All Chapters of After The Divorce: Ex-Husband Regrets And Begs Me: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

KIER'S POV:He called me four days later.I am at Sable's apartment when my phone rings. She is in the kitchen making breakfast, wearing one of my shirts and humming something under her breath, and for a moment everything feels almost normal, almost good, almost like I am exactly where I am supposed to be.Then I see Frank's name on my phone and my stomach drops and picked up thr call."I found her," he says.I stand up. My heart is pounding. I tell him where I am and I tell him to come to me, to bring everything he has, to not leave a single detail out. He agrees and hangs up and I am left standing in the middle of the living room with my phone in my hand and my mind racing.Sable comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. "Everything okay?""I'm expecting someone," I say. "A business thing. It won't take long."She does not argue. She never argues. She just smiles, that soft understanding smile that makes me feel like I am the center of her world, and she goes back to th

KIER'S POV:I put my head in my hands and I stay like that for a very long time.I do not cry. I have not cried since I was a child, since my father yelled at me for being weak, for showing emotion, for letting anyone see that I was anything less than perfect. I do not cry now. I just sit there with my head in my hands and my chest cracking open and the weight of everything I have lost pressing down on me like a mountain.Celestine is a Valancourt. She is the heir to an empire. She is worth more money than I will ever see in my lifetime. She has been lying to me for three years, hiding who she really was, pretending to be ordinary and simple and nothing special.And I was too stupid to see it. Too busy looking for something better to notice that I already had something extraordinary.She was pregnant. She was carrying my child, a Valancourt. And I threw it away. I threw all of it away.I think about Sable. About the baby she is carrying, the baby that is supposed to be my fresh start,

CELESTINE'S POV:It is strange to see, because Lysander is never cold with me. He is patient and gentle and careful, always careful, like he is afraid of scaring me away. But now his gray eyes are hard and his jaw is tight and his hands are clenched at his sides, and I can see the effort it is taking for him to stay still, to stay calm, to not march down to the gate and handle Kier himself. For a moment I see something else in his eyes too, something he is trying very hard to hide. Jealousy maybe. Or fear. The fear that I might look at Kier and feel something, that I might remember the love I used to have for him, that I might decide to go back."I will be nearby," Lysander says, and his voice is quiet but there is something underneath it, something that sounds like barely contained fury. "If you need me, I will be there. Say the word and I will have him removed."I reach out and touch his arm. Just a brush of my fingers against his sleeve. He looks down at my hand and then back up at

CELESTINE'S POV:"How dare you," he continues, his voice rising. "How dare you lie to me like that. How dare you make me look like a fool. I married you thinking you were ordinary, thinking you were nothing, and all along you were... you were this."He gestures around the room, at the silk walls, at the priceless furniture, at the fire crackling in the hearth."You let me believe you were a nobody. You let me treat you like you were nobody. And now I find out that you are a Valancourt, that you are worth more than I will ever be, that you have been laughing at me this whole time."He is breathing hard now, his face red, his hands shaking."You are a liar, Celestine. You are a manipulator. You trapped me in a marriage under false pretenses, and then you left me when I finally figured out that you were not who you said you were. This is your fault. All of it. You drove me to Sable. You drove me to another woman. You made me feel like I was not enough, like I was nothing, like I was just

CELESTINE'S POV:I look up at him. His gray eyes are soft in the fading light, warm and steady and full of something I am still learning to recognize."Most people would have broken," he continues. "Most people would have given up long before the thousandth time. But you did not. You kept going. You kept hoping. You kept believing that there was goodness in the world even when the person who was supposed to love you showed you nothing but cruelty. That is not weakness, Celestine. That is extraordinary strength."I do not know what to say to that. I do not know how to respond to someone who looks at me and sees strength instead of failure, courage instead of foolishness, hope instead of naivety.So I do not say anything. I just look at him, at this man who has been waiting for me, who has been patient and gentle and kind, who has never once asked me for anything I was not ready to give.And this time, I am ready.I kiss him.It is soft at first, tentative, the way you kiss someone when