tonight, but of every single moment since the sterile church where I’d said "I do" with such desperate, foolish hope.The careful dinners I planned, hoping for conversation, met with silence or clipped remarks. The nights I waited up, listening for his key in the lock, only to hear him go straight to his study.The way I learned his c
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