All Chapters of One Night Stand With My Hubby's Cousin: Chapter 221 - Chapter 230

Evelyn's POVI couldn't help letting out a small laugh.Not because it was funny.Because it wasn't.“Didn't he tell you?”Frank's mouth twitched.“Evelyn, the man barely tells me when he's changing flights.”His gaze remained fixed on the trail ahead.“Actually, that's not true. He tells me absolutely nothing, which is exactly why I know something happened.”He stepped over an exposed tree root before continuing.“When you've known somebody for more than a decade, you stop relying on what they say and start paying attention to patterns instead. You notice when they suddenly start drinking whiskey every night, when they begin ending meetings thirty minutes early for no apparent reason, and when they spend an entire week looking like a man who just got dumped.”I lowered my eyes.The path blurred slightly beneath the glow of the lanterns.I didn't answer.I didn't need to.Frank seemed to extract everything he needed from the silence anyway.“So.”He glanced sideways at me.“Are we dea

Evelyn's POVThe wind stirred the treetops overhead, filling the darkness with a soft rustling sound.“For years, I honestly thought there might be something fundamentally wrong with him.”A small laugh escaped him.“Emotionally, I mean.”The smile lingered for only a second.“Because normal people panic. Normal people obsess. Normal people make irrational decisions. Julian didn't seem to do any of those things. He always had a plan, always had a backup plan, and somehow always managed to stay five steps ahead of everyone else.”Then he glanced at me.“Until he met you.”The words landed with surprising force.For a moment, neither of us spoke.The trail curved gently ahead while lantern light flickered through the trees, and somewhere in the distance I could hear the faint sounds of the campground carried on the wind.“Evelyn, I know what you see when you look at this situation,” Frank continued, his voice calm and steady. “You see a man who manipulated things behind the scenes, who

Evelyn's POVFor the first time that evening, Frank's expression shifted.Only slightly.But enough for me to notice.I lowered my gaze.Immediately, memories surfaced.Julian's voice.Julian's hesitation.Julian speaking about someone with a tenderness that seemed almost unconscious.And all those nights afterward when I had replayed those conversations over and over again until sleep became impossible.“He told me himself,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper now. “He told me there was someone he'd loved for years, someone who had been in his heart long before I ever met him, long before any of this happened, and the way he spoke about that person wasn't the way someone talks about a passing crush or an old memory. It was the way people talk about the love that changes the shape of their lives.”The night seemed quieter now.Or maybe I had simply stopped noticing everything else.“I've seen the way his eyes soften when he talks about them, and I've heard that change in his voice

Evelyn 's POVThe lantern light stretched across the gravel beneath our feet.“The whole girlfriend story was a lie that happened on impulse, and it was Julian who suggested it first, Julian who told me to go along with it and pretend to be his girlfriend for the evening, and even though I knew perfectly well that it was a terrible idea and that getting involved in that kind of game would only make everything more complicated, I still said yes.”The wind moved quietly through the trees.For a few moments, I listened to it.Then I continued.“Sometimes I tell myself that I only agreed because the situation was awkward, because I didn't know how to refuse him in front of everyone, because it felt easier to go along with the lie than create a scene, and for a long time I genuinely tried to believe that explanation.”A humorless laugh escaped me.“But if I'm being completely honest with myself, I already know that's not the real answer.”The words came more quietly now.“Because by then,

Evelyn's POVI dropped into a crouch almost immediately, and an instant later she crashed into my arms like a golden missile, planting her front paws directly on my shoulders while her tail wagged with such alarming force that it looked capable of generating its own weather system, and before I could stop her, she was already shoving her face into the crook of my neck and enthusiastically covering every inch of exposed skin with dog slobber.“Okay, okay, I missed you too,” I laughed, trying and failing to preserve even a shred of dignity while Lemon made it abundantly clear that she considered our reunion the most important event of the evening.And somehow, despite everything that had happened only an hour earlier, despite the fear that still lingered at the edges of my thoughts and the emotional exhaustion weighing on my chest, that was the moment when I genuinely smiled for the first time all night, because there was something wonderfully uncomplicated about being loved by a dog wh