Lahat ng Kabanata ng He Wants Me More After Divorce: Kabanata 281 - Kabanata 290

Harrison’s POV“Hi,” I said roughly.The visitor badge had a crease down the middle from being shoved into my jacket pocket and pulled back out too many times.I smoothed it against my thigh while I waited for the elevator, pressing the fold flat with my thumb.The cardstock had already set and the line wouldn’t go away.The laminated surface was cloudy where my thumb had worn it down over three days of this until the badge looked like something you’d find in a junk drawer.I caught my reflection in the elevator doors and glanced down at the same jacket I’d been wearing since the night I broke down Lyndsey’s door.I had the same shirt underneath, wrinkled to the point where the creases had creases and the collar was sitting wrong on one side.My hair looked like I’d been sleeping on it at odd angles, which I had—three nights in the family waiting room on a vinyl sofa designed for sitting, not sleeping, that squeaked every time I shifted position.The elevator opened and I stepped in.

Harrison’s POVI heard the words.For a second they sat in my head as separate objects, refusing to form a sentence.Then they assembled.My face must have done something then, because Estelle’s eyes changed at once. A flicker, a small adjustment, the pupils doing something and the muscles around her eyes doing something else.Then she was watching me the way you watch someone who’s been shot and hasn’t realized it yet.“What?” I managed.“He told a classmate at school,” Estelle said evenly. “That his dad had to go help someone else’s baby. He hasn’t been eating, Harrison. His lunch box has been coming home full every day. The only reason he’s getting any food at all is because Chloe’s been ripping her sandwich in half and forcing him to eat it.”My knees gave out. I just bent, as if standing had become a math problem my body couldn’t solve anymore, and I sat down. My back hit the wall behind me, the plaster cold through my shirt.My knees came up and my forearms landed on them. My he

Estelle’s POVI’d been stupid enough to think it could work.I’d been stupid enough to let him sleep in my bed and eat breakfast with my children and mouth thank you over their heads while they bickered about seahorses.I’d let myself believe in the crooked cake and the four juice glasses and the family dinner where nobody acknowledged the family they actually were, and I’d let that belief grow roots inside me, and now—A sob broke out of me.I doubled forward over the counter, my forehead almost touching the surface, and another one followed the first, and then a third. Then I couldn’t count them anymore because they were coming faster than I could breathe between them.I slid down. My hands lost the counter and found the cabinet doors and then the floor. I sat on the kitchen tile with my back against the lower cabinets and my knees drawn up.I pressed both hands over my face and I cried.I didn’t care about composure anymore. My hands shook against your face, my mouth open behind my

Estelle’s POVHarrison’s forehead was pressed into my shoulder.His hands were gripping my doorframe and his entire body was shaking against mine. I stood there holding the weight of him the way I’d held the weight of everything else for seven years, because there was nobody else to hold it.Putting it down had never been an option.My eyes burned. I’d thought I was done—I’d thought the kitchen floor had emptied me—but apparently there was more, because my eyes welled. The first tear spilled down my cheek and landed on the back of his neck where his collar gaped.“Come inside,” I whispered.He didn’t move.I reached past him and gripped his arm—the one holding the doorframe—and I pulled. He let go of the wood and let me pull him through the door.He stumbled on the threshold and I caught him by the front of his jacket, both hands fisting the lapels. I hauled him forward until we were both inside and the door could close behind us.I kicked it shut with my heel. The latch clicked.Harr

Harrison’s POVI don’t know who moved first.One second we were standing in the hallway holding each other and crying, and the next her mouth was on mine—or mine was on hers—and it didn’t matter who started it because it was happening and neither of us was stopping it.She tasted like salt. Her lips were swollen from crying and her face was wet and mine was wet and when I kissed her I could feel the tears between us, slick and warm, mixing together until I couldn’t tell whose were whose.“This is a terrible idea,” she mumbled against my mouth.“I know.”“We just said—”“I know.”She pulled back far enough to look at me. Her eyes were ruined—red, glassy, the lashes stuck together in dark clumps. She looked devastated and beautiful and I wanted her so badly my hands were shaking.“One more time,” she whispered raggedly. “That’s all.”I nodded. My throat was too tight to speak.She took my hand and led me down the hallway, past the children’s closed door where I could hear the faint soun