All Chapters of His Wife On Paper : Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

Eliora's POV "He didn't come in."I said it to the ceiling first. Just to hear how it sounded out loud. It sounded worse out loud than it had in my head which was not surprising but was still something.I had been lying in the same position since I heard the front door. On my side, facing the wall, the duvet pulled up to my shoulder. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs I closed my eyes and evened out my breathing and waited. I had felt him at the door, the specific weight of someone standing still in a doorway, present but not entering, close but not crossing. I had waited for the floorboard just inside the door that always creaked when you stepped on it. The one we both knew about and both stepped around out of habit.It didn't creak.Then I heard the door close.Soft. Careful. The way he did everything.And then his footsteps going back down the stairs and then nothing and I had lain there in the dark with my eyes open for a long time after that.I picked up my phone.I pu

Eliora's POV "So," Dr. Stella said, crossing one leg over the other and settling back in her chair like she had all the time in the world. "What brings you here?"I looked around the office. It was warmer than I expected. Plants on the windowsill. A small lamp in the corner doing more work than the overhead light. The kind of room designed to make you feel like you could say things in it. I was not sure it was working."My best friend suggested it," I said."And do you usually do what your best friend suggests?""Not always," I said. "But she has a good track record."Dr. Stella smiled. She was in her forties, I thought, with the kind of face that did not give much away but was not unkind either. She had a notepad on her knee that she had not written anything in yet. "What does she think you need help with?"I looked at my hands in my lap and said nothing.Dr. Stella moved in her chair, making me look at her “Take your time dear.” She smiled.I breathed out, "She thinks I carry thing

Kian's POV "I'm not tired," Eliora said, and then yawned so completely that her whole face was involved in it."I can see that," I said.She pulled the throw blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around herself without taking her eyes off the television. The documentary had been Ezra's choice originally, something about deep sea creatures that he had watched approximately forty minutes of before falling asleep himself, declaring it boring right before his eyes closed, which was very Ezra. Neither of us had changed it. The narrator's voice was calm and low and the footage was all dark water and strange glowing things moving through it and it was actually, quietly, the most peaceful thing I had watched in days.Eliora tucked her feet under her and leaned slightly against the arm of the sofa. Not against me. We had not been against each other on this sofa since before the fight. But slightly less far away than she had been all week.I noticed. I did not comment on it."That

Eliora's POV "She's here." Kian was at the window, his voice carefully neutral in the way it got when he was trying not to influence my reaction either way.I looked up from the kitchen counter where I had been reorganising things that did not need reorganising for the past twenty minutes. "I heard the gate."He turned to look at me. "You okay?""I said she could come." I put the last mug back in the wrong place and left it there. "I'm fine."He nodded and left it alone. I appreciated it even when it made me feel like I was being handled carefully, which I was, which was probably necessary.The doorbell rang.Ezra came from nowhere and launched himself toward the front door with the focused energy of someone who had been waiting all morning. "Grandma Lydia!" he shouted at the door before it was open, as though she needed advance warning of her own arrival.How did he love her more than me?"Ezra." I followed him. "Let me open it."He stepped back reluctantly, I opened the door.Lyd

Eliora's POV "Kian!"He appeared in the bathroom doorway in about fifteen seconds which meant he had been close enough to hear the specific tone of his name and had moved immediately. He was still in his t-shirt from sleeping, hair not yet sorted, one sock on and one inexplicably not, and he looked at me standing at the mirror with his face doing the rapid assessment it always did when he was determining whether something was wrong.Nothing was wrong.I turned sideways.He looked at the mirror. At my reflection. At the small unmistakable curve that had not been there last week, or had been there and had not yet been ready to announce itself, but was announcing itself now, clearly, in the morning light coming through the bathroom window.He crossed the room.Both hands came up to either side of my face, gentle, tilting it toward his, and he pressed his lips to my forehead and held them there for a moment. Then he stepped back just enough to look at my stomach. Then back at my face."