All Chapters of Cursed To Love You: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

96 Chapters

Telling The Room

Caden made it a full twenty-four hours, which he later described as a personal record.Odette needed forty seconds."You're doing the face," she said, the moment he walked through her door."What face.""The face you did when you found out about my birthday party three years early. The face that means you know something and physically cannot hold it.""I don't have a face.""Caden."He held out for exactly four more seconds."Isla's pregnant," he said, in a rush, and then looked immediately relieved, like something physically painful had been released from his body.Odette called Isla within the hour."Did he tell you," Isla asked, picking up, "or did you just know?""Both simultaneously," Odette said. "His face told me, and then when I asked, he confirmed it.""He lasted a full day.""That's genuinely impressive, for him."From there it moved fast, the way things did in that particular group of people — three hours, start to finish.Zachary called Reid himself, which was how Reid und

The Doctor's Appointment

Isla came down the stairs and found Zachary already sitting in the car, engine off, waiting.She hadn't asked him to come. She got in and didn't mention it, filing it under the growing list of things she no longer needed to ask him for."You've been down here a while," she said, buckling her seatbelt."Ten minutes.""You could've come up.""You looked like you were having a moment with the mirror. I didn't want to interrupt a moment.""I was deciding if this shirt made me look pregnant or just like I'd had a big breakfast.""For the record, neither.""That's not helpful, Zachary.""You look like yourself. I told you that already, back at the wedding. I'm not going to have a different answer just because there's more going on underneath now."She let that sit for a second, then reached over and squeezed his knee once before he pulled out of the space.The waiting room, when they got there, was nothing like the ones he was used to — brighter, louder, a scattering of couples in every sta

The Room

They spent Saturday doing nothing practical about the room at all.Isla sat cross-legged on the bare floor with a mug of tea, looking at the walls the way she looked at every empty space — like it hadn't decided yet what it wanted to be, and her job was just to wait it out.Zachary sat down beside her, back against the wall, without being asked."You're doing your thing," he said."What thing.""The thing where you go quiet and stare at a wall like it's about to tell you something.""It might.""It's drywall, Isla.""Everything's drywall until it isn't."He almost laughed, and let the quiet settle instead, and for a while they just sat there, the morning light shifting slowly across the floor between them."Dublin," he said eventually. "If the timeline flexes the way you said, what does the next year actually look like.""Busy. Good busy." She turned her mug slowly in her hands. "Some months there, some months here. You flying back and forth more than either of us wants, probably.""I

He Is Going To Be Fine

Caden made a sound that was technically a word and entirely incomprehensible, some collision of "what" and a strangled cheer that came out as neither.Odette got there faster, both hands flying to her mouth, eyes already welling."Say it again," Caden said. "I don't think I heard it right.""We're getting married," Reid repeated, patient, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth."You heard it right," Wren said. "I promise.""Good," Sloane said, from his spot by the window, and it landed with more weight than the word usually carried from him. He set his glass down like he wanted both hands free for a moment, though he didn't do anything with them.Lyra smiled, the specific smile she saved for moments that confirmed something she already believed about the world, and reached over to squeeze Sloane's arm without looking away from Reid and Wren.Isla, without meaning to, burst into tears, which surprised her more than anyone else in the room."Sorry," she said, laughing through

The Results (Again)

The email came in early, before either of them was fully awake, and Zachary read it alone in the kitchen the way he'd always done — old habit, the one thing that hadn't fully unlearned itself even after everything.He read it twice.Then he carried his tablet into the bedroom, where Isla was still half-asleep, hair over her face, and sat on the edge of the bed."Isla."She stirred, one eye opening. "Is that a work face or a doctor face.""Doctor face. Good doctor face."She sat up properly then, reaching for it, and read through the report slowly, brow furrowed with concentration rather than worry."What does this mean in plain language," she said. "I don't have the energy for medical language before coffee.""It means the remission is holding. Strengthening, actually. She wants to move from monthly monitoring to quarterly.""Which means—""Which means she trusts my body to manage it longer between checks."Isla set the tablet down on the blanket between them. Reached for the mug on t

Dublin

CHThe pigeons started it."Someone is keeping actual livestock in that courtyard," Zachary said, standing at the kitchen window on their second morning, watching a man in a flat cap scatter feed across the cobblestones below."They're pigeons, not livestock.""They're loud. And there are a lot of them.""It's charming.""It's a health hazard.""You're being dramatic.""I'm being accurate."It went on like that for two days, low-grade and pointless, until they both simply stopped mentioning it, the argument dissolving the way small ones did between them now, without anyone declaring a winner.The apartment itself was small, a little impractical, one window in the bathroom that didn't fully close, but it had good light in the mornings and a kettle that worked and that was, they'd both agreed, more than enough.Isla left early most days for the gallery site, and Zachary watched her go each time with something that felt closer to admiration than habit.He saw it properly the first time he

The Next Two Years

They talked about it across two evenings, spread out over the small kitchen table, no crisis in it, just two people negotiating a life that had more moving parts than either of them had planned for."If I take the expansion," Isla said, on the first night, "it's not eight months anymore. It's closer to two years, on and off.""Take it.""You're saying that fast.""Because the answer is fast. This is the project of your life, Isla. You've said as much yourself.""I have.""Then take it."She turned her mug slowly on the table. "And what happens with you.""I've been thinking about that.""For how long.""Longer than I've admitted to you."He laid it out carefully — Reid stepping into a formal President role, the daily operations finally, fully out of Zachary's hands, Zachary moving to Chairman, a position that required his name and his judgment far more than his physical presence in a building."You've been building toward this for months," she said. "Without telling me.""I wasn't sur

Sloane Asks

Zachary's phone buzzed on the counter while he was making coffee. Four words from Sloane.I need the jeweler.He didn't ask questions. He forwarded the name and number without comment, because some things didn't need commentary attached.Then he called Caden, because some information was too significant to process alone."FINALLY," Caden said, before Zachary had even finished explaining. "I've been waiting for this since — do you know how long I've been waiting for this?""I have a rough idea.""Chapter fourteen, Zachary. Chapter fourteen of knowing this man. I have receipts. I have a running list of moments where I said, out loud, to multiple people, that he was going to marry her eventually."Three texts arrived in quick succession after they hung up, each one a fragment of increasingly detailed analysis of the Sloane-and-Lyra timeline, culminating in a message that simply read: This tracks. I called it.Nobody witnessed the proposal itself. That was intentional, in its own quiet wa

Six Months

The kitchen table had turned into a second office most mornings, laptop propped against the fruit bowl, Isla balancing a mug of decaf against the curve that had become impossible to ignore now."Bonjour," she said, waving at the screen, "sorry, one second, my husband's about to walk through the background making coffee, ignore him.""I always ignore him," the Paris partner said, deadpan, and Isla laughed loud enough that Zachary glanced over from the counter."I heard that.""You were meant to."The São Paulo call, twenty minutes later, went less smoothly — a delay in the feed meant Zachary crossed behind her twice before the partner on the other end finally asked, politely confused, "Is someone else joining us?""No," Isla said. "That's just background.""He walks a lot.""He does. It's a whole thing."She closed the laptop an hour later and stretched, one hand pressed to the small of her back, and looked toward the room at the end of the hall."We should probably actually do somethi

The Two Of Them

Wren sat across the kitchen table from Isla, both hands wrapped around a mug of tea, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all.The apartment was quiet around them, afternoon light coming in low through the window, the plant on the sill throwing a long shadow across the table."Four weeks," Isla said finally. "That's what the doctor said. You're four weeks behind me.""I still can't quite believe it," Wren said. "Both of us. At the same time. What are the odds.""With this group? Honestly, pretty high. I think we're all just operating on the same clock now, whether we planned it or not."Wren laughed, but it faded quickly, something more serious moving in behind it."Can I say something," she said. "And you won't think less of me for it.""Always. That's not a real question, Wren.""What if I'm not—" She stopped, turned the mug slightly in her hands, watching the tea shift. "What if I'm not the kind of person who's good at this? I've spent my whole career being precise. Co

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