All Chapters of After Midnight With Him : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Ethan’s POVSophia never looked back. She walked away without hesitation, her shoulders straight and her head held high. The woman who had once cried over me, who had begged me to stay, who had loved me with everything she had—was gone. In her place stood someone I barely recognized. Stronger. Colder. Untouchable.I stood frozen on the pavement, chest rising and falling rapidly as anger, regret, and frustration twisted together like a knife in my gut. The afternoon sun felt too harsh on my skin. The noise of the city—car horns, footsteps, distant chatter—faded into a dull roar in my ears.The security guards remained between us until Sophia disappeared into the crowd. Only then did they step back, their postures still alert and professional. Employees who had witnessed the confrontation whispered among themselves before slowly returning to their routines, stealing glances at me as they passed.I clenched my fists so tightly my nails dug into my palms.“So this is what you’ve become,”

Sophia's POVFor the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn't performing happiness. I simply had it.Eleanor's living room smelled like crayons and buttered popcorn, and the twins had commandeered me the second I walked through the door, dragging me down onto the rug before I'd even taken off my coat. Wyatt shoved a drawing into my hands—something involving a dinosaur riding what I could only assume was a skateboard—and demanded I guess what it was, while his brother Milo tried to talk over him with an entirely different, competing explanation."It's obviously a *dragon*," Milo insisted."It's a dinosaur," Wyatt said, aghast at the accusation. "Dragons don't have this many teeth.""Dragons can have as many teeth as they want, it's *my* dragon—"I laughed. Really laughed, the kind that comes from somewhere low in your chest and takes you by surprise, the kind I hadn't let myself do in front of anyone in longer than I wanted to admit. It felt strange in my throat at first, l

Damien's POVThe report on my desk detailed a shipping delay out of Rotterdam, three separate clauses of liability I needed to flag before the call with legal at nine, and a projected loss figure I should have found far more interesting than I currently did. I'd read the same paragraph twice without absorbing a single word of it.Austin knocked once and let himself in without waiting for a response, which had become something of a habit over the years, one I'd never bothered correcting because it was rarely worth the effort."You're going to want to hear this," he said, dropping into the chair across from my desk uninvited."I'm listening." I didn't look up from the file."Flowers were delivered to Miss Bennett last night. White roses. A dozen, apparently the expensive kind, not the gas station variety." Austin's tone was deliberately light, the way it always was when he was watching for a reaction and didn't want to seem like he was watching for one. "Card was signed. Ethan."I turne

Sophia's POVI was still holding the card from the roses when my phone rang again, and for one disoriented second I thought it might be the boutique calling back, or Damien checking in, or even, absurdly, Ethan himself, brazen enough to call directly after everything.It was worse than any of those.*Mom.*The contact name still read that way, unchanged, because I'd never gotten around to editing it, the way you don't get around to a lot of things when some part of you is still hoping the old version of a relationship might come back on its own. I stared at it for three rings before I answered, some old, deeply worn instinct in me unable to simply let it go to voicemail."Hello?""Sophia." Margaret Bennett's voice arrived exactly the way it always did—clipped, immediately businesslike, no warmth wasted on a greeting. "Your father is on the line as well.""Sophia." Richard's voice joined a beat later, equally brisk. "We need to talk about the wedding."I closed my eyes, standing in Ele

Sophia's POVI woke before my alarm, in the gray, uncertain light just before sunrise, and for one merciful, disoriented moment I didn't remember what today was.Then it settled over me all at once—the weight of it pressing down before I'd even opened my eyes fully. Today was supposed to be my wedding day.I lay still in the unfamiliar guest bed, staring up at Eleanor's ceiling, listening to the quiet sounds of the house waking up around me—the twins' muffled voices somewhere down the hall, the distant clink of Eleanor moving through the kitchen, the ordinary rhythm of a morning that was supposed to feel nothing like this one.The wedding invitation was still sitting on the nightstand where I'd left it the night before, gold foil catching the thin morning light. I hadn't been able to throw it away when it first arrived, months ago—some part of me, even then, unwilling to fully commit to the future it represented, as if not discarding it meant I still had a choice.I picked it up now a