Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 131 - Chapitre 140

Harrison’s POVI sat in the car in the parking lot and couldn’t drive because my hands were shaking too badly to grip the wheel properly.I’d almost told her. The words had been right there, already formed, already queued up:I need you to know something. There’s been a complication. Lyndsey is pregnant and the baby is mine.But Estelle’s face when I’d told her she was beautiful—her eyes filling, her jaw trembling—I couldn’t do it.I couldn’t watch that tenderness collapse into pain and know I was the one who caused it. Not again, not after everything.I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel and breathed.“Dad, why do you look sad?” Lucas asked from the backseat.“I’m not sad, buddy.” I lifted my head and forced a grin into the rearview mirror. “Just tired.”“You should sleep more,” Lucas advised seriously. “Dr Estelle said sleep is important for grown-ups too.”He kicked his feet happily against the seat.“Dad, can we have dinner with Dr Estelle and Chloe again? I want to sho

Estelle’s POVI got to the coffee shop thirty minutes early because sitting in my apartment waiting was making me pace circles into the carpet.I ordered a tea I didn’t touch, just wrapped both hands around the cup and watched the door.Harrison’s text had said Lucas’s treatment plan but something about it felt wrong—too urgent, too insistent, not the way a parent schedules a routine follow-up discussion.I kept thinking about the clinic. The way he’d looked at me across that exam room. The way his hand had almost reached for me before he’d dropped it.You look beautiful today.I’d been replaying those four words on a loop for days, lying in bed reaching for a body that wasn’t there, crying in the shower where Chloe couldn’t hear, staring at my phone and willing him to text again while simultaneously telling myself I needed space.Harrison walked through the door at exactly two o’clock and I stopped breathing.He scanned the room until he found me and the look on his face made my stoma

Karl’s POVDaisy opened the door before I’d even knocked, her face grim, and jerked her head toward the living room where Estelle sat on the sofa looking like someone had taken her apart and hadn’t bothered putting her back together.Red swollen eyes, shaking hands, her hair tangled and unwashed, clearly still wearing yesterday’s clothes.“She can’t really talk yet,” Daisy murmured near my ear as I came in. “I’ll fill you in.”I sat beside Estelle and she turned toward me. Her face just crumbled and she pressed herself against my shoulder and cried.I put my arm around her and held her while Daisy stood by the kitchen counter telling me everything. Harrison secretly testing Chloe’s DNA, the confrontation at the coffee shop, Estelle slapping him, the threats she’d made, the complete terror that he’d come after Chloe with lawyers.My arm tightened around Estelle involuntarily.I’d been hurt, properly hurt, when I found out she’d slept with Harrison again. I’d said things at her apartment

Harrison’s POVI called from six different numbers over two days. All blocked within minutes.I texted from each one before she caught on—please let me explain, please just talk to me, I need to see Chloe—and watched every message turn into a void she’d never read.On the second afternoon I drove to her apartment building and the doorman—a guy named Ray who’d always waved me through before—stepped into my path and shook his head apologetically.“Sorry, Mr Emerson. Dr. Estelle left instructions. I can’t let you up.”“Ray, please. Five minutes.”“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll lose my job.”I stood in the lobby for ten minutes staring at the elevator I wasn’t allowed to take, then walked back to my car and sat there in the parking garage until it got dark.Mother found me in the study at three in the morning.I’d been there since midnight, the desk covered in crumpled balls of paper—letters to Estelle I kept starting and throwing away because every version sounded either pathetic or accusatory.No

Harrison’s POVLucas screamed at two in the morning.I was out of bed and running before I was fully awake, my feet hitting the cold hallway floor, my hand finding his door in the dark.He was sitting up in bed, sobbing, his face wet, his eyes wild and unfocused.“Dr. Estelle is gone! Mama is gone!” he wailed when he saw me. “She’s gone forever and Chloe’s gone and everybody keeps leaving—”“Hey, hey, come here.” I sat on the edge of his bed, pulling him into my lap. He buried his face against my neck and cried so hard his whole body shook against mine. “Nobody’s gone, buddy. It’s just a bad dream.”“It’s not a dream,” he sobbed miserably. “It’s real. We can’t see them anymore and you won’t tell me why and Chloe says her mama cries every night—”“Everything’s going to be okay,” I murmured against his hair, and the lie tasted sour because I had no idea if it was true.It took forty minutes to get him back to sleep. I sat on the floor beside his bed with my hand on his back until his bre