All Chapters of He Chose My Sister, So I Married His Enemy: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

By the time I reached arrivals, I had stopped caring whether I looked like a woman who had spent hours on a plane. My husband was somewhere on the other side of those doors, and vanity had become considerably less urgent than finding him.The hall was crowded, drivers holding signs, families waving, and for a few seconds I couldn't find him at all among the faces. My heartbeat picked up in a way that had nothing to do with the walk from the gate. I knew intellectually he would be there, and still I scanned the crowd twice before I saw him.He was standing slightly apart from everyone else, jacket off, sleeves neat, phone forgotten in one hand. Then he saw me, and I watched something in him give way that he'd kept perfectly composed through every video call, every message, every ordinary conversation for weeks. His shoulders loosened. His mouth parted slightly, like he'd meant to say something and forgotten it entirely.He moved before I did, crossing the distance between us without an

I knew Damien was beside me before I remembered I was in Singapore. His arm was heavy across my waist, my leg tangled with his, and for a few seconds the only fact that registered was warmth and weight and the particular way he breathed when he was still mostly asleep. Then I opened my eyes and found the unfamiliar ceiling, the unfamiliar light, and Singapore arrived a distant second to the more important fact of him.He was already awake when I looked over, watching me with an expression I recognized. "What?" I asked. "Nothing." "You're staring." "Apparently you still move closer around four," he said, and I looked down at exactly how tangled we'd become overnight. "That sounds unverified." "I have accumulated evidence."I didn't move away from him. If anything I settled closer, running my thumb along his jaw, feeling the roughness of a morning that hadn't yet met a razor. "That seems deliberate," he said. "I'm conducting research." "On?" "Whether you're as distracting in Singapore."

"You realize that sounded suspicious," I told him as we walked."That seems to be your preferred interpretation of everything I say."I tried guessing anyway. A private club, some rooftop bar with a view he'd been saving, a restaurant he'd charmed into secrecy. He wouldn't confirm or deny any of it, and I finally gave up when he simply smiled and told me I'd see soon enough.The place turned out to be nothing like I'd imagined. A narrow bookshop-café tucked into an old quarter of the city, a handful of tables spilling onto a terrace that looked out over the water, nothing exclusive about it at all. No reservation, no host waiting to recognize his name. An older woman behind the counter looked up and greeted him easily, using a name I recognized as his own without any title attached to it, and I watched something in his shoulders loosen the moment we stepped inside.He took off his jacket without being asked, rolled his sleeves once, and didn't check his phone the entire time we sat do

I woke before Damien on our last full morning and made myself stop before the thought fully formed. Last morning waking up here. I remembered what he'd told me before he left, months ago now, in a different country entirely. Stop saying goodbye to me while I'm still here. I decided the same rule applied in reverse, and I let myself simply lie there instead, his arm heavy across my waist, refusing to turn the moment into something smaller by naming it too soon.We worked near each other for most of the morning, him at the small table with his laptop, me curled on the sofa answering programme messages, and it wasn't like the long-distance calls at all. I reached over and stole his coffee without asking. He touched my ankle under the table without looking up from whatever he was reading. He kissed my forehead once on his way past, and I complained that he was interfering with productivity."You crossed continents voluntarily.""I didn't realize there would be workplace harassment."A mes

Damien locked the apartment door behind us, and I caught myself looking back once before we reached the elevator. He noticed, of course. "Your chair is still waiting.""I haven't chosen it yet.""I'm aware. Apparently my wife requires extensive furniture research."I was leaving, but I already expected to walk back through that door again, and the difference from the last time one of us had gone sat quietly beside me the whole way down.He drove me himself, and his hand kept finding mine at red lights, resting on my thigh, threading through my fingers when the traffic gave him a free hand. He was quieter than usual, and I asked if he was all right."No," he said, honestly. Then, after a beat, "I will be.""Me too," I admitted."I dislike your flight time," he said, a little later, trying for lightness."You approved nothing about it.""A serious administrative failure.""You were the one who said you'd take every one of the four days.""I was operating with incomplete information."So