Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 161 - Chapitre 170

Harrison’s POVThe business center lounge closed at ten. The lobby sofas earned me a polite but firm suggestion from hotel security that I either return to my room or leave the premises—something about liability, insurance, they were very sorry.I tried rebooking on my phone and the hotel was completely full. Conference weekend. Everything taken.I sat in my car in the parking garage for forty minutes and the steering wheel dug into my forehead and I admitted to myself that sleeping folded into the front seat when I had a perfectly good hotel room was idiotic.I stood outside my own door for a long time. The spare keycard sat in my hand—I’d kept it without thinking about it—and a thin strip of light showed under the door from the bathroom, left on the way people left bathroom lights on in unfamiliar places so they could find their way in the dark.She was in there. Probably asleep. Probably in my bed.I slid the card in as slowly as I could and eased the door open and stepped inside an

Estelle’s POVLyndsey shoved past me into the room before I could react, her shoulder connecting hard with mine, her pregnant belly leading, and she stopped dead three steps in.Harrison in the bed. The covers pulled back on both sides. Two pairs of shoes by the door. Two indents on the pillows.The sound she made wasn’t words—just a wounded noise from somewhere deep in her, guttural and terrible.She stood in the middle of the room with both hands pressed against her belly, staring at the bed, then at me, then at the bed again. Her mouth opened and closed. Then she started screaming.Harrison woke up, sat up sharply, looked at Lyndsey and then at me standing in the bathroom doorway. His eyes moved across the room—the shoes, the pillows, Lyndsey shaking in the middle of the carpet—and he said nothing.“You were IN HERE with her!” Lyndsey’s voice cracked on the last word. “The whole time—last night in the corridor you made me feel like—and you were just going to come up here and—ALWAYS

Harrison’s POVThe bar was nearly empty by eleven.A pianist in the corner was playing something slow I didn’t recognize. Two strangers at the far end were nursing drinks and not talking to each other. I was alone, whisky half-gone, my tie loose, my jacket over the back of the stool.Karl had left hours ago. Lyndsey had finally been walked to her room by Margaret after she’d spent twenty minutes telling my board members about the nursery she was planning—sage green, apparently, she’d decided—and I’d stood there smiling the smile that wasn’t a smile and waiting for it to be over.The day sat in my body and wouldn’t leave. Twelve hours of performing competence while Karl’s words from two weeks ago played underneath everything like a song I couldn’t get out of my head.Truths sitting right under your nose.And this morning—Estelle’s hand was on my chest, and I was in heaven…And then Lyndsey’s scream and Estelle stepping between us and defending her—defending Lyndsey—before walking out.

Estelle’s POVI didn’t sleep on the flight home.I sat in my window seat with my forehead against the cold plastic and took the conversation apart. Word by word. Syllable by syllable. The way I dismantled a case study when the diagnosis didn’t fit, looking for the thing I’d missed.The good part first. His honesty about Lyndsey—unprompted, unvarnished, costing him something visible with every sentence. The DNA test confession—I understand why you did it, I’d said, and I’d meant it, and the meaning of that still frightened me.Then he asked why I left. And I told him the truth. And his face changed.The disgust. The flat coldness in his eyes. The way he’d said goodnight and placed money on the bar and walked out without turning around.I told him the truth—I left because he destroyed our marriage—and he’d looked at me like I’d confessed to something unspeakable.I rolled my head against the seat and closed my eyes. There was a gap in my understanding. I could feel it.He’d asked a ques

Estelle’s POVI was already twelve minutes late when I shoved through the clinic doors, coffee sloshing over the rim of my travel mug and down my wrist, my white coat half-on and dragging off one shoulder.“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said breathlessly to Amy at reception, wiping my hand on my skirt. “Chloe spilled cereal everywhere and we had to change twice and then I couldn’t find my—it doesn’t matter. Am I behind?”“Only a bit,” Amy said cheerfully. “Your nine-fifteen rescheduled anyway.”“Oh thank God.” I yanked the coat the rest of the way on and speed-walked down the corridor, shoving my bag higher on my shoulder, already mentally sorting the patient files I needed to review before ten.I pushed my office door open and stopped.White lilies. A full bouquet of them, sitting in a glass vase on my desk, their petals open and heavy, their smell already filling the room.I didn’t move. I stood in the doorway and stared at them and the coffee mug in my hand tilted and I didn’t notice unt