Semua Bab TOO LATE TO WANT ME : Bab 81 - Bab 89

Chapter 78I kept both hands on the wheel even though I could not feel them anymore. The sting in my palm was still there, sharp and immediate and every time I tried to push it away, it came back harder. I had slapped my own daughter. I had raised my hand to my child.The road ahead blurred for a moment and I blinked fast, forcing myself to focus. I would not cry. Not yet. Not while I was still driving.But the truth of what I had done sat heavy in my chest, pressing down like something too large to swallow. I should not have done that. No matter what she said. No matter what she was trying to do. She was still my child and I had let my hurt make me someone I did not want to be.That was Jason's gift to me. That was what years of him had left behind. A woman who could lose herself in a moment, who could reach for violence when words failed her. I hated him for that. I hated what he had shaped me into without me even noticing it was happening.I turned onto the main road and exhaled sl

Chapter 80 SKYLAR POV The smile faded before it could fully form. I still had weeks to wait before any of that mattered. Court dates moved slowly, and drunk drivers with decent lawyers knew how to stretch a single hearing into three. I pushed the papers on my desk into a neat stack and told myself I would think about Mara's case tomorrow, and Rory's silence some other day, and the gala invitation sitting unanswered in my inbox whenever I found the energy to care about seating charts. Tomorrow came slower than I expected. Then it came anyway. Four weeks later, my phone rang while I was standing in the middle of the design floor, arguing with a fabric supplier about a shipment that had somehow lost color halfway across the ocean. I almost didn't answer. Then I saw the name. "Give me a second," I told the supplier, and stepped into the hallway. "Mara?" "We won." Two words. That was all she said at first, and something about the flatness of her voice worried me until I he

Chapter 82 Skylar's POV The powder room on the east side of the ballroom was quieter than the rest of the gala, marble and low gold light, the kind of hush that only existed in places built for people who never had to wait for anything. I hadn't planned on needing a moment alone. But watching Jason disappear back into the crowd, and Zane's jaw still tight from whatever had passed behind his eyes when Jason walked away, I'd felt the evening pressing in on me all at once, and I excused myself to Mara with nothing more than a quiet "give me five minutes." I ran the tap and pressed cool water against my wrists, watching my own reflection in the mirror, the emerald silk catching the light exactly the way I'd designed it to. For a moment I let myself just breathe. No Jason. No calculating what he might do next. No wondering what Zane's silence had meant. Just five minutes. The door opened behind me, and I glanced up expecting Mara, already forming an apology for taking too long. It wa

Chapter 84Zane's POVI called her number for the fourth time, standing in the middle of the corridor with her clutch still clutched in my other hand, watching the screen count through rings that nobody was ever going to answer.Voicemail again. Her voice, warm and unaware, telling me to leave a message."Skylar, if you get this, call me back the second you see it." My own voice sounded strange to me, too controlled, the kind of calm I'd trained myself to perform in boardrooms during hostile negotiations. It wasn't calm at all underneath. Underneath, something had already started screaming.Mara reached me at a near run, her heels abandoned somewhere behind her, stockinged feet slapping against marble. "What is it. What's wrong.""Her phone was on the floor. Her clutch was on the counter. The tap was still running.""Maybe she dropped it. People drop things.""Mara." I turned the phone screen toward her, the lock screen still glowing with a photo of Skylar and her children from years

Chapter 86Zane's POVElena stood in my office with her arms crossed, staring at the wall of security stills I'd had printed overnight, the same grainy frame repeated across three sheets of paper. Skylar's face turned back toward the ballroom. Her steps unsteady. Then nothing."Talk me through what you have," she said, not looking away from the images."A partial plate. A car that wasn't booked through any registered service for the gala. Two figures escorting her out, one female, one male, neither one identified yet." I rubbed a hand across my jaw, aware of how little sleep sat behind my eyes and not caring at all. "That's it. That's everything.""That's not nothing, Zane.""It's not enough."Mara sat across from my desk, hollow eyed, a cup of coffee gone cold in front of her that she hadn't touched in over an hour. She'd refused to go home. I hadn't argued with her about it, because I understood exactly what it felt like to sit somewhere useless just to avoid sitting somewhere quiet