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Home / Romance / Cruel Love Back in His Hands / Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

All Chapters of Cruel Love Back in His Hands : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

148 Chapters

Chapter 122

George had found her through a colleague recommendation — someone who specialised in relationship trauma and had a straightforward, unhurried manner that made difficult things feel, if not easy, then at least possible to say out loud. Kristine had agreed immediately. She had wanted this for months and had not known how to begin it.The office was quiet. Books on shelves. A plant that looked genuinely cared for. Two chairs at a slight angle to each other, neither of them directly facing — a small structural choice that she appreciated. Not confrontational. Just open.Dr. Weiss began by asking them to describe, in their own words, what had brought them here.They talked for twenty minutes between them. Not interrupting each other — taking turns, filling in the gaps the other left. Five years apart, the false evidence, the reconnection, the campaign, the investigation, the trial. Dr. Weiss listened with the specific attention of someone not forming responses while you speak but actually

Chapter 123

Richard called her into his office and told her directly, without preamble, which was how he gave good news as well as bad — just the fact of it, then the details. Director of Creative Design. Effective first of the month. A small increase in the team she would oversee and a larger increase in the scope she would own.She said thank you.He said: you earned it twice over. Once before all of this and once during it.She thought that was probably the most Richard had ever said to her about any of it and she understood it as the full version.George's consulting expansion was quieter — three new hospital contracts, two of them outside Seattle, referrals from colleagues who had watched the vindication coverage and reached out. His caseload in the first month back had exceeded what it had been before the complaint. Not compensation, exactly. Just evidence that professional reputations, when grounded in actual competence, had a way of reasserting themselves once the noise cleared.They had

Chapter 124

She had stopped checking her phone after the Rachel Morrow voicemail. Not in a deliberate, managed way — she simply found that she wanted to be in the specific place she was in rather than managing the next thing, and she was surprised by how available that choice turned out to be once she made it.They swam in the morning. Rented bikes for an afternoon and went further than intended and ended up at a beach she hadn't known was there, smaller than the others, with a rocky headland to the left and the light going orange over the water. They locked the bikes and sat on the sand and she thought: this is the kind of thing I will remember. Not the verdicts or the depositions or the files. This.The light was going when George said: I have something I want to ask you.She looked at him.She felt her chest do the thing it did sometimes in quiet moments — a kind of alert, a leaning-forward feeling, the awareness of a question that might be arriving.He was looking at the water.He said: if we

Chapter 125

George had found it online. A rescue organisation that pulled dogs from overcrowded shelters across the Pacific Northwest, vetted them, fostered them, and matched them deliberately rather than just placing them fast. He had read the website three times before mentioning it and she had recognised this as his version of excitement — thorough preparation before committing.They went on a Saturday morning.The woman who ran the intake process was named Janet, practical and warm in the way of someone who had been doing this for years and had stopped performing cheerfulness about it because she didn't need to. She asked them questions — home size, lifestyle, hours away from the apartment, experience with dogs. She was not trying to disqualify them. She was trying to match correctly.She took them through.Three rooms. Dogs in various stages of their stay — some settled, some still finding their feet. She did not push. She let them walk and look and she watched what happened when they stoppe

Chapter 126

Not slowly and not fast. At the pace that time passes when nothing is trying to stop it.George's three hospital consulting contracts ran well. He had settled into the Chief Medical Consultant role at Caldwell with the same deliberate competence he brought to everything — learning the organisation properly before offering opinions, which Richard had observed with visible approval. By month four they had developed a working rhythm that felt less like a formal arrangement and more like two people who had decided to build something.Kristine's team expanded by two. The Henderson project closed to strong client feedback. She took on a hospital network rebrand that ran directly through George's consulting division, which produced three weeks of them being professionally in each other's orbit in a way that was occasionally complicated and mostly extremely efficient.Max developed opinions about the furniture arrangement. He preferred the couch angled toward the window, which settled that ar

Chapter 127

He knew the exact number because he had bought it on a Tuesday in September, the day after they had come home from Max's first vet appointment and stood in the apartment doorway laughing at the amount of mud a healthy golden retriever could generate on a single walk, and he had looked at her laughing in his doorway and thought: this. I want this permanently. I want to make it official and clear and documented.He had gone the following morning and found the ring in under an hour. He had not agonised over it. He had known, looking at the rings in the case, exactly which one, the way you know certain things when you stop thinking and just look. A simple setting. Nothing showy. Something she would wear every day without thinking about it and reach for without it ever feeling like a costume.He had put it in his coat pocket and carried it home.That was sixty-three days ago.The problem was not the ring. The ring was right. The problem was the moment.His first plan had been a restaurant.

Chapter 128

Not dramatically. Just — he was slightly somewhere else. Present in the physical sense, answering when spoken to, doing all the things he did, but with a quality to his attention that was fractionally off, the way a radio sounds when the signal is almost perfect but not quite.She did not say anything immediately.She had learned, across the months of the investigation, the difference between George being elsewhere because something was wrong and George being elsewhere because he was working something through. The first required intervention. The second required space and eventually he would surface with the thing he'd been sitting with and they would talk about it.She gave it three days.On Sunday evening she said: what's going on.He looked up from his book.She said: you've been somewhere else all week. I've been patient about it. Tell me what it is.He said: it's nothing. Work stress. The surgical wing project has some timeline issues and I've been thinking through the consultanc

Chapter 129

The university library where they had first met was a building he had not been back to in seven years — one of those places that exists very specifically in the past tense, vivid in memory and somehow surprising when encountered in its actual physical form. He had called the events coordinator twice to confirm. He had a photographer named James who had done three proposals in the building that year and knew the light in the reading room at four-thirty PM the way a painter knows a specific kind of afternoon. He had flowers being delivered at four. Candles already approved by the events office.He had the ring in his coat pocket.He had told Kristine he had a late afternoon meeting at the university campus about a potential academic medical consultancy. She had not questioned it. He had felt slightly sick about the small lie and had promised himself it was the last one.He left work at three.He got to the library at three forty-five.The main doors were locked.He stood in front of the

Chapter 130

Not because anything was wrong — she had been reading and the lamp had started to bother her eyes and she had turned it off and then not turned it back on because the light from the city through the window was enough and Max was on the floor beside her and the apartment was quiet and she had been thinking.She heard his key in the lock.She heard him come in and stop when he saw the room was dark.She said: I'm here.He found her by the window. He had flowers — she saw them against the light, a bunch of white ones, the kind she would have liked. He was still in his coat.He stood there for a moment.She said: how was the library.He said: closed. Water leak.She said: ah.He said: I had a photographer. I had candles approved by the events office. I had flowers, which you can see. I had the ring in my pocket, which you cannot see, but it has been in my pocket every day for sixty-three days.She looked at him.He sat down on the coffee table in front of her. Not beside her on the couch

Chapter 131

Lucy answered already awake, which meant she had been told. She said: finally, and she said it with the specific emphasis of someone who had been holding that word in for months and was extremely relieved to release it.Kristine said: how long have you known.Lucy said: since the library. He called me from the car. She paused. I told him not to wait for perfect.Kristine said: that was good advice.Lucy said: it usually is.They talked for twenty minutes. Lucy had opinions about engagement parties and timelines and venues that were fully formed and delivered without preamble. Kristine wrote down three things and told her to stop and call Daniel back before he thought she had abandoned him for a phone call.George called Richard.She could hear his side of the conversation from the kitchen. Brief, warm, Richard's voice audible through the phone as something measured and genuinely pleased. He said: I told Kristine once that I thought you were the right man. I don't say things like that

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