All Chapters of Untouched for Three Years: Leaving My Billionaire Husband and Return the Pool: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

By the time Romy exited the aquatic center, the last of the afternoon light had begun to fade. Long shadows stretched across the parking lot.She had showered and changed into loose training clothes. She was feeling more relaxed but exhaustion still sat visibly in the line of her shoulders. Her damp hair had been pulled into a low ponytail. One hand was wrapped firmly around the strap of her training bag, as if relaxing her grip might allow the day’s achievement to slip away.Outside the center entrance, the silver Maybach waited at the curb.Devon stood beside it.His driver was nowhere in sight. He had removed his tie, and the top button of his white shirt was open beneath his navy suit jacket. One hand rested against the roof of the car. He didn’t open the rear door when he saw her.Romy slowed her approach.Devon looked at the weariness around her eyes and seemed to reconsider whatever he had prepared to say.Instead, he said quietly, “You’re looking tired. Come on, I’ll take you

The dinner table had barely been cleared when Romy went upstairs to their bedroom and pulled the black travel bag away from the wardrobe.Devon appeared in the doorway as she set it on the bench and opened the zipper.“You don’t need to pack tonight,” he said. “You’ve got two full days this weekend.”“I know.” Romy unlocked her phone and opened the residential packing checklist. “That’s why I want to get the important things ready now. I haven’t attended a residential training camp in three years. So, if I forget something, I’ll still have the weekend to realize what’s missing, and add it.”Her reasoning was practical. No argument there.She didn’t hesitate over packing what she might need for the next six weeks. And she didn’t cast an eye around the bedroom as though anything there would still be available to her later. She crossed from the wardrobe to the drawers with the quiet efficiency of someone separating what belonged to her, from everything she intended to leave behind.Devon

He had always known that his mother could be a handful, but she hadn’t always been like that. At least, in his childhood memories, he had a mother who was very gentle and kind.Margaret had demanded his divorce before, but grief and fury from losing her husband had made her unusually vicious. She had paced beside the drawing-room fireplace, one hand gripping the pearls at her throat.“I will never understand your father,” she had said. “Meeting that poor girl recovering in hospital was apparently enough to damage his judgment. What could he possibly have seen in her that made him insist you marry her?”Devon had told her to stop.Margaret had not.“Bad breeding would have been enough. But she can’t even give this family a child. Are you really going to sacrifice the Kensington line for a barren hen?”The argument that followed had been the worst they had ever had.Margaret had never liked Romy, but until then she had kept her contempt inside the language of family suitability and medi

“Den,” Jordan called through the water. “Which one of us do you think she’ll choose?”The words might have been a joke. They might have been terror wearing the only voice Jordan knew how to give it.Romy answered with the direction of her body.She swam toward Devon.He had already begun to sink by the time she reached him. One of her arms locked beneath his shoulder and forced his face above the surface.“Relax,” she ordered. “Kick. Breathe. Hold my shoulder, not my neck.”Devon coughed and tried to turn.Beyond her, Jordan’s red-brown hair appeared and disappeared between the waves. A life ring floated several yards from him, but every movement of the sea carried it farther away.“My friend,” Devon gasped. “There’s another—Jordan—”Romy tightened her hold as he struggled.“I know.”“Go back.”“If I release you, you’ll sink.”“Jordan—”“I can keep one person alive until the rescue boat reaches us,” she said. “Only one.”There was no cruelty in her voice. Only the brutal calculation o

Romy hung the towel over the back of the chair at her dressing table and crossed to the bed.The mattress shifted when she climbed onto her side. She drew the duvet over her legs, aware of how little space remained between them compared with every other night.Devon didn’t reopen the magazine. He was looking at her carefully.Romy touched the side of her face. “Is something wrong?”“No.”His gaze moved over the damp ends of her hair, the color in her cheeks, and the bare skin above the neckline of her nightdress.“You look different.”Her hand lowered. “Different? How?”Devon considered the question with the seriousness he might have given a figure in a financial report.“Healthier,” he said at last. “Brighter.”Romy waited.“There is a shine to you that wasn't there before.” His thumb moved once along the edge of the closed magazine. “During the last three years, you sometimes looked like a plant kept too long in a room without sunlight. But since you’ve started training again, it is