Semua Bab HIS SECRET DESIRE (MxM): Bab 131 - Bab 140

Christopher's POVThe divorce was finalised on a Wednesday morning.My lawyer sent the confirmation at 9:47 and I read it at my desk at Horizon Homes with a coffee going warm beside me and felt the particular quality of an ending that had been a long time coming, not sharp or painful but clean, the closing of something that should have been closed years ago so that both people involved could get on with actually living.Sophie and I had exchanged no words beyond what the legal process required, and that felt right. There was nothing left to say that would have added anything useful. The settlement had been fair, she had the penthouse and a financial arrangement that reflected the decade she had spent inside a marriage that had asked things of her she had never been properly compensated for, and I hoped she was well.I sent her solicitor a brief professional note and closed my laptop and looked out the window of the Horizon Homes office for a moment, at the grey morning and the street

Robin's POVI had not seen it coming.That was the thing that stayed with me even as it was happening, the fact that Christopher Hall was on one knee on the floor of our sitting room on a Friday evening with a ring box open in his hand, and I had not seen it coming, not even a little, and the particular shock of that sat alongside everything else I was feeling and made it larger somehow.I looked at him, properly, the way you looked at something you needed to take in completely before you could process it.He looked back at me with an expression I had not seen on him before, not in all the months of this version of us, something stripped entirely of composure, no management left in it, just him, uncertain and certain at the same time in the specific way you were when you had made a decision you were completely sure of and had absolutely no way of knowing if it would be received the way you needed it to be.He had said something. I had heard it and it had gone through me like something

Christopher's POV I had seen the story before Robin woke up. I had been at the kitchen table with my coffee when the first notification came through, and I had sat there for forty minutes reading through the coverage methodically, the way I had always approached things that required assessment rather than reaction, going through it systematically and without letting any individual piece land harder than necessary, taking in the shape of it, the volume, the spread across different kinds of outlets, the ratio of what was being said and by whom, before I put the phone face down on the table and sat with the full picture of it for a moment and then went to make Robin's coffee. The media attention was not a surprise and I had not allowed myself to be surprised by it. I had known it was coming from the moment we became publicly visible, which had been the moment I walked out of that boardroom and my father released his statement and the story had a shape the press could work with, and th

Robin's POVThe club was exactly the right kind of loud.Not the aggressive, shoulder-to-shoulder, no-space-to-breathe kind, but the kind with enough room to move and a sound system that had been set up by someone who actually understood music, the bass sitting at the frequency that moved through you rather than battered you, the lighting low and warm and shifting slowly enough that it felt atmospheric rather than disorienting.We had dressed without overthinking it, jeans and shirts, nothing that announced itself, and we walked the ten minutes into town with our hands loose at our sides, the night air cool off the water and the street quiet enough that our footsteps were audible. We arrived late enough that the club had settled into its full rhythm, the bar busy without being a crush, the small stage at the far end already occupied by a DJ working through a set that had the floor moving properly.Christopher got the first round while I found us a position near the back wall where we

Robin's POV I told Felix to go shower and he went without argument, crossing the room with the same unhurried ease he brought to everything, pulling the bathroom door closed behind him. The sound of the water running filled the quiet of the room. Christopher was sitting on the edge of the bed and I sat beside him, our shoulders touching, and we stayed like that for a moment in the particular quiet of two people who had just shared something unusual and were taking a beat to simply exist in the same space before the next thing. His hand found mine on the mattress. Nothing needed to be said and neither of us said anything. The bathroom door opened after a while and Felix came back out, a towel around his waist, his expression easy and unbothered, and he looked between us with the attentive patience of someone waiting to understand what the room required of him next. I looked at him for a moment and then at the floor in front of me. He understood without being told, dropping the t