Lahat ng Kabanata ng Divorced By My Cold Husband, I Returned As A CEO: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

His Heartbeat“Are you okay?”Elara turned when she heard it — that sound. The one she had learned to recognize before she could name it. That particular struggle for air that lived in her memory like an alarm.Victor was beside her but something was wrong. His breathing had changed — labored, pulled tight, each breath costing more than it should. His face had gone pale in the way that meant something was happening inside his chest that his body couldn’t manage alone.She panicked.She ran back to her bag before she’d finished thinking — and there it was, right at the bottom where she’d packed it without registering it. Daniel’s new inhaler. Still in its packaging. Still unused.She ran back to him.She lowered herself to the ground and lifted his head carefully, settling it into her lap. He was heavy and warm and already weakening — she could feel it in the way he didn’t resist, the way he simply went where she put him.She opened the packaging with shaking hands.“Breathe, Victor.”

The party had found its rhythm — music low and warm, glasses refilled, the particular hum of a room full of people who have been fed well and are in no hurry to leave.Julian tapped his fork against his glass.The room settled.He stood on the third step of the staircase, high enough to see and be seen, and looked around at the gathered faces with the satisfaction of a man whose plan had come together exactly as intended.“Thank you all for coming.” He smiled — easy, generous, the smile he wore when he was most certain of himself. “I see my father made it too, which means everything to me.” He glanced toward the older man with genuine warmth. Then his eyes found Elara. “My love — would you come up here?”She climbed the stairs.She kept her face soft and her posture easy and stood beside him, and if her smile was constructed rather than felt, no one in that room was looking closely enough to see the difference.“I wanted all of you here today,” Julian said, his voice carrying clearly,

Spare Keys She didn’t know what William had intended. Maybe he’d wanted her to find it. Maybe it had slipped from his pocket without him realizing. Either way, she sat on the edge of the guest bed and turned the information over in her mind and couldn’t find a place to put it that didn’t hurt. Stage four. That was why he’d lost the weight. That was why he’d looked, at the party, like a man making the most of an evening rather than simply enjoying one. She had noticed it and filed it away as tiredness, as age, as the general wearing that life does to people over time. She pressed her hands flat on her knees. What am I supposed to do with this? She wanted to cry but nothing came — the feeling sat too deep for tears, the same place grief goes when it’s too large and too sudden to find an exit. The damage is already done. Knowing it doesn’t change it. Saying something to him doesn’t change it. She folded the paper. Set it back on the pillow exactly as she’d found it. And sa

Julian talked the entire journey.He was animated in the way of someone who has gotten exactly what they wanted and hasn’t yet learned to contain it — gesturing as he drove, laughing at his own observations, planning out loud with the cheerful momentum of a man whose future has just snapped into focus.Elara watched the city go past her window and said the right things at the right intervals and felt, underneath all of it, the particular heaviness of someone moving through a day that belongs to someone else.The boutique was everything its name promised.Classy Bridals — warm lighting, ivory and cream everywhere, the hushed reverence of a place that understood its own significance. They were welcomed at the door and guided inside with the practiced attentiveness of staff who recognized the particular energy of a couple on this kind of errand.“Welcome. Please — let us show you what we have.”They moved through the racks. Julian touched things, pointed things out, consulted with the at

Julian talked the entire journey. He was animated in the way of someone who has gotten exactly what they wanted and hasn’t yet learned to contain it — gesturing as he drove, laughing at his own observations, planning out loud with the cheerful momentum of a man whose future has just snapped into focus. Elara watched the city go past her window and said the right things at the right intervals and felt, underneath all of it, the particular heaviness of someone moving through a day that belongs to someone else. The boutique was everything its name promised. Classy Bridals — warm lighting, ivory and cream everywhere, the hushed reverence of a place that understood its own significance. They were welcomed at the door and guided inside with the practiced attentiveness of staff who recognized the particular energy of a couple on this kind of errand. “Welcome. Please — let us show you what we have.” They moved through the racks. Julian touched things, pointed things out, consulted with