RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

Hazel's POVThe morning of the Wentworth Gala, I woke to a voicemail I almost deleted without listening to, recognizing the number before the message even played. I sat on the edge of my bed in the gray London light for a long time before I finally pressed play, my thumb hovering over the screen like it might burn me.Julian's voice, when it came, sounded different than I remembered, rougher, stripped of the polished calm he wore like a second skin in every boardroom and every anniversary dinner I had endured for five years. He told me about a driver named Desmond Ruiz. He told me about Penelope, confirming everything Eleanor had already relayed in careful, secondhand pieces. He told me, in a voice that cracked once, audibly, near the end, that the accident that had cost me my legs and my career had never been an accident at all.I sat very still after the recording ended, replaying it twice more, feeling the same cold, unsteady grief Eleanor's phone call had first stirred loose in me

Hazel's POV"What is it?" Julian asked, the urgency in my expression apparently eclipsing, for him, everything still unresolved between us.I looked up from the phone, the coolness I had been holding onto all evening gone entirely from my face, replaced by something closer to fear. "It's the university," I said. "Someone's leaked my medical records to the press. There's already an article live claiming I faked my recovery to trap a billionaire husband into a payout."The words felt strange in my mouth, absurd and violating all at once, the private architecture of my own body suddenly rendered into a headline for strangers to argue over. I scrolled the article with hands that had gone unsteady, Adrian reading over my shoulder, his jaw tightening at whatever he found there."Who would even have access to those records?" Adrian asked quietly.I already suspected the answer before I lifted my eyes from the screen. Across the ballroom, near the terrace doors, I caught sight of a face I had

Hazel's POVThe morning after th⁠e gala, L‍ondon looked wash​ed clean, like the ra‍in had scrubbed something loose from the sky​ overnight. I stood‍ at my apar​tment window⁠ with a cup of t‌ea going cold i‌n my⁠ hand​s, watching people‍ hu‍rry pas‌t wit⁠h umbrellas th‌ey n‍o lon‍ger needed, fo​ld‌ing them‌ cl‍os‍ed one by one as the sun broke weakly th​rough the​ cl​ouds, and I th​ought about the six⁠ months Ju​li​an⁠ had​ asked me to give‌ him.Six mon‍ths had⁠ never felt so‌ short an‌d​ so‍ lo​n‍g at the same time. I turned th‍e num‍ber ov​er in​ my m​ind the⁠ way I used to tu​rn a difficult​ phrase of c⁠horeogr‍aphy over in my bod⁠y, testing it f⁠rom every angle before I tr‌usted it enough⁠ t‍o perform. Six mont​hs to decide whether fiv⁠e‌ y​e‌a​rs of silence could⁠ be‍ undone.‍ Six months‌ to decide whether the man wh​o ha‍d flown ac‌ross an o⁠cean to tell me​ a har​d truth was the same man who h‍ad once sat at the head of a table and le⁠t⁠ hi⁠s friends laugh at my limp. I wasn‍'t

Hazel's POVThe morning of my keynote, I woke before my alarm, the old dancer's habit of rising early still living somewhere in my body even six months into a life built around lecture halls instead of stages, my muscles remembering a discipline my mind had long since redirected toward footnotes and citations instead of pliés and pirouettes. I stood in front of the mirror longer than I meant to, studying the woman looking back at me, steadier on her feet than she'd been in five years, though still, in certain lights, carrying the ghost of a limp that no physical therapist could fully erase, a small unevenness in my gait that I had slowly stopped apologizing for.I thought, standing there, of the woman I had been on my fifth wedding anniversary, pressing suits with a devotion that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with proving I still had a use in a house that no longer needed a dancer. That woman would not have recognized the one blinking back at her now, hair pulled in

Hazel's POVI spent the two days before his arrival rehearsing what I would say, though I knew from experience that rehearsed words rarely survived contact with Julian's actual presence, the particular gravity he carried into any room he entered. I graded papers I barely remembered reading, took a longer route home from campus than necessary simply to have more time to think, and twice picked up the phone to cancel the meeting entirely before setting it back down, aware that whatever fear was driving that impulse was not the kind of fear I wanted to keep obeying anymore.Julian flew to London two days later, not to command me home this time, but to sit across from me at a small café near the university with a folder of financial documents he slid across the table without a word, letting me read them myself instead of explaining them to me the way he might have a year ago, a small but deliberate change I noticed and understood the cost of immediately. Penelope's family firm was buried