All Chapters of HIS SECRET DESIRE (MxM): Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Christopher's POVI sat in my car outside my parents' house for a long time before I started the engine.The night was quiet around me, the kind of quiet that only existed away from the city, nothing pressing against it, nothing filling the space. I could still see the lights of the house through the windscreen, warm in every window, like nothing inside had changed at all, like the conversation I'd just walked out of had simply been absorbed into the walls and the furniture and the long history of things this family managed by not talking about them.I kept thinking about my mother's face. Not my father's, I'd had enough experience with my father's expressions to know how to put distance between myself and them, but my mother standing in the doorway with her arms folded and her eyes full, saying I love you in that broken voice that meant she meant it and also couldn't see past her own fear to do anything useful with it.I sat with that for a while. Let it hurt the way it needed to.Th

Robin's POVHe knew.I could see it in his face the moment I said those words, the quiet dread settling in behind his eyes, the way his jaw tightened slightly before he could stop it. He knew before I said another word and I watched him decide to fight it anyway.Don't, he said.I haven't said anything yet, I said quietly.You don't have to. I know where this is going Robin and I need you to not go there.I looked at him across the small table, the low restaurant noise around us, the ordinary evening carrying on at every other table while ours felt like the edge of something.Let me say it, I said. Please just let me say it.He looked at me and his expression was something I hadn't seen from him before, raw in a way Christopher Hall almost never let himself be in front of anyone, and I had to hold myself very still to keep going.I've been lied to, I said. Before you, before any of this, I was with someone who looked me in the eye every single day and lied. Who made me feel chosen and

Sophie POVThe apartment was quiet when I woke up that morning, the particular quiet of a space where two people were living separate lives under the same roof and both of them knew it.Christopher had come home late the night before. I'd heard the front door, heard him move through the apartment, heard him settle in the guest room he'd been using since our conversation, and I'd lain in my bed with my eyes open and said nothing. We hadn't spoken in two days. Not since he'd walked out of the living room and I'd gone to my room and made the decision that changed everything.I made coffee and stood at the kitchen window and watched the city wake up below, and I thought about Richard Hall's voice on the phone. That cold controlled tone when I'd finished telling him, the way he'd said good and moved on, the brisk efficiency of a man snapping a problem back into place.You were right to call me.I'd believed that when he said it. I'd told myself all the way through that decision that I'd be

Sophie's POVHe called two days later. Not too soon to look desperate, not too late to seem like he didn’t give a damn. Perfect timing.He suggested coffee. I told him I’d rather do dinner, that I didn’t trust conversations designed to wrap up after one drink. There was a short pause on his end, then he laughed low and said, “Fair enough,” before naming a restaurant I’d heard people talk about but never tried myself. Quiet, expensive, the kind of place where the lighting was dim enough to feel private and the noise level let you actually hear each other.I said yes.The restaurant sat on the fourteenth floor, all soft amber lights, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a view that turned the city into something almost unreal. Tio was already there when the host led me over. He stood up as I approached. Old-school, but it didn’t feel performative. Just him.“You look good,” he said. Simple. No bullshit.“Thank you,” I answered, and sat.Dinner was easy. Easier than I thought it could be. He ta

Sophie's POVI started paying attention to him in a way I never had before.Not because I loved him, I want to be honest with myself about that, but because watching someone disintegrate quietly in the same space you occupied was impossible to ignore, and Christopher Hall was disintegrating in the quietest, most methodical way I had ever witnessed, like a building whose foundation had been removed but whose walls were still standing out of sheer structural habit.He woke at five every morning. I knew because I was a light sleeper and the sound of his alarm and his footsteps down the hall toward the elevator had become as reliable as the sunrise. He came back an hour later smelling of the gym, showered, dressed, was out the door before I'd finished my coffee. Some evenings he was home by eight. Some nights later than that. He always said good morning and good evening and occasionally, if something on the news required a response, a short neutral sentence. He ate when I left food out. H