All Chapters of DON’T STOP: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

120 Chapters

Back in his heart 111

DaisyThe house was quiet in a way it hadn’t been in a long time.I sat across from him with my legs tucked under me, a mug warming both my hands, watching him take a slow sip of his tea. He looked different in the quiet of my sitting room. Smaller somehow. Not physically — Norman had never been small — but something about him without the boardroom and the suit and the armor of all of it made him look like what he actually was underneath everything.Just a person carrying something very heavy.I looked down at my mug.“Why did you even enter my house like that?” I asked softly. No edge in it. Just a question.He looked up at me briefly, then dropped his eyes back to his tea. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I was calling for you, and you weren’t answering the door.” A pause. “I heard screaming and I got scared.”Something loosened in my chest slightly. I pressed my lips together to stop the small smile.“I was in the bathroom,” I said. “Singing. I couldn’t hear anything.”He nodded once and

Back in his Heart 112

Norman“Don’t be too surprised, Norman.”Her voice was calm. Almost amused. The kind of calm that took effort to produce, and she was producing it very well.“When I left the event last night, I came back to check on you,” she continued. “I couldn’t find you anywhere inside, so I went to the parking structure.” A pause. “That was when I saw you. In your car. With her. Your ex wife.”The room was very quiet.I didn’t look at Daisy. I couldn’t. I stared at a fixed point on the wall and kept my face as still as I could manage and said absolutely nothing.“I can also tell that you still love her,” Evelyn said. No accusation in it. Just a statement, delivered plainly, like something she had already made her peace with before picking up the phone. “So do tell me the truth. Are you with her right now?”I exhaled slowly.“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”“Okay.” Another pause, shorter this time. “I can’t force you to have feelings for me, Norman. I see that you won’t be able to leave that woman behind

Back in his Heart 113

DaisyI sat with it for a long moment.All of it. The doctor’s appointment. The switched-off phone. The cancer he had carried alone through our entire marriage, through my pregnancy, through Treasure’s birth — smiling at me every morning, holding my hand, and being everything I needed while quietly falling apart inside.He had been dying, and I hadn’t known.He had missed my calls because he was in a hospital trying to find a way to stay alive for us.Three years. Three years I had hated him for something that was never what I thought it was. Three years of building walls and sharpening edges and telling myself that Norman White had simply chosen to not be there, that he hadn’t cared enough, that I had meant so little to him that he couldn’t even answer a phone.And all along he had been terrified of dying in front of me.My chest ached with something that didn’t have a clean name — grief and relief and guilt and love all pressed together into something almost unbearable.I wiped my fa

Back in his Heart 114

NormanShe smirked at me, that dangerous little curve of her lips that always meant trouble.“I asked if you wanna have—”Her words died the second I slapped my hand over her mouth.My heart slammed against my ribs. The room suddenly felt too small, too hot. Her eyes widened slightly above my palm, but instead of pulling away, she wrapped her fingers around my wrist and held my hand right there — pressed firmly over her soft lips.Fuck.The sight hit me like a punch. Half her face covered by my hand, those pretty eyes staring up at me, dark and hungry. She looked like she wanted to be used. Like she wanted me to ruin her. My cock twitched hard in my pants, already throbbing, already leaking.I swallowed thickly. My thoughts were turning nasty — filthy images flashing through my head of her on her knees, mouth full, eyes watering while I fucked her throat.Slowly, I dragged my hand down, letting my thumb brush over her bottom lip as I pulled away.She didn’t say anything. Just watched

Back in his Heart 115

NormanA month later…I had woken up next to Daisy Wright every morning for a month, and it still caught me slightly off guard each time — the way she looked before she was fully awake, hair everywhere, face soft and unguarded, nothing like the woman the rest of the world got to see. I had missed this version of her more than I had allowed myself to admit for three years.I watched her for exactly three seconds before she opened one eye and looked at me.“Stop staring,” she muttered.“I’m not staring.”“You’re always staring.” She pushed herself up and reached for her phone on the nightstand. “Come on. We’ll be late.”We brushed our teeth side by side at the double sink, which had been my favorite thing about mornings for four weeks running. She had a system — face wash first, then brushing, then moisturizer in a specific order that she followed with the same precision she brought to quarterly reviews. I had learned not to disrupt the system.This morning I disrupted the system.I rea

Back in his Heart 116

DaisyI noticed it in the small things first.The way he paused sometimes in the middle of sentences like he had lost the thread of something. The way he reached for his temple when he thought I wasn’t looking. The way he smiled just a half second too quickly whenever I asked if he was okay, like the smile was something he kept ready and waiting specifically for that question.I knew that smile. I had worn it myself for three years.Something was wrong.I tried to ask him directly twice. Both times he looked at me with that warm, steady expression and said he was fine and changed the subject so smoothly that I almost believed him. Almost. But I knew Norman. I knew the difference between fine and performing fine, and what I was watching every day was a performance.The knowing sat in my chest like something cold.I stopped sleeping well. I would lie in the dark beside him and listen to him breathe and run through every possibility in my head and arrive at the same place each time — a p

Back in his Heart 117

Daisy“Your brother is good,” he said.“Don’t tell him that,” I said. “He’ll be unbearable.”Norman smiled.I reached over and took his hand.He turned it over and laced his fingers through mine, and we sat like that while Michael ran a board meeting on the other side of the glass wall like he had been doing it his whole life.***That Tuesday morning was bright and unhurried.I had canceled everything the night before — my meetings, my calls, my entire day — and hadn’t thought twice about it. We had nowhere to be and nothing to prove, and the whole morning stretched out ahead of us like something rare.The hospital corridors were familiar to me now in the way that places become familiar when you spend enough time in them — the particular smell of the reception area, the way the light fell through the east wing windows in the morning, and which nurse worked which floor on which day. I knew all of it. I had learned all of it without meaning to.I pushed his wheelchair through the main

Back in his Heart 118

DaisyI woke up gasping.It was a nightmare. A big, bad one!The room was dark and still and exactly as it had always been, and for a long, terrible second I couldn’t separate what was real from what wasn’t. My heart was slamming against my ribs. My face was wet. My hands were shaking against the sheets.I sat up.The other side of the bed was empty.Of course it was empty. He had left. After everything, after the talking and the crying and the things we had finally said out loud to each other and then the sex that followed, he had gotten dressed quietly and told me he had feelings for me.And I’d told him we shouldn’t go there.And then he had gone.I reached for my phone with hands that wouldn’t fully steady themselves and found his name and called.It rang twice.“Daisy?” His voice came through immediately, low and alert, like he hadn’t been fully asleep. “What’s—”“Come over.” My voice broke completely on the second word. “Please. Please just come.”A sharp silence. “Are you cryin

Back in his Heart 119

DaisyIt was one of those perfect lazy holiday Saturdays — cool, cloudy, and raining steadily outside. The kind of day where the whole world felt soft and muffled. Norman and I were curled up on the big sectional couch in the living room, wrapped in a thick blanket. The lights were dimmed low. A romantic comedy played on the TV, but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore.A big bowl of popcorn sat between us. Every now and then one of us would reach for a handful, our fingers brushing. Each little touch sent a quiet spark through me.Norman shifted closer, his arm sliding around my shoulders. I leaned into his side, resting my head on his chest. His heartbeat was steady and warm beneath my ear. The rain pattered gently against the windows, creating a soothing rhythm that made everything feel safe and intimate.“You know,” he murmured, his voice low and soft, “I could stay like this forever. Just you, me, the rain, and bad movies.”I smiled, tilting my head up to look at him. “Even t

Back in his Heart 120

DaisyWe must have drifted off after that beautiful, slow lovemaking. The rain was still falling softly outside when I woke up later that evening. The room was dim, lit only by the grey twilight filtering through the curtains. Norman was still asleep beside me, lying on his back with one arm draped loosely over my waist. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, his face relaxed and peaceful in sleep.I smiled softly, my heart swelling with warmth. Leaning in, I pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, slow and tender. He didn’t stir, just let out a quiet sigh in his sleep. I lingered there for a moment, brushing my thumb over his cheek, before carefully slipping out of bed.My body felt deliciously sore in the best way. I wanted to make us dinner, something warm and comforting to match the rainy evening, but first I needed to freshen up. I padded quietly to the bathroom and turned on the shower. The water heated quickly, filling the room with steam. I stepped under the spray, letting the

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