Все главы TOO LATE TO WANT ME : Глава 41 - Глава 50

Chapter 39 Skylar's POV I typed fast. Not the careful, considered kind of fast where you weigh each word before it goes down. The other kind. The kind where your fingers are moving and your brain is three sentences ahead and you are not stopping to read what you have already written because if you stop you might talk yourself out of it and you have spent too many years talking yourself out of things. I tagged her. @NataliaDmitri. Right at the top, so she would see the notification before she even read the first line. What followed was not my finest moment as a person, and somewhere in a calm, detached part of my brain I knew that even while I was writing it. But that part of my brain was very small and very far away. I wrote that Natalia Dmitri was a woman who had stood in a room and watched her own husband slide his hand onto another woman's knee and said nothing, because she already knew exactly what kind of man she had married. That she had been flirting with men at that r

Chapter 42Zane's POVShe picked up on the second ring."Mr. Lawson." Natalia's voice came through carefully. Not the warm, suggestive tone she had used at the reception, or the composed social version she performed for rooms. This was a smaller cliipped voice of a woman who had seen a name on her screen and felt her stomach drop."Natalia." I kept my voice even. "I'll make this brief. I've seen the post. Take it down. Tonight."A pause. "Mr. Lawson, I was only…the situation at the sales event was…""I didn't ask for an explanation. Take it down."Another pause, but shorter this time. "Of course." Then: "But Mr. Lawson… you should know. That woman posted about me too. About Ivan. About you. She said things that were…""I'm aware," I said. "I'll address it on my end.""She said…" Natalia's composure cracked slightly. I could hear the careful surface giving way to something more rattled underneath. "She implied that I was trying to…with you…that I was using you for…""Natalia." My voice

Skylar’s POVMy phone kept ringing in my lap, the screen was flashing Jason’s name like a bad omen I couldn’t ignore. The tension from my conversation with Zane still crackled in the car, but this call pushed me over the edge. Without thinking, I snatched it up and answered, my voice exploding before he could say a single word.“Stop calling me, Jason!” I yelled, not caring how loud I sounded in the confined space of the car. “Just stop! If my children really said what you’ve been insinuating, if they actually miss me that badly, then put them on the phone right now so I can speak with them myself. Don’t hide behind excuses. Let me hear their voices!”The line went quiet for a few painful seconds. I could hear him breathing, but he didn’t speak immediately. My heart hammered against my ribs as anger and a deep, aching longing twisted together inside me. Those kids… Aurora with her brave little face, Ethan so quiet and observant. If they truly needed me, I wanted to know. I deserved to

Chapter 46Zane's POVI noticed she wasn't behind me before I had even reached the elevator.I turned. Eric was at the car. Agnes was coming in through the side entrance carrying something from the kitchen. Skylar was not in the lobby.I went back to the front door and looked outside. She was still on the driveway, standing with her back to me, talking to someone. I couldn't see who. The angle wasn't right and the light beyond the gate was low.I came back inside.Agnes was crossing the lobby with a small tray and I stepped into her path. "What's keeping Skylar outside?"Agnes looked at me with the expression she used when she was deciding how much to say. She was a careful woman. Not secretive, just considered. She had been with me long enough to know that my questions were not casual."Her husband came," she said simply. "They're just having a conversation."I looked at her."Her husband," I said."Yes, sir.""Jason Lawrence came to this property.""He was at the front door when Mis

Chapter 48Skylar's POV"Pick one."I looked at him for a long moment."If I had chosen Jason," I said slowly, "then tell me… why did I run? Why did I leave that house in the first place? Why did I sit in a restaurant bathroom and fall apart? Why did I end up in a hospital?" My voice was steady but it was costing me something to keep it that way. "If Jason is who I choose, Zane, then what exactly have I been doing here?"He didn't answer immediately. He was watching me with that absolute attention of his, the kind that didn't miss anything."You transformed me," I said. "You know that. I know you know that because you were there for all of it. I was the woman who couldn't hold a spoon without apologising for it and now I'm standing here arguing with you in your bedroom and not once have I said sorry for it. That is not the same woman. You did that. So if you genuinely believe that one conversation with Jason outside is enough to undo all of that, if you think I would throw everything