All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Discarded Bride : Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

Bella POVThe guests were gone by nine, the evening had been long and warm, dinner stretched past sunset, the garden lights doing exactly what I'd hoped, Tom falling asleep against Diana's shoulder sometime around eight with the ring pillow still clutched to his chest. Maya had taken him up as Diana had stayed long enough to help stack chairs and then said goodnight.By nine it was just us, in the quiet of the house, with the lights still strung in the garden and the last of the wine on the kitchen counter and nothing left between us and the fact that we were, actually and finally, alone.Caleb was in the kitchen when I came back downstairs from checking on Tom. He'd taken off his jacket and loosened his tie and was leaning against the counter with a glass of water, and he looked up when he heard me on the stairs, and something in the way he looked at me — the same way he'd looked at me when I'd walked down the garden path, unhurried and complete — made me stop on the bottom step."He

Bella POVI woke up at six and lay still for a moment, waiting. The nausea arrived on schedule low and unhelpful, sitting somewhere between my stomach and my throat, the same way it had arrived every morning for the past few weeks. I breathed through it the way I'd been breathing through it, and after a few minutes it retreated enough to be manageable.Caleb was still asleep, one arm across my waist, his breathing slow and even. I looked at his face in the early light — the particular quiet of him asleep, and felt the warmth of the morning and decided that nausea was not going to be the thing I focused on today.I got up carefully and went to make tea.By nine we were on the beach.It was the kind of morning that felt designed — water so clear you could see the bottom twenty feet out, the heat already building but not yet unreasonable, the beach entirely ours in every direction. Caleb had brought the good towels and a bag with water and fruit and a book he hadn't opened in days becau

Caleb POVI noticed the wine first. Bella would pick up her glass, hold it, set it back down. Sometimes she'd take a sip and sometimes she wouldn't, but either way the glass ended the evening mostly full. She ordered sparkling water at dinner which was so unlike her.The mornings were the other thing. She was always up before me, which wasn't unusual — Bella had always woken early, it was one of her factory settings. But she was quieter in that first hour than she'd been even two weeks ago, moving through the kitchen in a drowsy manner.On day five I asked if she was sleeping well."Fine," she'd saidI knew better than to push. Bella came to things when she was ready and not a moment before, and pushing her toward something she hadn't yet decided to look at directly was the fastest way to make her put a wall up. So I watched and waited.Day seven started the way most days had started — me waking to an empty space beside me, following the smell of tea to the terrace, finding Bella alre

Bella POVThe penthouse smelled like Tom's shampoo and someone had been baking, which meant Maya had been here, and I stood in the entry hall for a moment with my bag at my feet and just breathed it in.Two weeks ago, it had been two weeks of sea air, constant sex, and endless talking. In that short time, I got to know more about Caleb than I had in our entire previous life together.The moment we stepped back into the apartment, the familiar smell of home hit me. It felt real—equally worth wanting.Caleb came in behind me, set the bags down, and went still. “Maya,” he said."Has to be," I said.Tom came running from the kitchen and launched himself at me. I caught him as his arms wrapped around my neck and legs around my waist."You were gone forever," he said into my shoulder."Fourteen days," I said."That's forever.""Did you miss me?"He pulled back, grey eyes solemn like his father's. "Every day. Maya let me have ice cream twice. I told her you wouldn't mind.""Did she say I wou

Bella POVI pressed my face into his shoulder and felt the fear and the warmth and the strangeness of it all exist at once, which I was learning was how everything real felt.Tom's chair scraped back, his small footsteps. Then his arms around both our legs, his face tipped up between us with the grey eyes and the gap-toothed grin. "Are we hugging?" he asked. "I want to hug you."Caleb let out a breath of laughter and pulled back enough to reach down and pick Tom up, settling him between us, and Tom looked at both of us with the satisfaction of someone who had correctly identified the situation and inserted himself appropriately.He stayed like that for approximately a few seconds and then leaned back and looked between us."Is it better than a birthday?" he asked.Caleb considered this seriously. "Yes."Tom's eyes widened slightly. "Better than the dinosaur museum?""Much better," I said.He absorbed this. "Better than the submarine we're getting?""We're not getting a submarine," I s