All Chapters of My Husband Brought Another Woman, I Chose His Best Friend : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Eleanor excused herself not long after her verdict hung in the air, drifting back into the crowd with the same quiet precision she'd arrived with, leaving me alone at the small table trying to decide whether I'd passed some test or simply failed to fail it outright.Liam appeared a moment later, sliding into the seat his mother had just vacated, loosening his collar slightly like the last ten minutes had cost him something too."Well," he said. "You're still sitting upright. That's usually a good sign, in my experience.""I honestly don't know how that went.""Knowing my mother, that means it went better than most first meetings," Liam said. "She usually decides within thirty seconds whether someone's worth further conversation, and then simply moves on to the next room. She gave you considerably longer than thirty seconds. That's practically a standing ovation, by her standards.""Is that supposed to be reassuring?""It's the best I've got tonight," he admitted, reaching for my hand

I didn't answer right away.Liam's words sat in the cold air between us, and instead of rushing to fill the silence, I let myself actually feel the size of them, the weight of everything that had led to this exact moment on this exact balcony.The guilt came first, an old, familiar shape I'd carried for so long it had almost started to feel like part of me. Daniel's ring still on my finger the first time Liam kissed me, both of us pretending afterward that it hadn't meant anything, that we could put it back where we found it. The year I spent convinced I didn't deserve to be happy about how we'd started, like happiness itself was something that had to be earned through suffering first.Then the drawer, cleared out without ceremony, Maria's quiet work done before I'd even asked for it.The small brass key, dropped into my palm on his way past the kitchen island like it weighed nothing at all, though it had turned out to weigh more than almost anything else he'd ever given me.Elena's v

Patricia was already in Liam's office by the time we arrived, three laptops open across the conference table, her usual composure fighting to hold together over something clearly worse than a few unflattering headlines splashed across the business section."Close the door," she said, not looking up from the screen in front of her.Liam did, and I took the seat beside him, bracing myself for whatever came next, my coffee from that morning suddenly feeling like it belonged to a different, easier version of this same day."It's not just the articles," Patricia said, finally looking up at both of us. "That was bad enough on its own, genuinely bad, but I've got worse waiting for you now.""How much worse," Liam asked, his voice already careful in the way that meant he was preparing himself for something specific."The Meridian negotiation," Patricia said. "The one you've been working for months now, the acquisition terms that were supposed to stay locked down until the signing next week, n

The first missed dinner was easy to forgive. Liam texted an apology, something short and clipped about outside counsel needing another hour, and I told him not to worry about it, that I understood, that Meridian and the board and Sophie Marsh mattered more right now than a reservation at a restaurant we could visit any other night of the week.The second missed dinner came without a text at all. I sat at my own kitchen table with two plates and a candle I'd lit for no particular reason, watching the wax pool and harden while I waited for a message that never came. He walked in near midnight, apologized briefly, barely meeting my eyes, and fell asleep almost immediately, still in his shirt from that morning, his tie draped over the arm of the couch like something he'd forgotten he was wearing.By the end of the first week, it had stopped feeling like an exception and started feeling like a pattern, one I recognized from somewhere deep and old, though I told myself repeatedly it wasn't

I hung up on Tom Reyes without another word, my hand still trembling as I set the phone down on the counter for the second time that morning, the screen dark and silent now but somehow still feeling dangerous."We heard you have information about the settlement. Care to confirm?" That was what he'd said. Not the company. Not the board. Me, specifically, as though I were a source rather than a bystander caught in the wreckage of someone else's mess entirely.Liam finished his call with Patricia and turned to find me staring at the phone like it might ring again on its own, my expression clearly telling him something had shifted."Nina, what happened?""He asked me to confirm information about the settlement," I said slowly, still working through it in my own mind as I said it out loud, trying to make sense of the details even as I spoke them. "Specific information. About the original buyout terms not matching the public filing.""That's a fairly technical detail for a reporter to guess