Lahat ng Kabanata ng He Wants Me More After Divorce: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Estelle’s POVThe peonies hit me first—not the sight of them but the smell, that thick bruised sweetness that always made me think of my grandmother’s garden.Peonies and garden roses in cream and wine red, spilling from low centrepieces on every table, the whole room glowing under a canopy of fairy lights that someone had strung in exactly the criss-cross pattern I’d once described to Harrison on a night years ago.Karl’s hand pressed against my lower back.“Are you okay?” he asked carefully, dipping his head toward my ear.“Fine,” I said brightly, too brightly, and swallowed against the sting building behind my eyes. “Just…it’s beautiful.”Daisy and Levent came up beside us, and Levent loosened his tie and gave a long appreciative whistle.“This is some party,” he said admiringly. “Your business partner went all out. What’s the occasion?”“Company milestone,” Karl said flatly, and I nodded and sipped my champagne so I wouldn’t have to elaborate, because how could I explain what this

Estelle’s POVChloe sat between me and Daisy in the taxi, hiccupping softly, her face pressed against my arm. Daisy reached across Chloe’s lap and found my hand and squeezed. I squeezed her hand back but I couldn’t look at her.None of us spoke.The driver adjusted his grip on the wheel and turned the radio up just enough to fill the silence with something that wasn’t crying.My phone vibrated in my bag. Then again. Then again, a persistent angry pulse I could feel through the leather, but I didn’t reach for it.I carried Chloe inside—she was heavy and limp against my shoulder, completely wrung out—and got the door open one-handed and kicked off my heels in the hallway.“I don’t understand what happened,” Chloe mumbled into my neck as I carried her toward her room. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut, her nose crusted, her purple dress damp with tears and snot.“I know, sweetheart.” I laid her on the bed and sat beside her, brushing the hair from her forehead. “It’s grown-up stuff. Compl

Estelle’s POVI woke to the gritty pull of dried mascara against my eyelids, and for about three seconds I didn’t remember any of it.Then it came back. The photos. Karl’s face. Chloe is crying. The whole room staring.I groaned and dragged the pillow over my head and pressed it down hard enough to muffle the sound of my own breathing, and I stayed like that until small footsteps padded down the hallway and stopped in my doorway.“Mummy?”I sat up too fast, blinking, shoving the pillow aside and running my fingers under my eyes where the mascara had smeared. “Good morning, baby.”Chloe climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged facing me, her head tilted, her eyes moving over my face the way she did when she was trying to figure something out.“You look sad,” she announced quietly.“I’m okay.”“You’re not okay,” she countered, picking at a loose thread on the duvet. “You were crying last night. I heard you through the wall.”I pulled her into my lap and pressed my nose against the top o

Karl’s POV“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Estelle whispered brokenly.“Would it have mattered?”The silence that followed answered for both of us.“Even when Harrison destroyed you,” I said quietly. “Divorced you over lies—I still loved you. When you came back with Chloe, alone and hurting, I thought maybe…finally…”I couldn’t finish. I turned away from her and stared at the wall and breathed until I could speak again.“I’ve been so selfish,” Estelle croaked behind me. “So blind and selfish and cruel.”“Yes,” I agreed without turning around. “You have.”I heard her inhale sharply.“I used you,” she went on, her voice wrecked. “Let you help me, let you be part of Chloe’s life, knowing I’d never—”She couldn’t say it, so I said it for her. “Knowing you’d never love me back.”The quiet after that lasted a long time.“The marriage was fake anyway,” I said finally, turning around. “We both knew that.”“It was supposed to keep Harrison away,” Estelle murmured. “To protect Chloe.”“Did it wor

Harrison’s POVI sat in the car for a long time.The folder from the investigator lay on the passenger seat, the cream-coloured cover slightly bent from where I’d gripped it too hard, and I stared at it without seeing it because the only thing in my head was one sentence, looping over and over.She’s not married to Karl.I put my head in my hands and pressed my palms against my closed eyes until I saw spots, and I breathed, and I let it hit me properly.She’s not his. She was never his.Every time I’d watched Karl’s arm slide around her waist, every time I’d heard her call him her husband, every time I’d lain awake imagining them together in the same bed—none of it was real.The guilt I’d carried for sleeping with another man’s wife, the jealousy that had been rotting through me for months, the sick twisting feeling every time Karl touched her—all of it built on a lie.I dropped my hands and laughed, a ragged breathless sound that surprised me, and leaned back against the headrest.She