All Chapters of After The Divorce: Ex-Husband Regrets And Begs Me: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

After breakfast, Lysander asked her if she would like to see Ashcroft Manor."It's not far," he said, his voice casual, like he was asking her to take a walk in the garden, not inviting her into his home, his history, his heart. "The estates border each other. Just across the valley. We could drive. Or walk, if you'd prefer. It's about twenty minutes on foot."Celestine thought about it. She had never been to Ashcroft Manor. She had seen it from a distance, of course, the old gray stone manor on the hill across the valley, the towers and chimneys visible from her bedroom window. But she had never set foot inside. She had never been invited. And now she was being invited by the man who had been waiting for her."I'd like that," she said. "To see it, I mean. I'd like to see it."Lysander nodded. "We'll drive. It's cold out."He went to get his car, and Celestine stood in the doorway of Valancourt House and watched him walk across the gravel drive, his long legs eating up the distance, h

The drive back to Valancourt House as the sun began to set was comfortable and filled with the type of easy silence that Celestine had never experienced with anyone before, not even during the early days of her marriage when Kier was still pretending to be a decent husband who cared about her feelings and her thoughts and her existence in his life.Lysander drove with one hand on the wheel, his posture relaxed, his gray eyes focused on the road ahead. He didn't feel the need to fill the silence with meaningless chatter the way Kier always had, chattering on about business deals and stock prices and people Celestine didn't know and didn't care about.Celestine found herself stealing glances at him when he wasn't looking. The way his jaw was set. The way his dark hair fell across his forehead. The way his hands looked on the steering wheel, strong and capable and surprisingly gentle. She had spent the afternoon in his home, in his garden, in the space he had created while waiting for he

Later, after dinner, after the coffee and the brandy and the long conversation about nothing in particular, Celestine found herself in the library.The fire was burning low, and the rain had started outside, tapping against the windows in a soft, soothing rhythm. She was curled up in her favorite armchair, the one by the window, with a book open in her lap that she wasn't really reading.She was thinking about Athena. About the way the woman had looked at her across the dinner table, assessing her, testing her, trying to figure out if she was worthy of her brother. She understood it, she really did. If she had a brother who had spent 9 years or so waiting for someone who had run away and married someone else, she would be skeptical too. She would ask pointed questions. She would want to know if the person who came back was here for the right reasons or just because they had nowhere else to go.But it still stung. It still hurt to be judged, to be found wanting, to be looked at like sh

Celestine's POV:We laughed together too. That was the strangest part. I had not laughed in years, lol, not really, the laugh that came from deep in your belly and made your cheeks hurt and left you gasping for air. I had smiled at parties and chuckled at Kier's business associates' jokes and made the appropriate noises at the appropriate times. But I had not laughed. Not until Lysander. One afternoon, I decided to teach him how to make my grandmother's pasta sauce. I do not know why. It just came out of my mouth, an invitation I had not planned, and he said yes before I could take it back, and the next thing I knew we were standing in the Valancourt kitchen with flour everywhere and tomatoes simmering on the stove and chaos unfolding around us. He was terrible at it, absolutely, hopelessly and wonderfully terrible. He held the rolling pin like it was a weapon. He got flour on his face, in his hair, all over his expensive black sweater. He dropped the eggs on the floor and cracke

KIER'S POV:Two weeks.Two weeks since I came home to that empty penthouse and those divorce papers on the counter and that text message telling me my father would be ashamed of me. Two weeks since my wife, my boring, ordinary, nothing special wife, walked out the door and disappeared like she had never existed at all.I am not worried. Let me make that clear. I am not worried at all and I am not sad and I have not spent every single night lying in that empty bed staring at the ceiling wondering if I made a mistake. I am angry. That is what I am. I am furious. I am burning with the rage that makes me want to punch walls and throw things and drive my fist through the windshield of my car.How dare she.How dare she walk out on me. How dare she leave those papers on the counter like I am some kind of nobody she can just discard. How dare she send me that message about my father, bringing him into this, using his memory to make me feel guilty, how dare she?She is throwing a tantrum. Tha