All Chapters of No Way to Win Me Back: Chapter 321 - Chapter 330

595 Chapters

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-One

Ryan’s POVThe call came at noon.“Your father wants you in his office. Now.” Mr. Davis’ message came through.I cursed under my breath. I was already drowning in work from all sides.I didn’t bother replying. I already knew this wasn’t about business.Maximilian rarely made anything “about business” when it came to me.I took my sweet time driving to Crown Luxe.The office door was half-open.He was waiting.My father stood at the head of the mahogany table, spine straight, jaw tight, every inch of him radiating fury. A folder sat in front of him.He didn’t say hello.He didn’t even look at me at first.Not until I stepped fully inside and closed the door behind me.Then he finally turned and slid the folder across the table with two fingers.It fanned open.Photographs spilled out.Celeste.Molly.Their hands intertwined as they crossed the street. Molly laughing with her head tipped up at Celeste. Celeste bending down to fix the little bow on Molly’s coat. Molly leaning her face int

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Two

Celeste’s POVThe days started blurring together.Metal filings under my nails, sketches layered over sketches, gemstones scattered across my desk like pieces of my sanity I kept trying to rearrange into something beautiful.The exhibition was less than two weeks away, and every beat of the clock felt like a hand squeezing around my ribs.If I wasn’t moving, I was thinking. If I wasn’t thinking, I was panicking.Work was the only thing quiet enough to drown out everything else.Rachel stayed beside me like a quiet anchor.“You need to breathe,” she said one afternoon, setting a mug of tea beside me with the gentleness of someone placing a candle in front of a storm. “Preferably air. Not anxiety.”I cracked a tired smile. “Breathing is a luxury these days.”“You’re going to burn out,” she warned.“I already have.” I leaned back, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Now I’m just… recycling the ashes.”She snorted. “Very dramatic. Very you.”But there was worry in her eyes.She wasn’t wrong.T

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Three

Celeste’s POVI thought I was prepared.I’d rehearsed this day in my head a hundred times, how I would walk into the exhibition we’d spent months preparing for, how I would stand tall beside my team, how I would breathe knowing my work was finally out in the world.But nothing could’ve prepared me for the moment I stepped inside the grand hall and saw him.Nicholas Grant.My father.Standing under the chandelier light with the elegance of someone who belonged to every room he entered, wearing the name of a man I’d never met and the face of the man my mother had lost.He wasn’t alone.He had a wife. And two children, maybe ten, maybe twelve years old, clinging to him like he’d never once disappeared from their world.My breath stopped.I felt Ryan’s fingers brush mine, sensing the shift in my body before a single word left my mouth.“Celeste?”I couldn’t answer him.My heart was malfunctioning, tripping over itself, trying to beat around the shards suddenly slicing through it.Nicholas’

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Four

Celeste’s POVFor most part, I had managed to ignore Nicholas Grant.But I knew it was inevitable.The way the crowd’s noise thinned into a strange, suspended silence warned me something inevitable was approaching.I didn’t turn.I kept my eyes fixed on the display case in front of me, pretending I was examining the emerald necklace inside instead of fighting the urge to run.“Celeste.”His voice.Lower than I imagined. With an echo of something that tugged painfully at my ribs.My shoulders stiffened. I hadn’t said his name aloud since the file arrived.Nicholas Grant. Nathaniel Cole. My father who was a stranger to me.I inhaled slowly and turned toward him.He stood there alone now, a few feet away, as if afraid to come closer.Up close, the resemblance was clearer, the shape of his eyes, the angle of his jaw. Flashes of myself reflected in someone I’d never been allowed to know.It made my stomach twist.“May I speak with you?” he asked quietly.He sounded like a man stepping onto

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Five

Celeste’s POVI didn’t know what I expected to happen next but it definitely wasn’t seeing Nicholas entering Rosemary Atelier the day after the exhibition.I didn’t think he’d actually come.Not after the look on his face when I walked away from him at the exhibition, not after the words I’d forced out, shaking, years late: What you did to my mother wasn’t fair.But there he was.Nicholas Grant stood inside Rosemary Atelier like a man who had wandered into the wrong life. Hands folded. Shoulders stiff. Eyes darting around the room as if the walls themselves had the right to judge him.I felt Rachel freeze beside me.“Celeste,” she murmured under her breath, “is that…?”“Yeah.” My voice barely formed. “It’s him.”For a full heartbeat, I couldn’t move.The man who hovered in my memories like a ghost was now standing on my floors, in my world.He cleared his throat.“Celeste,” he said, trying to smile. “Do you…have a moment?”I didn’t invite him into my office. I didn’t even pretend at po

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Six

Celeste’s POVI insisted we arrive separately.I told Nicholas it would be better that way, less like we were presenting a united front, more like what this truly was. An old wound being reopened under a sterile light.So I walked into my mother’s home alone.The air inside felt wrong the moment I stepped in, like it remembered everything we’d once suffered here.Claire was sitting on the sofa, hands clasped in her lap, staring at the door as if bracing for impact. She looked strong, but her eyes were swollen, rimmed red.She had cried before I even arrived.I hated that. I hated him for that.“Mom,” I whispered.She nodded, but her throat bobbed hard once. “Bring him in.”Nicholas stepped inside slowly. His gaze dropped the moment he saw her.“Claire,” he breathed. “Thank you for-”“Don’t thank me,” she cut in, voice thin, trembling. “Just say what you came to say.”He looked gutted. Truly gutted. For a second, I almost believed he’d rehearsed his apology a thousand times and still ha

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Seven

Celeste’s POVBy the time I reached my apartment, my legs felt hollow. As if the air itself had been carved out of me and I was moving through the world on muscle memory alone.The door clicked behind me, and the moment I stepped into the living room, I froze.Ryan was already there.Molly sat curled on the rug with her sketchbook, humming softly to herself. She looked up when she heard me, her eyes brightening, then dimming when she registered my face.She didn’t say anything. She just stood and walked to her room quietly, giving me and Ryan space.Smart girl.Ryan didn’t speak right away. He just rose slowly from the sofa, his expression tightening the second he saw me, as if every fracture inside me reflected onto his face.“Celeste,” he whispered.And that was all it took.My composure splintered. All the restraint I had been clenching since walking out of my mother’s house cracked open.My throat burned. My eyes stung. My hands shook. It was humiliating, how fast I fell apart, but

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Eight

Celeste’s POVI kept expecting the world to stop spinning after that night at my mother’s house. After the apology. After the truth finally tore itself free and left everything in ruins.But nothing stopped.The sun rose the next morning like it had no idea what my family had become. Emails kept flooding in. Orders kept piling up. Employees kept knocking on my door with samples, invoices, and questions.And I kept pretending I was fine.Ryan pretended too, except his version involved moving a little closer every time I inhaled sharply or blinked too long.He didn’t hover, not exactly. He just… existed in the doorway, in the hall, beside the elevator. Shoulders tense. Eyes sharper than usual. Watching for the moment I stalled or cracked.He never pushed. Not once. But his presence wrapped around me like a safety net I refused to fall into every time something derailing happened in my life.Because I feel like that’s why it was so hard for my mother to ever move one, she had depended too

Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Nine

Celeste’s POVI hesitated outside my mother’s door longer than I should have. The hallway felt too quiet, too still, like the world itself was bracing for her reaction.Three days of unanswered calls. Three days of imagining every possible version of her sitting alone in this apartment, shattered and numb.I finally knocked.The door opened after several seconds, and Claire stood there, looking… small.Not fragile, my mother was never fragile, but dimmed, as if someone had quietly drawn a curtain over her light. Her face was washed-out, her eyes swollen, her mouth pulled into a tight, polite line that wasn’t really a smile.“Hi, sweetheart,” she said softly.A single sentence, and my throat tightened. “Mom.”She stepped back for me to enter. The living room was spotless, except for the untouched cup of tea cooling on the table and a folded blanket on the couch. Signs she had been sitting here for hours, thinking, hurting, trying to breathe.I sat beside her, not too close, not too far.

Chapter Three Hundred and Thirty

Vanessa’s POVI was stirring my coffee, no, stabbing it, when Mrs. Collins casually dropped the information that ruined my entire morning.“Nicholas Grant,” she said, adjusting her glasses, “was actually the one whose vote shifted the entire jury in Celeste’s favor. Surprising, isn’t it?”Surprising?I nearly cracked the ceramic mug in my hand.I smiled, the tight, brittle kind that kept me from screaming, and excused myself before Mrs. Collins could notice the way my jaw twitched.Nicholas Grant.The man I had cultivated. The man I’d made sure saw me as the face of discipline, competence, refinement, everything Celeste Sinclair was not.And he voted for her?I walked out of the café on autopilot, heels tapping sharp and angry against the pavement as my mind spun through the last few months.Celeste, Celeste, Celeste.Her name had infested every conversation lately. Her breakaway success. Her exhibition. Her sudden artistic genius. Her “undeniable brilliance.” Her tragic little backsto

...

31 32 33 34 35

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP