All Chapters of In Love With The Hot Billionaire.: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

CHAPTER SIXTY # The SpiralI couldn't stay in my bedroom.The walls were too close, the air was too thick, and the messages kept replaying in my head like a nightmare on loop.Criminal charges…Prison…Public scandal…I stumbled into the attached bathroom, locked the door behind me, and sank to the floor with my back against the bathtub.My chest was too tight. I couldn't get enough air. Each breath came in short, painful gasps that did nothing to fill my lungs.Panic attack. I was having another panic attack.But knowing what it was didn't stop it. It didn't slow my racing heart or clear the black spots dancing at the edges of my vision.One million euros in two weeks? The numbers were impossible.And Julien knew it. That was the point. He wasn't actually expecting payment. He was creating an impossible situation so he could follow through on his threats.He was going to have me arrested.The charges were fabricated. I knew they were fabricated. I'd never stolen jewelry. The account w

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWOI didn’t move.The black car idles at the end of the street and I stand at the corner like something rooted, like something that has forgotten how legs work, and the cold that has settled into my chest has nothing to do with March and everything to do with the particular quality of Julien's patience. He has always been patient when it suited him. When he was winning.The car doesn't pull forward. The car being there is already the message.My wrist throbs beneath my sleeve.And then, from the opposite direction, another car turns onto the street.Black as well, but a different kind of black. It pulls to a stop directly between me and Julien's car with the calm precision of someone who has assessed a situation and inserted himself into it without drama or announcement.The window comes down.Adrien.He is still in his surgical clothes, white coat and all, one hand on the wheel and those gray eyes on me through the open window. He does not look at Julien's car. He look

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR I could not stay in my room. The walls were too close and the silence was too loud and every time I closed my eyes the numbers started again. One million. One week. One million. One fucking week. A metronome made of things I could not fix, ticking behind my eyelids with the patience of something that knew it had already won. I pulled my cardigan over my pajamas and padded out into the hallway, moving the way I always moved at night, quietly, carefully, the particular silence of someone who had learned a long time ago that being heard moving around after dark required explanations she didn't have. The living room was dim and still, orange light from the street below lying in long strips across the floor. I folded myself onto the sofa, pulling my knees up as far as my stomach would allow these days, which was less far than it used to be and getting less every week. I looked at nothing in particular and let the city move outside the windows, distant and indifferent

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX I held my breath for a few seconds. "I am seven. I know you are not my actual real mummy. I understand that completely." He straightened slightly to demonstrate the extent of his understanding. "I just meant you could stand in the mummy place. Because you do all the nice things. You brush my hair until it is soft and you know that dinosaurs are my most favourite thing in the entire world and you always know exactly the right thing to say to Miss Claire even when she is in a difficult mood." He paused for breath. "And Papa always tries to come to things but then his phone rings and he gets called to the hospital and then he feels sad and I feel sad because he feels sad and it all just gets very sad and nobody wants Thursday to be sad." I finished the first buckle and moved to the second one. "And also," Noé said, quieter now, the careful rehearsed quality falling away from his voice and leaving something more honest underneath it. "You are always here. Like, every

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHTNot 'What's wrong.' My name. Placed at the end of the sentence like punctuation. Like a door he was holding open and waiting, with complete patience, for me to walk through.I stared at his collarbone. At the visible edge of the tattoo above his neckline. At anything that was not his eyes."I'm tired," I said. "That's all. I'm pregnant and tired and I didn't sleep and the dizziness is normal, Dr. Rousseau said so, it happens in the second trimester and it passes and there is nothing wrong that isn't entirely ordinary and explainable and I would really appreciate…""Look at me."I looked at him.That was a mistake.His eyes at this distance, with this light, with his hand on the wall beside my head and the warmth of him close enough to register through my cardigan, were doing something that no eyes had any business doing at nine in the morning on a Tuesday. The gray of them was steady and serious and underneath the steadiness was something else, something that had b