All Chapters of He Never Claimed Me: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Ava woke up feeling like she hadn't slept at all. She’d spent half the night convincing herself the black car from the night before was just a stranger with nowhere else to go. Still, she found herself walking to the window before she even put the coffee on. The street was empty. The black car was gone. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, but the relief didn’t come. Instead, a lingering, unsettled feeling sat in her gut. She double-checked the locks on her way out, her fingers lingering on the deadbolt for a second longer than necessary. The salon was busy, but Ava couldn't find her rhythm. Every time the bell above the door chimed, she flinched. When her phone buzzed on the counter, she grabbed it, only to find an unknown number on the screen. She swiped to answer, but the line went dead. An hour later, a delivery man dropped off a bundle of lilies at the front desk. No card. No sender. Just flowers that looked too expensive for a random delivery. Tessa

Noah didn’t sleep. He spent the small hours of the morning pacing the floor of his office, the phone burning a hole in his hand. A car registered to a dead man wasn't just a coincidence it was a message. He felt restless, the distance he had kept between himself and Ava didn't feel like protection. It felt like negligence. He had rules about keeping her out of his world, but as the sky began to bleed into a pale, gray morning, those rules felt paper-thin. He didn’t care about the optics or the danger. He just needed to know she was safe. Ava dragged herself through her morning routine, her mind looping back to the phone call. The sound of that slow, deliberate breathing echoed in her head, louder than the morning traffic or the chatter of her neighbors. She didn’t tell Tessa. If she said it out loud, the fear would become something solid—something she couldn't outrun. Her phone buzzed on the counter. She looked down, her heart skipping a beat when she saw Noah’s name. She swip

Ava drove home with Noah on her mind. The conversation outside the salon replayed in her head the entire drive—the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d just said okayNo excuses. No disappearing act. It should have made her feel better. Instead, it just made her realize how much she’d missed him. That thought annoyed her. By the time she pulled into her driveway, she was already busy arguing with herself. The house sat exactly as she’d left it. No open gate. No strange cars. No feeling that someone was watching from the shadows. For the first time in days, she almost relaxed. Almost. She climbed out of the car and walked toward the front door. Then she stopped. Something white rested against the welcome mat. Ava froze. The world seemed to narrow. Slowly, she stepped closer. A flower. A single white lily. Perfect. Fresh. Deliberate. The blood drained from her face. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t an accident. Someone had been standing right here. Someone had come close enough to t

The house felt entirely different with Noah inside it. It wasn’t just his size, though he seemed to occupy the living room like a permanent, immovable fixture; it was the way the air had shifted. Every corner, every shadow, every creak of the floorboards felt heavy, charged with a constant, humming alertness. Ava had retreated to her bedroom twenty minutes ago, but the silence of the house was too loud. She lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the muffled sounds of the night. She knew he was still in the armchair in the living room. She knew he was sitting in the dark, motionless, guarding the door. After an hour of tossing, her thirst finally outweighed her nerves. She crept out into the hallway, the floorboards groaning under her feet. Noah was exactly where she had left him. He hadn't turned on a lamp. He hadn't turned on the television to pass the time. He was just a sharp silhouette in the chair, his eyes fixed on the front door as if he could hold it shut

The silence in the house had changed. Before Noah arrived, it was a thin, brittle thing, always threatening to snap under the weight of her own unease. Now, with the perimeter secured and his men hovering at the edges of the block, the house felt heavy, anchored, and claustrophobic. Ava tried to keep her hands busy. She moved through the rooms, straightening pillows that were already straight, folding laundry she’d already folded anything to stop the restless thrumming in her chest. She made coffee, the scent blooming sharp and bitter in the kitchen, and stood by the window for a long time. Everything outside looked annoyingly normal. A neighbor was out walking a golden retriever; the mail carrier moved from house to house with rhythmic efficiency. It was the kind of banal, gray morning that made the sheer, cold terror of the night before feel like a fever dream she’d invented. Get it together, Ava, she told herself, clutching the mug until her knuckles went white. He’s coming bac