All Chapters of His Ex Mistress, His Enemy: Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Ten in the morning in Bali feels like six in the evening in my brain.I’m sinking into the villa’s living-room sofa, drowned in Zane’s oversized hoodie. The sleeves swallow my hands all the way to the fingers, and every time I move, the fabric slides with me, soft and slick, smelling far too much like Zane to qualify as neutral clothing.Up front, the glass door is half open. The blue ocean sits quiet beneath the cliff, the sun climbing slow, the breeze slipping in with salt and the faint scent of sambal drifting from the kitchen.I’m doing nothing. Phone in hand, a warm box of siomay on the table. My newest life discovery: steamed fish balls and tofu with thick peanut sauce, sambal, and a squeeze of tiny lime. The perfect child between an arepa and an empanada in some alternate form.I stab a piece with a plastic fork, drag it through the sauce, squeeze lime over it, and pop it into my mouth. Soft, rich, savory, spicy, tangy. My brain waves a white flag.“Fine,” I mumble to the box.

Our plates were nothing but bone evidence. Duck skin that had once felt like armor lay scattered as crisp crumbs across the wooden table. The matah sambal had bled into a bruise of green-purple on the surface, a fingerprint that refused to fade. My orange ice had surrendered into cold water, two lonely cubes melting with slow resignation.Winona wiped her mouth with a tissue, then studied the rice fields behind me as if deciding whether this could pass for a getaway spot after committing financial fraud.I reached for my water, took a swallow, felt the sambal lingering along the edges of my tongue. Outside the shack, wind combed through young rice, insects kept up their endless chatter. When my life wasn’t on fire, I could almost believe the world truly worked this way: eat. fill up. go home.Winona slid her plate aside. The tip of her nail tapped the table once. Not loud. Just enough to change the tempo.“Erick.”His name hit the surface between us like a dropped spoon.I didn’t lift

Zane’s plate held nothing but slick duck bones and a smear of chili that looked like a war map. He leaned back as if the white table were a boardroom instead of a villa terrace facing the ocean. He wiped the corner of his mouth once with a tissue. He’s calm, far too collected for someone who’d just promised to make a man regret owning fingers.I pushed up from my chair. Bali’s heat clung to my skin like a stranger with boundary issues. The hoodie I’d worn earlier felt like the worst decision of the day, so I yanked it over my head; my hair snagged, then slipped free in one rough pull.The sticky air bit down right away. My T-shirt clung to my back. I fanned myself with the hoodie and let out a short huff. Then another. Like a busted engine I still hadn’t taken to the shop.He lifted a brow.“Don’t start,” I warned while wiping sweat from my neck. “I can feel my pores forming political opinions.”He rose, plate in one hand. His sleeves stayed rolled, veins visible along his wrist, his

Four in the afternoon, and the AC had already surrendered to the Bali sun. I blinked up at the wooden ceiling, waves slipping through the balcony door. The thin blanket had slid to my waist. My neck felt tacky, even though the room stayed cold enough to make normal people reach for a jacket.Zane sat in the chair by the window, phone in one hand, laptop open on the low table in front of the sofa.“How many centuries was I out?” My voice came out rough, my throat sand-dry.He glanced over. “Two hours. You snored a little.”I squinted at him. “Bullshit.”“Highly entertaining.” His thumb tapped the side of his phone once before he powered it off. “Ash will be devastated you missed his morning chatter.”That name flicked something in my chest. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand; the screen lit up: 4:02 p.m.“If it’s four here…” My lips moved as I counted. “Italy minus seven. So nine in the morning. He just woke up.”“Unless my dad dragged him into the chicken coop,” Zane muttered. A m

Sand clung to my soles like it had its own agenda.Zane kept drifting too close, not normal-people close, but the kind of close reserved for a man who treated personal space like an urban legend. His hand kept finding my waist every few steps, then my lower back, then a notch lower, like he was checking if I still existed.I let him. That was the strangest part of this whole trip: my body already recognized his patterns, the way bad habits sometimes turned into skincare routines.“I’m starting to think you break out if you go three seconds without touching me,” I muttered, kicking at the foam.He dipped in, his mouth brushing my cheekbone. Warm, salty, infuriating, my pulse decided to do a salsa routine.“If I’m allergic, you’re my antihistamine.”“Ew.” I sighed like I needed divine intervention.A quiet laugh drifted out of him.We stumbled onto a calmer stretch of beach. Finer sand, rocks pushed back, no kids screaming for ice cream. The resort sat in the distance, all white villas