All Chapters of SURROGATE FOR THE COLD BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Dominic's POV She falls asleep at the table. Not dramatically. Just goes quiet mid-sentence, something about the patisserie's weekend order, and when I look up she's asleep sitting up, head tipped slightly, hands still wrapped around her empty mug. I sat there for a moment. Then I get up, go to her side, and say her name quietly. She stirs enough that I can walk her to the couch, one hand at her back, and she goes without argument which means she's more tired than she's admitting. I get the blanket from the chair, the soft grey one she's claimed as hers without discussion, and cover her and she's gone again before I've straightened up. I stand there longer than necessary. There's something about watching her sleep that I can't categorize properly. It's not just tenderness, though it's that. It's something closer to recognition. Like some part of me that's been running a low-grade calculation fo

Dominic's POV I don't sleep. Not insomnia. Not the work-brain that used to keep me up running numbers. Just this clean wide-awake state, lying in the dark, replaying her hands gripping the front of my shirt like I was something to hold onto. She chose to hold on. That's the thing I keep returning to. Emma Chen, who manages everything alone, who built entire systems of self-sufficiency around herself like architecture, reached out in that hallway and held on. To me. I stare at the ceiling for an hour and then get up and go to my desk and actually read the Reyes file, because I need something to do with my hands and my head, and by three in the morning I've annotated the whole thing and sent Marcus six pages of notes and then sat in the chair in the dark feeling more awake than I've felt in years. This is

Dominic's POV She fell asleep against my chest standing up. Not fully. Just that half-drop where the body decides it's safe enough to let go for a second, her weight shifting into me, and I felt it happen and didn't move. Just held her. Stood in the doorway of my office with my arms around her and the afternoon doing whatever it was doing outside and thought, I would stand here for as long as she needs. That thought would have frightened me three months ago. Now it just feels like information. She surfaces after a minute, straightens, pulls back just enough to look up at me with the particular expression of someone who fell asleep standing up and has opinions about it. "Don't," I say. "I wasn't going to say anything." "You were going to apologize." "I was

Dominic's POV She kissed me. I've kissed before. That's not what I mean. I mean she kissed me the way she does everything, with her whole self committed to it, hand at my jaw, completely deliberate, and the world rearranged itself into before and after without asking my permission. I sit at my laptop for ten minutes after she goes to call Lily without reading a single word on the screen. Then I close it and go stand at the window. The city is doing its morning thing. Ordinary Friday. Nothing has changed out there. Everything is different here. I press my fingers to my mouth once, briefly, like checking something is real. It is. I go make coffee. She comes back twenty minutes later with the expression she gets after Lily calls,

Dominic's POV The park looks exactly the same. That's the thing about places that mattered. They don't adjust for your absence. The bench by the east path still has the split in the third slat. The cart is still on the corner with the same faded yellow umbrella. The pigeons are doing whatever pigeons do with the same complete indifference to everything. Emma is beside me with her coat buttoned and her hands in her pockets and she's taking it all in without rushing me through it. I told her what this place is on the walk over. Not everything. Enough. She listened without filling the pauses and when I finished she just nodded and took my hand and kept walking. She's still holding it. "Which bench," she says. "That one." I point to the one by the path. "Daniel always took the side facing the fountain because he said watching water helped him think.