Lahat ng Kabanata ng You Shouldn’t Have Found Me : Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

The drive out of London took just under two hours, the city thinning into motorway and then into narrow hedgerowed lanes, the kind of English countryside that looked like it belonged on the front of a biscuit tin rather than somewhere real people actually lived.Zara hadn't asked where they were going. Sebastian had simply told her to pack for the weekend and trust him, which was, she reflected, a significantly larger ask than he seemed to realise, given everything the past year had taught her about surprises."You're doing the thing," Sebastian said, glancing over from the driver's seat."What thing?""The thing where you're quietly cataloguing every possible danger a simple road trip could contain.""I'm allowed a healthy sense of vigilance.""You're allowed to also just enjoy a Saturday."She managed a small smile at that, and made a genuine effort to let her shoulders unknot as the fields rolled past the window, until the car finally turned down a long gravel drive lined with old

The penthouse was quiet by the time they got home from Chloe's, the city humming faintly beyond the windows, the whole evening still settled warm in Zara's chest, Nathan's careful, unguarded confession, Chloe's face when she'd said it back."They're going to be insufferable now," Sebastian said, shrugging out of his jacket. "Nathan's already texted me twice about restaurant recommendations for their anniversary. Which isn't for another eight months.""Let him be insufferable. He's earned it." Zara kicked off her shoes and curled onto the sofa, watching him move around the kitchen, pouring two glasses of water with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything. "It was a good night.""It was." He crossed the room and sat beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him. "Ashcombe. Nathan and Chloe. All of it happening in the same fortnight feels almost unfair to the rest of the calendar."Zara laughed softly, and leaned into him, his arm coming around h

Chloe's bathroom felt smaller than it actually was, the two of them crammed into it together, Zara perched on the edge of the bathtub while the small plastic stick sat on a folded square of tissue on the counter, three minutes counting down on Chloe's phone between them like something enormous."You could look at it now," Chloe offered. "I won't judge you for peeking.""The instructions said three minutes.""The instructions also said to wait for a clear result, which is a phrase that means nothing when you're sitting here dying of suspense."Zara laughed despite herself, a short, nervous sound, and pressed her palms flat against her knees to stop them shaking. "I don't know what I want it to say.""You don't have to know yet.""I do, though. I'm going to look at that stick in two minutes and forty seconds and I'm going to know exactly what I want it to say, and I have absolutely no idea which answer that's going to be."Chloe sat down beside her on the edge of the tub, shoulder press

Nathan took the news the way he took most enormous, life altering information, by going very quiet for exactly four seconds before recovering his composure entirely."You're joking," he said finally, looking between Sebastian and Zara across the kitchen island."I'm not in the habit of joking about this particular subject," Sebastian said."No. I suppose you're not." Nathan's face cracked slowly into something genuinely delighted, the careful professional mask he wore most of his waking life slipping entirely. "Congratulations. Properly. Both of you."Chloe, beside him, had already abandoned any pretence of composure whatsoever, pulling Zara into a fierce hug that lasted considerably longer than a normal greeting required."I already knew," she admitted into Zara's shoulder. "Obviously. I was there for the test. But hearing you say it out loud to everyone properly is different.""You knew before me," Nathan said, mildly wounded."I knew before Sebastian too, if it helps.""It does not

Chloe had never been particularly good at mentioning the date in advance, a habit Nathan had noticed months ago and quietly learned to work around rather than confront directly. She simply went quiet for a day or two each year, in early autumn, and became slightly harder to reach, and it had taken him the better part of a year to piece together why.Her mother's anniversary fell on a Thursday this time.He found her sitting on the floor of her living room that evening, surrounded by the same shoebox of old photographs that had started this whole chapter of everyone's lives, a cup of tea gone cold beside her, untouched."You didn't tell me," he said gently, sitting down on the floor beside her rather than the sofa, close enough that his shoulder pressed against hers."I don't like making a thing of it.""I'm not asking you to make a thing of it. I'm asking you to let me sit with you while you don't make a thing of it."Chloe managed a small, tired smile at that, and passed him one of t