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Lahat ng Kabanata ng Divorced by my Billionaire Ex, Now He Wants Me Back! : Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

257 Kabanata

1

Stella. I wasn’t expecting to start my third wedding anniversary with my little brother calling me at the crack of dawn and announcing that I’m a month pregnant. But here we are.“Congratulations, sis! You’re pregnant for a month!” Josh blurted out like he was telling me I’d won the lottery. Which, I guess, in a way, I had.I blinked, squinting at the sunlight filtering through the blinds. “Josh, what the hell are you talking about?”“You’re pregnant. One month in. I ran the tests twice. Triple-checked your hormone levels. You’re very knocked up.”And that was Josh for you; future doctor, current lunatic, and always ten steps ahead of the people around him. He must have done it after I asked him to check on those strange symptoms last week. I thought I was just stressed. Maybe hormonal. Maybe even mildly insane. Turns out, I was pregnant.With Alex’s baby.I just sat there, stunned, clutching the phone, processing that my body had been hiding something so monumental from me. I touche

2

2Stella.I hadn’t slept.Not even for a second.Pregnancy was supposed to make you sleepy, right? I was supposed to be glowing, maybe a little nauseous, sure, but… this? This exhausted ache in my bones, the heaviness behind my eyes, the constant sting in my throat? This wasn’t pregnancy. This was heartbreak.I didn’t even want to go to the hospital when Josh called. But I picked up anyway, and he didn’t say “hi” before going into protective brother mode.“Your voice sounds off,” he said. “Come to the hospital.”“I’m fine,” I lied.“Stella.”That’s all he said. Just my name, but with that older-than-his-years seriousness that made me crumble.So I went.Hospitals smell like lemon cleaner and endings with it’s bright lights and thin walls. Josh met me at the door with his doctor face; gentle and firm at the same time. “Lie down,” he murmured. Cold gel, warm hand, the hum of the machine. His jaw clicked once. Twice. The third time, I knew.After he examined me, Josh’s jaw tightened. His

3

3Stella.I woke up to the sterile hum of fluorescent lights and the faint beeping of a heart monitor. The sheets smelled like bleach, and my mouth was dry enough to feel like sandpaper. Hospital ceilings were always the same; square tiles, perfectly dull, perfectly meaningless, but I stared at them anyway because the alternative was trying to figure out why my body felt so hollow.And then I felt it. Not pain exactly, but a dull ache in my lower abdomen that made me bolt upright before the room spun and I had to grip the rail of the bed like it might fly away.“Stella, slow down,” came Josh’s voice, soft and close. He was sitting by my side, his warm hands gently wrapped around my icy fingers like he was trying to hold me together.My eyes landed on him, and I noticed the shadows under his eyes, the exhaustion in his posture, like he’d been there for hours. Maybe he had.But he wasn’t who I was looking for.“Where’s Alex?” The question left my mouth before I could stop it.Josh didn’

4

4Alex.You’d think after years of surgeries, emergencies, and boardroom wars, I’d be immune to drama. But apparently, all it takes to shake me is one woman collapsing in a hallway.Stella.She dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, right in the middle of that chaos; Josh flailing, Sophie looking smug one second and shocked the next. I should’ve rushed to her side. I should’ve done a lot of things. Instead, I stood there, frozen, while everything around me spiraled.Sophie started crying.I mean, really crying. Hands covering her face, shoulders shaking, and that helpless, pitiful sob that women do when they want to be held, not when they’re actually hurt. I barely noticed. My eyes were still on the spot where Stella had fallen, the ghost of her still imprinting itself on my mind like a bad memory I couldn’t erase.“Alex, I didn’t mean to,” Sophie said, voice breaking. “It was an accident. I just… I was scared. She was screaming. Josh tried to hit me, and I panicked…”I blinked,

5

5Stella. Packing a life into boxes is supposed to be quick if you don’t have much left. Or so people say. But nobody tells you about the quiet, aching way time stretches, every minute thick with memories you don’t want but can’t escape. The sun was barely up when I began, washing the bedroom in watery gold, everything sharp and brittle with that cold, early light. My suitcase waited, open-mouthed and accusing, in the center of the room. I found myself staring at it the way you stare at a blank test you know you’re going to fail.I moved like I was underwater. Sweater, jeans, toothbrush, charger, all landing in neat little stacks that meant nothing and everything. I left most things behind; the fancy dresses I bought hoping to impress him at some Marwood party, the designer heels that always pinched, the jewelry Alex’s mother gave me that never felt like mine. I kept the essentials. A threadbare T-shirt that smelled like my mother. The book I’d read every time I was lonely, pages sof

6

6Alex. The first thing everyone tells you about divorce is that it comes with relief, as if someone finally cuts you loose from a bad anchor. They don’t tell you about the empty echo of footsteps on hardwood floors or the way silence starts to hum around you like an old fridge with a broken motor. It wasn’t freedom. It was hollow.For two weeks after Stella left, I didn’t set foot in the house. I holed up in a city hotel; penthouse, corner suite, view of everything but the parts of my life that mattered. I’d tell myself it was for convenience. For privacy. For work. Really, I couldn’t stand the idea of walking into that house and smelling her perfume, hearing her laughter replay in my head like an earworm, finding strands of her hair in places she hadn’t been in months. It was everywhere, her. In the scent of clean sheets, in the chipped mug she always left beside the sink, in the lingering trace of her favorite shampoo in the upstairs bathroom. Even the pillows were stubborn, refus

7

7Alex’s POV.The office was dark except for the glow of my desk lamp. My PA stood there, files pressed so tightly to his chest I half expected him to bruise. His eyes darted from the folder to me and back again, like he was weighing whether to hand me a loaded gun or an overdue utility bill.“Sir, there’s been a development. You’ll want to see this immediately.”I didn’t bother sitting. “What is it?”He set the file down in front of me. “We were preparing to transfer the alimony, as instructed. Routine, or so I thought. But Stella’s account bounced the payment. I tried the backup numbers and accounts, but… sir, she’s wiped everything. There’s no working contact, no active account. It’s like she’s…gone.”He waited for a reaction. I gave him none. My heart was beating hard in my chest but I held his gaze, expression flat. “So find her brother. Josh Harrington. He worked for us. There must be a record.”“We checked. He resigned the same week Stella left. No forwarding address. No job app

8

8Alex’s POVMy office sounded like a call center and a courtroom. Everyone was talking, no one was answering. I held the printed hospital note in one hand. Pregnant. Bed rest advised. I said it out loud so it would stop echoing in my head.“Who signed her discharge,” I asked. “Names. Times. I want a chain.”A senior nurse cleared her throat. “Josh handled her directly. She insisted on privacy.”“Who else knew?”Blank faces. A few no, sirs. A few I am not sure. Someone tried to mention policy. I cut them off. I was not interested in policy. I was interested in my wife carrying my child and walking out of a hospital without me knowing.I called Stella first. Straight to voicemail. I tried again. Same thing. I texted one word. Please. No dots. No reply.“Try her bank again,” I told my PA. “Try every contact we have on file.”He came back five minutes later with the same answer. Accounts closed. Email bounced. Number dead. He added that Josh’s records were clean and empty. No forwarding

9

9Stella.EIGHT MONTHS LATERWe had picked a city where no one knew our names and an apartment that smelled like new paint and borrowed courage. Josh installed the second lock himself because the locksmith was “too friendly with the hinges.” He said it as a joke; he didn’t smile.“New SIMs,” he said, sliding mine across the counter. “Use cash today. No food apps.”“Copy,” I said, even though I wanted pancakes that arrived with emojis.He made eggs and burned the bread on purpose so the fire alarm would scream. “Good,” he said, waving a dish towel. “Sensitive. If someone even breathes wrong, it tattles.”I laughed. It sounded like someone else’s laugh, but it worked.We had rules: curtains closed at night, shoes inside the door, phone in the bowl, don’t answer unknown numbers, trust your spine over your hope. Also: talk to the baby, even if it looks like you’re talking to a bowl of oats. The baby answered with small waves, polite but determined.By noon, the place looked like people li

10

10Stella.The triage nurse had a braid so neat it made me trust her. She listened to the baby, then to me. “Your vitals are steady. When the next contraction comes, think about blowing up a stubborn balloon.”“It is stubborn,” I said.“Then be more stubborn,” she said, like a blessing.We moved to a small delivery room with a window that framed one ladle of sky. Josh parked the bag by the door and tried to fold himself smaller. He failed. He is six feet of worry with a medical degree.“Pain scale?” he asked.“Three,” I said. “And your socks don’t match.”He looked down, horrified. “Sabotage.”The midwife arrived with hands that had delivered whole towns. She checked me, listening in that concentrated way people do when they’re solving a code. “How far along were you when your water broke?” she asked.“Just now-ish,” I said. “We timed for an hour. It kept flirting with five minutes.”She smiled. “It’s committing now.”Another contraction folded me. I breathed, jaw loose, shoulders dow

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