Semua Bab Runaway Bride to his Billionaire Rival : Bab 111 - Bab 120

Scott did not speak in the car. He drove with both hands on the wheel and let the city move around them in streaks of reflected light. Freeda sat in the passenger seat with one hand resting low over her stomach and the other curled around the strap of her bag, the greenhouse still clinging to her skin in the worst way. Not because Randy had frightened her. Because she was tired of rooms built to feel soft while they asked for surrender. By the time they got home, Winnie had left a pot on the stove and a note on the counter. Eat. No fighting. If either of you starts acting noble, I’m coming back. Kris had added one line underneath in smaller writing. I mean it. Freeda read both and almost smiled. Almost. Scott locked the door behind them and set his keys down in the bowl by the wall. The apartment felt steady in a way the greenhouse never had. Their lamp. Their table. Their untidy flowers. Her shawl over the arm of the chair. His jacket was over the back of the sofa—a life made

Freeda did not go straight home from the hospital café. She drove past it first. Past the imaging center, the pharmacy, the traffic light where too many cars idled, and too many lives kept moving as if nothing had happened inside that little bright room. Her hands stayed steady on the wheel. That was the part she noticed. Not because she was calm. Because she had learned the difference between being shaken and being moved, Randy had wanted movement. Wanted her voice sharpened, her breathing wrong, her body turned into proof of instability under fluorescent lights. He had not gotten it. Still, the old ache was there. Not in her throat. Deeper. By the time she got home, Winnie was in the kitchen with both elbows on the table and one eyebrow already up. Kris sat on the arm of the couch with a notebook, pretending not to hold it like a weapon. Scott stood when Freeda walked in. “What happened?” Freeda set her bag on the chair and looked at all three of them. “He tried to film m

Freeda chose the photograph herself. Not a studio shot. Not a soft-focus announcement with flowers, ribbons, and a hand under her stomach like the baby needed to be presented before it had even arrived. She stood in the kitchen after breakfast, wearing one of Scott’s white shirts and her own dark trousers, hair tied back, no makeup except what sleep and peace had left behind. The morning light came through the window cleanly. That was enough. Winnie leaned against the counter with her arms folded. “You are really doing this without drama.” Freeda looked down at her phone. “That’s the point.” Kris sat at the table with the James Fund briefing notes stacked beside her. “Then no paragraph.” “No paragraph,” Freeda agreed. Scott stood near the window, too quiet in a way that usually meant he was feeling too much and trying not to turn it into pressure. Freeda glanced up at him. “You are making this look emotional already.” His mouth shifted faintly. “It is emotional.” “Not on th

The hospital at two in the morning looked like every building that had ever promised mercy, with white walls and fluorescent light. Too bright. Too clean. Too awake. Freeda gripped Scott’s hand through another contraction as the nurse at intake asked questions in a voice that was kind enough not to become irritating. “First baby.” “Yes,” Freeda said through her teeth. “How far apart?” “Close enough that he’s starting to look useful,” she muttered, nodding once at Scott. The nurse smiled despite herself. Scott did not. He stood beside the desk with the bag over one shoulder and every paper already ready in his free hand, face too controlled to be calm. Freeda could see the effort in it. He was holding himself together the way men hold a door against the weather and pray no one notices the shaking in the frame. By the time they got her into the labor room, the contractions had stopped feeling like warnings and started feeling like work. Real work. Deep. Primitive. A force in h

Six months later, the house still smelled faintly of milk, soap, and warm cotton. Freeda stood in the nursery doorway, one hand on the frame, watching her daughter sleep. The late afternoon light came in soft through the curtains, laying a pale stripe across the crib blanket and the curve of the baby’s cheek. One tiny fist was still tucked near her mouth, as if even in sleep she refused to let the world think it had all of her. Freeda understood that instinct. She smiled and stepped in quietly. The room was small, but nothing in it felt lacking. A white crib. A chair by the window where too many dawn feedings had turned into quiet conversations with the dark. Folded blankets stacked with Winnie’s severe neatness. A stuffed rabbit Kris claimed the baby liked because she had blinked at it twice in a row. On the shelf above the changing table, one framed photo from the hospital sat. Not posed. Not polished. Just Freeda, tired and wrecked and radiant in ways she had never trusted bef