All Chapters of He Wants Me More After Divorce: Chapter 321 - Chapter 330

Estelle’s POVMorning. The kind that starts with a crash.“THE EGGS ARE ON FIRE.”Chloe’s voice hit a register that should have shattered glass. I dropped the coffee pot and ran.Harrison was standing at the stove holding a spatula in his right hand—his only available hand, the left still weeks from being useful—and staring with bewilderment at a pan producing more smoke than a chemical plant.The eggs inside had passed through cooked, passed through burned, and arrived at a state that could only be described as punitive.“They’re not on fire,” Harrison said carefully.“There are flames, Harrison. Actual flames. On the eggs.”“That’s just the butter.”“The butter is on fire! Mama! Come look at this!”I was already there. I grabbed the pan handle with an oven mitt, yanked it off the burner, and dumped the contents into the sink.The eggs hit the basin and hissed violently. A tendril of smoke rose toward the ceiling.“Thank God,” Chloe breathed. “The crisis is over. Mama has fixed it!”

Harrison’s POVThe cinnamon rolls were twenty minutes into the oven, and the whole kitchen smelled of brown sugar and butter.I was at the table with my second coffee, scrolling through an email I did not want to answer, the phone in my right hand because my left wrist still couldn’t grip anything heavier than a mug. The cast had come off three weeks ago. The bones were fine. The rest of it was taking its time.Lucas was on the floor by the radiator, shoving a wooden dolphin and a wooden whale into the same plastic tub with a focus that suggested a lot rode on the outcome.Chloe was at the counter with a piece of cardboard flattened in front of her, drawing something in pencil so hard her hand was white at the knuckles.Estelle was at the sink rinsing cups, the tap low. She had her hair up with a pen through it.I watched the back of her shoulders for a second, the way they moved when she rinsed, and then I looked back at the phone.“The whale goes in the deep-sea bin, Luc,” Chloe sa

Harrison’s POVI was on my second coffee when I got to my mother’s house, and I had not shaved. Claire poured the third from the pot without asking, and put it down in front of me hard enough to slosh.“Sit,” she said.Lloyd-Thomas was at the kitchen table with a square of cloth spread out and a piece of basswood in one hand and a folded piece of sandpaper in the other. He was making a bird. He’d been making birds for months. He nodded at me when I came in. I nodded back.I sat. I did not drink the coffee.“Lloyd slipped on Saturday,” I said. “He told the kids his father drank at the King’s Arms on Jersey Street.”Lloyd put the sandpaper down on the cloth. He set the bird down next to it. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead for a second and held it there.“I didn’t realize I’d said it,” he said quietly.“I know.”“This is the third time,” Claire snapped, and started counting on her fingers. “The film. The wine. Now the pub. Three times in two months, Lloyd. Three.”“C

Harrison’s POVLucas had slept through.He was sitting up in the hospital bed at seven in the morning eating a triangle of toast with one bite taken out of it, looking at the wall like he had never seen a wall before.Chloe was in the chair beside the bed reading him facts off her tablet about the brain, because Chloe had clearly been up since five.“The frontal lobe is behind your forehead,” she said.“I can feel my forehead, Chloe.”“That doesn’t mean you can feel your frontal lobe.”“I feel it.”“You don’t.”“I do. It’s warm.”Estelle had gone home an hour ago to shower and grab clothes for all of us. I was in the chair by the window. I had not slept. I had stopped pretending to around four.The doctor came in at ten past eight with the tablet and a small stack of paper. She had the kind of tired around her eyes you got when you had been on for fourteen hours, but she smiled at Lucas and asked him about the toast.“It’s cold,” Lucas said.“I know. Hospital toast’s a known problem.

Estelle’s POVGiuseppe had recommended the osso buco twice by the time the entrees arrived, and Harrison had done the thing he did when he was trying not to make a scene out of not eating—he had cut his veal into increasingly smaller pieces and arranged them in a neat row along the edge of his plate.The wine hadn’t been touched either.At the next table a couple was arguing quietly about whether their dog had been sleeping enough.Somewhere above us a speaker was playing “Uptown Girl.”I set down my fork halfway through the lasagna.“This isn’t working.”Harrison looked up.“The dinner,” I said. “The dinner isn’t working.”“I know.”“Do you want to go home?”“We booked a sitter.”“Daisy’s family. She’s not a sitter!”He half-laughed.“Let’s go,” I said.He signaled Giuseppe. Giuseppe came over with his eyebrows already up, took in the full plates, and gave me a conspiratorial look that I did not correct.I let him assume we were fighting. He boxed our food with an offended tenderness