All Chapters of TOO LATE TO WANT ME : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

81 Chapters

WE WERE ROLE PLAYING SOMETHING

Chapter 69 Zane's POVI reached them in nine steps.I knew because I counted. Just as I always did when I needed something to do with the part of my brain that was not currently occupied with staying calm. Nine steps across a polished floor with a room full of people who had not yet noticed anything was wrong and whom I intended to keep that way."Get your hands off her."I said it quietly. That was deliberate. Quiet in a crowded room carried further than loud in a crowded room, and it left no room for interpretation. Jason's hand dropped from Skylar's waist before he had consciously decided to move it, which told me the muscle memory of being spoken to that way was already doing its work.He stepped back and looked at me."Lawson." His voice was the one he used when he wanted to sound unrattled. He was not unrattled."What were you just doing?" I kept my voice at the conversational manner. "Were you about to kiss her?""Zane." Skylar's hand found my arm. "Stop it.You completely misr

HE TRIED TO KISS YOU

Chapter 70 Skylar's POVHe reached for my arm the moment we were outside."Don't." I stepped back before he could make contact. "Don't touch me right now."He dropped his hand. He stood in the evening air outside the venue with that stillness of his. The one that usually communicated patience but tonight communicated something else. He knew that he had done wrong and had not yet decided what to do with that."How could you do that?" My voice was low because I was not going to make more of a scene than had already been made. But that didn't mean I was calm. "How could you stand up in that room in front of people who were celebrating something and do that? I looked at you. I told you with my face to stop and you did it anyway.""He was about to…""He was not about to do anything." I said it clearly, because right now he needed to hear them without deflection. "Jason leaned toward my ear. He was going to say something. That is all that was happening.""Skylar. You don't know the kind of

I MISS YOUR BODY

Chapter 71 Skylar's POVI was asleep by eleven but not actually resting.My body was in the bed but my mind was somewhere on a dance floor at the Crane’s anniversary dinner, stuck on five words.“I miss your body.”I turned onto my side, pulled the sheet up then pushed it back down. Zane was beside me, breathing steadily, properly gone into sleep the way he always was when the day had used him up. I did not wake him.Jason had leaned close, put his mouth near my ear and I had gone rigid because proximity to Jason always carried its own weight. And then he had said that stupid sentence like it was reasonable or like it was something a normal person said.My brain had just stopped. No dramatic reaction,or sharp intake of breath, nothing anyone in the room could have clocked. Just a flat internal silence while I waited for the words to make sense.They did not make sense.Then the disgust arrived. Completely with no build-up required. Not because of the words themselves but because of w

WE'RE NOT A SOCIAL MEDIA FAMILY

Chapter 72Skylar's POV"I knew it, Zane." I tapped him hard on the shoulder. "That's why I didn't want you to butt in. You should have just… oh God." I tapped him again. "Wake up. Your face is all over the internet and they're making Jason look like the victim."He grunted and pushed himself up slightly on one elbow, eyes barely open. "Let them say what they want, Sky. I'm exhausted. Let's sleep. We'll talk tomorrow.""Tomorrow?" I pulled my phone up and held the screen in front of his face. "Look at this. Look at it."He squinted and looked. His eyes were doing the thing where they were technically open but processing very little. "It'll settle.""It will not settle. You punched a man at a dinner party and someone filmed it and now it's everywhere and Jason's PR team, because of course he has a PR team…has already put out a statement saying he was defending himself and you were the aggressor and…""Sky." He sighed "What?""Go to sleep."I stared at him. He had already put his head

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW ZANE LAWSON

Chapter 73 Skylar's POVI almost did not go.I stood outside the hospital ward for a full minute before I walked in. The last time I had been here the nurse had come out and said she was sorry and I had turned around and gone to put on a dress and stand at a dinner party and smile. That particular kind of rejection did not just go away because a week had passed.But I knocked. And this time the nurse smiled and said go ahead.Rory was sitting up in the bed. Her wrist was bandaged and she had a bruise along her left cheek that had turned yellow which meant it was healing. She looked smaller than she did normally, the way people looked in hospital beds regardless of their size. But her eyes were open and they found me the moment I came through the door.She did not smile. But she did not look away either."Hi," I said."Hi, Mum."Only two words. That was all. But she had said “Mum” and not looked at the wall and I held that carefully as I walked to the chair beside her bed and sat down

WHAT WAS ZANE'S MOTIVE

Chapter 73 Skylar's POV"What do you mean by that?"Mara did not answer immediately. She picked up her cup, drank, set it back down. I was sure she was choosing her words very carefully just to make sure what came out was what she actually meant."I'm not saying anything bad about him," she said. "I want you to hear that first.""Then say the thing.""He helped you very fast." She looked at me directly. "You showed up at my restaurant and you were broken, Skylar. You had nothing. You had left your house with nothing. And within days this man had given you a phone, a place to live, a brand, a building. That is a lot of help very fast." She paused. "I find that a little unusual."I opened my mouth."Let me finish." She raised one hand. "He also did all of this after finding out you were married. Not divorced. Married. A woman with children and a legal husband and a complicated situation. Most men hear that and they step back. He stepped forward." She tilted her head. "I'm not saying he

THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES

Chapter 74Skylar's POVBy the time we arrived at the police station, I was already wondering whether I should have insisted that Mara stay home and rest. She had been discharged only a few hours earlier, and despite the brave face she was putting on, the accident had clearly taken a toll on her. She moved more slowly than usual, and every now and then I caught her pressing a hand lightly against her side when she thought I wasn't looking.Unfortunately, Mara had never been the kind of person who listened when she had made up her mind.The moment she learned the police had found the driver, she decided she wanted to see him for herself, not hear about him.I had tried talking her out of it during the drive."You should be home." I said slowly."You sound like a grandmother." She turned to look at me from the passenger seat. "Skylar, if someone almost killed you and then walked away from the scene, wouldn't you want to see his face?"I didn't answer immediately because the truth was ob

JUST BE CAREFUL

Chapter 75 Zane's POV When Skylar arrived at my office that evening, I could tell immediately that she had spent the entire day thinking and she looked mentally exhausted before the day was even over. She walked in carrying her handbag and dropped into the chair opposite mine with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her. I closed the file I had been reviewing and set it aside. "How did it go?" She knew what I meant without asking. "The police station?" She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. "About as well as you'd expect." "Mara wanted to see the driver." For a moment she stared at the ceiling as though replaying the visit in her mind. "He wasn't what I expected. I thought I'd see somebody arrogant who looked like he didn't care what he'd done. Instead he looked terrified and disheveled and Nervous. Like he'd barely slept." "Did he admit to it?" A short laugh escaped her. "No. Apparently he doesn't remember anything." I shook my hea

COME BACK TO DAD

Chapter 76 Skylar's POV I arrived fifteen minutes early. The café Rory had chosen was located in a quiet part of the city, far from the business district and even farther from the neighborhood where Jason lived. It was the kind of place people visited when they wanted privacy rather than attention. Small wooden tables filled the interior, soft music played through hidden speakers, and the afternoon crowd was light enough that nobody paid much attention to anyone else. I sat near the window and checked my phone for what felt like the tenth time. Not because I expected a message, but waiting made me restless. I had spent years imagining conversations with my children. In some versions they forgave me. In others they refused to speak to me. Sometimes they were angry but sometimes they were curious. Reality, I was discovering, was far more complicated than anything I had imagined. When the café door opened, I looked up immediately. Rory entered first and Ethan followed behind h

WISEN UP KID?

Chapter 77Skylar POV“I thought we were having a normal conversation Rory but now you say this and… I don't even know what to say”“Mom you need to cut him some slack and stop being judgemental please” “Oh this is it. No wonder you were acting so nice. It's because you wanted to blurt out this nonsense from your mouth and wait…” I pushed up from my seat.The chair legs scraped harshly against the polished floor, the sound cutting through the charged silence like a warning. My heart hammered in my chest as I stood and the weight of years of carefully guarded emotions suddenly pressing down on me in this sterile, neutral-toned room. The soft lighting overhead did nothing to warm the growing tension; instead, it highlighted every micro-expression on their faces. Rory’s determined stare mixed with that flicker of vulnerability she tried to hide, and Ethan’s quiet watchfulness beside her. I had walked into this meeting expecting awkward small talk, maybe even a tentative bridge across t

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