All Chapters of Too Late: She Is Gone With Your Baby: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Chapter 22ADRIAN Vivian had said as much. My mother had said something similar, in the way my mother said things, with less gentleness and more specific instruction about what I ought to do instead. I picked up my phone and put it down again. Julian had threatened to call the police and he had meant it and he had the standing to follow through. I had grabbed Elena's wrist at a public event and it was still circulating online and the narrative was not flattering. Another incident would move from gossip to something with legal weight. I needed to be rational. I was going to be rational. Being rational lasted until Saturday afternoon. I had gone to the park near my building because it was a thing my doctor had suggested in a way that implied I was not managing stress adequately, and I was trying to demonstrate to myself that I could follow reasonable advice. I had been walking for fifteen minutes when I heard him. "If you go that way, the ducks get angry. I found that out alrea

Chapter 24 ARIA I told myself it was nothing for three days. It was a reasonable thing to tell myself. Julian had a life before me, a full life, with relationships and history that had nothing to do with the woman he found half-conscious and nameless in a hospital bed. It would have been strange if he didn't. I had no claim on the years before I existed to him as anyone at all. But the stone stayed where it was, and on the fourth day, while Julian was at a meeting with the venue about the final performance logistics and Eli was occupied with his tablet under the stage manager's supervision, I found myself in our hotel room going through a box of his things. I was not looking for anything specific. I told myself that too. The box had come with us from city to city for the length of the tour, a small archive box of business files and old photographs Julian kept for sentimental reasons, things he sometimes pulled out to show Eli, university photos, early agency photos, the small art

Chapter 26 ARIA I was coming out of the small grocery store two streets from the hotel with Eli's hand in mine and a paper bag of fruit balanced against my hip when I saw her standing by the entrance. Ava. She was not dressed for coincidence. She was standing too still, too deliberately positioned near the door, the kind of waiting that told you a person had been waiting specifically for you and not for anything else. "Aria Vale," she said, and her voice had none of the warmth I had seen in the park that day with Julian. "Or should I say Aria. I don't actually know what to call you." "Excuse me?" I said, my grip on Eli's hand tightening slightly without my deciding to do it. "I think we should talk," she said, stepping closer. "Woman to woman." Eli looked up at her, then at me, his small face doing the thing it did when he sensed adults behaving strangely around him. "Mum, who's this?" "Nobody, sweetheart," I said. "Go stand by the window for a second, okay? Look at the puppi

Chapter 28ARIAJulian sat back down, his elbows on his knees, his voice careful. "It would look like insecurity. It would look like the lead musician of the orchestra had a problem with a company representative over something personal, and in the industry, that kind of story travels fast and it does not travel kindly." A pause. "It would be framed as you feeling small compared to her."The specific cruelty of it settled over me like weather.She had positioned herself perfectly. She had professional standing I could not challenge, family protection I could not go around, and a narrative ready to deploy the moment I tried to remove her. If I pushed, I looked threatened. If I stayed quiet, she stayed close."So she stays," I said."For the duration of the investor agreement," he said. "Yes."I nodded once and said nothing further.Julian reached for my hand. I let him take it."Aria. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I thou

Chapter 30JULIAN"No," I said.She looked at me with the particular expression of a person who had expected that answer."You were hers," I said. The words came out before I had fully decided to say them, but they were true and I did not take them back. "That's the honest answer, Ava. I'm sorry for it. But you asked me directly and that's the truth. I couldn't have her. She was with Adrian. She was married and unreachable and I had known her since university and I had spent years watching her be somewhere I couldn't get to."She was quiet. Something moved across her face that I recognized as genuine pain and I felt something for it, some old regret, but not enough to change anything."And now you have her," she said."Now I have her," I said. "We're getting married. Whatever this is, whatever you think you're going to accomplish with those photographs, I am asking you to stop. Not as a threat. As someone who knows you well enough to know you are better than this."Something flickered