All Chapters of I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss With Triplets: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

44 Chapters

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE: Introductions

Emma's POVJulian's face does not move.I have watched a lot of men take news badly across a lot of dinner tables in a lot of previous lives, and I know what it looks like when a man decides to make his discomfort someone else's problem. Julian does not do it. He sits very still with his hand around his wine glass and his eyes on Liam, and he lets a full second pass in silence."Told me what?"Quiet. No edge. He is offering Liam the chance to be the one who says the next thing, because Julian is the kind of man who lets people walk into the rooms they build for themselves.Liam does not walk in.He looks at me instead."Perhaps I should have said hello to you first." His voice does the thing it does when he wants a room to relax before he takes something from it, warm and casual and almost apologetic. "I have been trying to get on your calendar for a year. I did not expect to find you tonight. I thought Friday dinner was the one place we would not accidentally cross paths."The lie is

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO: The Message

Emma's POVI do not send it.Not because I am afraid of her.But because sending it would be the first thing I have done in two years that Talia Sinclair got to make me do, and if I press that button tonight, at eleven forty-two on this Friday, while my hands are still cold from the pavement outside my building and my head is still full of Julian's I can wait and my chest is still tight from watching my ex-husband smile his way through a lie in the middle of my dinner, then she wins. Not the war, just this one moment. And she has been winning small moments for two years already, and I am tired of it.I set the phone face down on the kitchen table.Adèle watches me do it.She does not ask what the message said. She does not ask who I was about to send it to. She stands up, walks to the kettle, pours hot water into a fresh cup, drops a teabag into it, and slides the cup across the counter to me without a word."Drink," she says quietly. "Then talk. Or don't. Either is fine."I wrap both

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE: Saturday Morning

Emma's POVI wake up at five fifty-two.Not to Ace's foghorn, because Ace is still asleep. Not to Willa in the doorway, because Willa's still asleep too. I wake up to my own body, which has apparently decided that seven hours of sleep is the maximum it is going to allow me tonight, and I lie in the dark and I stare at the ceiling and I do not move.The apartment is quiet.Paris outside the window is doing its early Saturday thing, that pre-dawn hush before the boulangeries open, the low grey of the sky beginning to think about turning blue at the edges, and I lie under my duvet and I let my brain do what my brain has been trying to do since I closed my eyes at midnight, which is replay every second of yesterday evening on a loop it will not stop running.Liam walking past our table with his coat still on.Liam sitting at the window like a man auditioning to be misinterpreted.Julian's face when Liam asked she hasn't told you yet?The four unsent words to Talia glowing on my kitchen tab

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR: Sunday

Liam's POVI do not leave the hotel room for thirty-six hours.Not because I have decided not to, but because every time I put my hand on the door I think about walking out of it and then I think about where I would go, and there is no answer to that question that is not either back to her building, back to the restaurant, or into a bar to drink myself into a version of the day that I will regret tomorrow.So I sit on the edge of the bed instead. I order room service I do not eat. I stand at the window and I watch Paris be the weekend it currently is, and I think about the fact that I have not been alone in a room for this many hours in fifteen years.I have always been on the move and always kept myself busy.That is one of the things I understand about myself this weekend, sitting on the edge of a hotel bed at the George V without the buffer of Talia or the office or Marcus or a calendar with someone else's problems on it. I have kept myself busy for fifteen years because being still

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE: Monday

Emma's POVThe office is quiet when I arrive at seven forty, which is the way I like it. Noémie is at her desk already, because Noémie is always at her desk already, and she looks up when I come in with the small assessing glance she gives me every Monday."You slept?" she asks."A little.""A little is not enough.""A little is what I got."She hands me a cup of coffee that she has already made because she has been making it for me every Monday for eight months, and I take it to my office. I close the door and I sit down at my desk and I open my laptop and I try to remember what week it is.The week starts.There is a nine o'clock with the operations team about the Zurich account. There is a ten thirty with legal about a licensing question that has been sitting on my desk for a week. There is an eleven o'clock investor call that Bertrand has told me twice I should let him lead, and I have told him twice that I want to be on it, and he has stopped arguing because Bertrand knows when to

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX: Everything

Emma's POVI tell him.Not everything all at once, because everything all at once is not a story, it is a collapse, and I have spent two years turning what happened to me into a story that I can carry rather than a collapse that carries me.So I tell it the way I have learned to tell things when they matter, which is slowly, in order, with the exact weight each part deserves and no more.I tell him about the marriage.Not the marriage as it looked from the outside, which was a young CEO and his quiet wife at charity dinners in Los Angeles, but the marriage as it actually was, which was fourteen months of a man who barely looked at me while I stood beside him in rooms that had been built for him and slightly behind him in the specific way certain wives learn to stand when they understand they are not the reason the room exists.I tell him about the Harrington Gala. The dress that would not zip. The black dress I wore instead. The two women behind the pillar and what they said. The car r

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN: The Rabbit

Emma's POVI almost do not go to the Luxembourg.That is the thing I will think about later, standing in my kitchen at six in the morning with the kettle boiling and the light coming through the windows in the thin grey way. I almost do not go because going means the possibility of seeing him, and seeing him means the possibility of Ace running toward him because Ace has never been briefed about the complicated emotional architecture of adults who have failed each other, and Ace has decided that the man with the short name is someone worth running toward.But Tuesday belongs to us.I told myself that two years ago when I built this routine, and I told myself that two weeks ago when Liam first appeared on the bench, and I am not going to stop telling myself now because a man I used to be married to has decided that my park is a place he can show up to with or without invitation.I dress the children.We go to the park. The north gate is quiet in the late morning, the way it always is,

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT: The Addendum

Emma's POVBy Thursday afternoon the addendum is ready.Bertrand brings it into my office himself, which he does when something is not routine, and he closes the door behind him before he sits down.“You’ve read it?” he asks.“Twice.”“And?”I look at the document on my desk.Carson Holdings’ revised terms are not generous in a performative way. They are precise. They address every objection our board raised. They give Bellamy Inc leverage in three areas we did not expect to gain leverage. They concede a revenue split that would have been unthinkable six months ago.It is not desperation.It is intention.“He rewrote it himself,” I say.Bertrand nods. “Helena confirmed that.”I lean back in my chair.The office is quiet except for the low hum of the city through the windows and the faint sound of Noémie’s keyboard outside the door.“He is not trying to win,” I say slowly. “He is trying to show me he understands.”“Yes.”“That makes it more dangerous.”Bertrand’s mouth curves, not into

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE: What Julian Said

Emma's POVI read the second message twice.Liam just called me.I sit down slowly in my chair. The office is still holding the shape of Talia's departure, the specific vacuum that certain people leave behind them when they walk out of rooms, and I look at Julian's message and I feel the specific quiet of a moment when two separate things are happening at the same time and both of them are aimed at me.I call him back.He picks up on the second ring."Emma.""When?""An hour ago. He called my office directly. My assistant recognised the name.""What did he say?""He asked if we could meet."I close my eyes."Julian.""Yes, I know.""What did you tell him?""I told him I would think about it. I did not want to say yes or no without talking to you first."Of course he did.Of course Julian Beaumont, the man who has known me for eleven days and who has already earned more of my trust than most people earn in years, called me before agreeing to anything. Of course he understood without bei

CHAPTER FORTY: The Meeting

Liam's POVJulian Beaumont's office is small.That is the first thing I notice when I walk in, and it is not what I expected. I have spent the past two days constructing this man in my head as someone who occupies the kind of space I occupy, glass and steel and the quiet arrogance of a corner office on the top floor of a building he owns, and instead I am standing in a third-floor office on Rue de Miromesnil that smells faintly of old wood and coffee, with photographs of his family's factory on the walls and stacks of fabric samples on a table by the window.He does not stand up when I come in.That is the second thing I notice.Every man I have ever met in a professional context has stood when I entered a room. Julian Beaumont does not. He looks up from his desk, he acknowledges me with a small polite nod, and he gestures to the chair opposite him, and he waits.I sit."Mr. Beaumont.""Mr. Carson.""Thank you for seeing me.""You said it did not concern our businesses. I was curious w

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