All Chapters of Her Rebirth, His Regret : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The arrivals hall smelled like coffee and jet fuel and too many bodies packed too close, and I was still blinking against the fluorescent lights when I heard it — a scream that could probably be heard from the tarmac."MAEVE."Jane came barreling through the crowd like she'd forgotten personal space was a concept, arms already open, and I barely got my suitcase handle down before she slammed into me hard enough to knock the air out of both of us."You're here, you're actually here, oh my god!" She pulled back just enough to grip my face in both hands, inspecting me like I might be a forgery. "You look so French. Is that a French coat? Take it off, I want to see if it's lined.""It's not lined, and hello to you too." I hugged her again because once clearly wasn't going to cut it, and something in my chest that had been coiled tight for months finally, finally let go. She smelled like the same vanilla shampoo she'd used in college. Some things didn't change, and God, I needed that today

"Mom. Maeve." Dorothy's whole face lit up the second she cleared the doorway, sunglasses coming off in one smooth motion, like she'd walked in expecting an audience and was pleased to find one waiting. "What a surprise.""Dorothy."She crossed the room unhurried, kissed our mother's cheek, then turned to look me over properly, eyes moving slow from my coat down to my shoes and back up again. "You look wonderful. Paris agreed with you." Her voice softened, almost convincingly. "We worried, you know. All of us.""I'm sure you did.""No, really." She touched my arm, and I had to fight the urge to pull away from her in front of our mother, who was watching us both, hoping hard that a scene wasn't about to happen in a bakery on a Tuesday. "Funny timing, isn't it? You, back in the city, the same week the engagement went public. I saw the billboard went up Tuesday." Her lips pursed, gentle, like she was breaking bad news. "I do hope it wasn't too much of a shock, seeing it like that."Three

ALEXANDER The whiskey had gone warm in my glass, untouched for the last ten minutes, and I still hadn't managed to stop seeing her.Not the way she'd looked walking out of the bakery, shoulders squared, chin up like nothing had touched her at all. The second before that. The half-second where her eyes had found mine over Dorothy's bowed head and I'd forgotten, completely, how to do anything but look back."—which is why I'm telling you, the boat idea is stupid, Romy, we are not doing a boat—""It's not stupid, it's classic. Bachelor party on the water, everyone gets a little seasick, everyone bonds over it—""Nobody bonds over vomiting off the side of a yacht."I let the argument wash past me the way I had been for the better part of twenty minutes, Liam and Romy volleying logistics back and forth across the low table between us like the fate of the evening depended on it. Liam's wedding was seven days out. He deserved better than a friend who couldn't stay in his own head long enoug

"Thank you," Maeve said finally, and her voice came out steady, even warm, though her fingers had gone tight around the stem of her glass. "Seriously. It means a lot that you'd even offer. But I can't."My chest caved in on itself, quiet and total, a wall giving way behind my ribs."I built my name away from this family and mine on purpose." She wrapped both hands around her water glass, knuckles pale against the condensation, thumb pressing hard enough into the glass that it left a faint print behind when she finally let go. "Signing with Hagreeves undoes three years of work in one signature. I hope that makes sense."My grandmother studied her for a long moment, then huffed out a small laugh and shook her head, like she'd expected this and lost a bet with herself anyway."Fair enough. Had to try." A faint smile, the kind that never quite reached her eyes. "You'd have jumped at a worse offer if it came from literally anyone else on earth. That tells me everything I need to know about

Mary's townhouse smelled like eucalyptus and fresh coffee, and she was sitting up in her own bed, sheets a soft, absurdly expensive linen, a laptop balanced on her knees like bedrest was a mild inconvenience instead of a cardiac event."You're supposed to be resting.""I am resting." She didn't look up from the screen. "I'm resting extremely productively.""That's not how resting works, Mary.""It is when you're seventy-eight and bored out of your mind." She finally glanced at me over the top of her reading glasses, mouth curving. "Sit down. You're hovering. It's making me nervous, and my cardiologist says stress is bad for me now, so really, this is on you."I laughed despite myself and dropped into the chair beside her bed, the same one I'd practically lived in for three days after the ambulance. My back still ached from it. I didn't mind."How are you actually feeling?""Actually?" She set the laptop aside, some of the performance dropping out of her voice. "Tired. Old. Furious tha