All Chapters of One Night Stand With My Hubby's Cousin: Chapter 231 - Chapter 240

Evelyn 's POVI lowered my gaze toward Lemon.She had settled herself comfortably against me at some point, completely relaxed and utterly trusting, with her head resting across my lap and her tail lazily thumping against the grass every few seconds as though she had already concluded that everything in the world was exactly as it should be.The sight made my throat tighten unexpectedly.Because animals were so much simpler.They loved openly.They trusted completely.They never spent sleepless nights questioning intentions or analyzing conversations or wondering whether somebody's heart belonged somewhere else.When they chose someone, they simply chose them.No conditions.No complications.No ghosts from the past standing quietly between them.I looked away before the thought could hurt more than it already did.“But none of that actually answers the real problem.”The hot chocolate had begun to cool in my hands, and I found myself staring at the thin ribbons of steam still rising

Evelyn's POVFrank's gaze drifted toward the darkness beyond the campsite, toward the endless stretch of trees standing beneath the night sky, and for a moment he seemed less like someone having a conversation and more like someone reopening a memory he hadn't visited in years.“The truth is, a group of us spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out who the woman was, because for years she existed in our lives almost like an urban legend, the kind of person nobody had ever seen and yet everybody somehow knew was real.”I frowned.“What do you mean?”Frank laughed softly.“I mean exactly that. None of us had ever met her. None of us knew her name, knew what she looked like, knew where she lived, or even knew whether she had the slightest idea that Julian existed, and yet every single one of us knew there was somebody, because Julian made it impossible not to notice.”The lantern beside the tent swayed gently in the wind.“The first time I realized something was wrong was whe

Evelyn's POVThe name hit me like a physical blow, and suddenly every thought inside my head scattered in different directions while my lungs seemed to forget how to work properly, because Sebastian wasn't just a random name in this story but my husband, my ex-husband, Julian's cousin, the man whose wedding Julian had attended, the man whose relationship Julian had been forced to watch from the sidelines for years, and the man Frank had just identified as the reason for an entire decade of heartbreak. Meanwhile, Frank casually took another sip of his hot chocolate and leaned back against the table with infuriating composure, looking for all the world like someone discussing ordinary facts instead of detonating an emotional bomb in the middle of my life.“Evelyn,” he said at last, and there was now genuine disbelief in his voice, the kind that comes from watching an intelligent person repeatedly miss something obvious, “I honestly don't understand how you've managed to do this, because

Evelyn's POVAfter several rounds, everyone had already put down more than a few fingers, and the crackling of the fire mixed with the distant music drifting through the trees while the kind of cold that only existed in the California mountains late at night slowly turned everyone's cheeks a little red, so when it was finally Maddie's turn and she set her beer bottle on her knee with a smile that immediately made me feel as though something terrible was about to happen, I instinctively braced myself.“I have never been dumped.”The moment the words left her mouth, I silently folded down one finger.Frank folded one down too.Julian also folded one down.Only Maddie remained seated there with all five fingers still raised, looking so serenely untouched by heartbreak that it almost felt offensive.Frank stared at her for a full three seconds.“Wait, Maddie.”“Yeah?”“You've never been dumped?”She actually looked a little hurt by his disbelief.“Why does everyone react like they've just

Evelyn's POV“People change the world in their twenties, become billionaires at twenty-five, land on Forbes lists before thirty, and anyone still talking about their 'prime years' at thirty-five is usually trying to convince themselves they didn't already miss them.”“That is outrageously biased.”The response came without hesitation.“And when men spend their entire lives chasing twenty-two-year-old women, nobody calls that biased.”For the first time all evening, Frank actually stopped talking.The silence lasted several seconds.Then he laughed.“Okay.”He lifted both hands.“That's annoyingly fair.”“Maddie is always fair,” I said.“Thank you.”“She just happens to express fairness in the most extreme way possible.”Maddie looked delighted.“Extreme fairness is still fairness.”She nodded as though this settled the matter completely, then suddenly straightened in her chair, and the moment her expression changed, a very specific sense of dread settled over me.Because I knew that l