Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 151 - Chapitre 160

Harrison’s POVI opened the guest room door looking for Lucas and stopped dead.Lyndsey’s clothes hung in the closet—dresses, blouses, maternity wear on padded hangers, neatly arranged by color.Her toiletries covered the bathroom counter, creams and lotions and vitamins in neat rows. The furniture had been rearranged—the bed pushed against the far wall, a reading chair by the window, her throw pillows on the duvet, her bloody scented candles on the nightstand.She’d moved in. Fully, permanently, without asking, without telling me, without a single word of discussion.I found Mother in the sitting room reading the Sunday paper.“What the fuck is happening?” I demanded from the doorway.Mother turned a page calmly. “You’ll need to be more specific.”“Lyndsey’s things are in the guest room. All of them. Her entire wardrobe, her furniture rearranged, her…she’s moved in, Mother. When did this happen?”“Yesterday afternoon, while you were at the office,” Mother replied smoothly, not lookin

Harrison’s POVThe apartment was big enough for the two of us and quiet enough that I could hear Lucas laughing from every room—a sound I’d almost forgotten existed.He was different here. He ate breakfast without being coaxed, played with his Lego for hours on the living room floor, fell asleep at night without screaming himself awake.He told me one evening, cross-legged on the sofa eating fish fingers, that the new place felt cosy and safe.“It’s just us,” he said contentedly, dragging a fish finger through ketchup. “Nobody fighting all the time.”I hadn’t realised how much the tension with Lyndsey and Mother had been poisoning him until it stopped.I’d tried to shield him from it—kept arguments behind closed doors, lowered my voice when he was nearby—but children absorbed everything, every slammed cupboard and tight-lipped silence and overheard accusation, and he’d been drowning in it without me noticing.Claire called daily. I let every call go to voicemail. She started showing up

Harrison’s POVLucas talked the entire drive home.He talked about the swings and the jungle gym and the snacks Estelle had packed and the way Chloe could hang upside down from the monkey bars longer than anyone he’d ever seen.He talked about the picture he was going to draw when they got back, and he talked about whether Chloe’s hair had gotten longer or if it just looked different because of the ponytail.I drove and listened and kept both hands on the wheel because if I let go I’d have to do something with them and I didn’t trust what that would be.He kicked his shoes off at the front door. One hit the wall, one landed on top of the other.He went straight to the fridge and stood there with the door open for thirty seconds before grabbing a yoghurt and a cheese stick and carrying both to the living room floor, where he sprawled on his stomach and pulled his sketchbook out from under the coffee table.I leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched him draw.He was humming. Actual

Karl’s POVI got to the office at six-forty-five, before the cleaners had even finished, and sat at my desk in the half-dark watching the sky lighten through the window.I’d slept maybe three hours. The whiskey from last night sat sour in my stomach and behind my eyes, and the guilt about Lucas—always the guilt about Lucas—pressed down on me the way it did every morning.I’d learned to carry it but never learned to put down.I opened my laptop and a news alert filled the screen.Harrison’s company announced as headline sponsor for the MedTech Innovation Conference, complete with a photograph of him at some recent industry event, clean-shaven and composed and confident.My jaw locked. I closed the laptop harder than necessary and shoved my chair back and stood up and went to the window and looked at nothing.The man who had everything. The man who kept stumbling into more—Estelle’s love, Chloe’s adoration, Lucas’s devotion, a new baby on the way, and now his company’s name plastered acr

Harrison’s POVLyndsey’s fingers were on my sleeve again.She’d been doing it all evening—every time I shifted my weight or angled my body toward the door, her hand would land on my arm or my wrist or the fabric of my jacket, light and insistent, pulling me back into whatever conversation she’d started with whoever was closest.“Harrison and I have been looking at nurseries,” she told a woman from a pharmaceutical company, her other hand resting on her bump. “Haven’t we, Harrison?”“No,” I said shortly.“Well, I’ve been looking,” Lyndsey corrected brightly, squeezing my arm. “He’s just so busy. You know how men are.”The woman laughed politely and I stood there and let it happen because the alternative was yanking my arm free in front of two hundred people, and I’d already given this crowd enough material for one year.She kept saying we. We’re expecting. We’re so excited. We haven’t decided on names yet. Every we landed on me and I swallowed it and smiled the smile that wasn’t a smile