Alle Kapitel von Pregnant By My Ex's Brother : Kapitel 111 – Kapitel 120

My mouth moved before my brain had anything useful to put in it.“He’s been helping with the hospital arrangements,” I said, too fast, wiping an invisible speck off the counter. “Transport, the meds schedule, the discharge paperwork. It’s been a lot, and Damien handled a lot of it so I wouldn’t have to leave you alone at the desk. That’s all.”Mother’s gaze stayed on me long enough to make the back of my neck itch. Then it shifted to Damien, who had the sense not to embroider the lie with details. He only nodded once, as if my inadequate explanation were complete and ordinary.“How considerate,” she said.The words could have been gratitude. They weren’t. But she was tired, newly home, and still measuring her strength in careful portions, so she let the thin story stand. For now. She asked Damien to pass the water, thanked him with the same polite steel as in the car, and let me walk her back to bed. When I closed her door to a soft gap, I stood in the hallway for a second with my pal

I wiped my mouth, flushed, and opened the stall because there was no version of staying locked in there that didn’t make it worse. Jess stood by the sinks with her arms crossed and a look on her face that had already moved past surprise into something tighter. I washed my hands longer than I needed to, rinsed my mouth, avoided the mirror until she stepped sideways into my sightline and made avoidance childish. “How long,” she said again. “Not here.” She checked the outer door, then nodded toward the far end of the corridor where a narrow meeting room sat empty between schedules. I followed her in. The second the door shut, the office noise dropped into a dull, distant wash and my stomach gave one more uncertain turn, as if it hadn’t finished with me. Jess didn’t sit. “Talk.” “It’s not food poisoning.” “No shit.” I pressed my palms to the edge of the table and stared at the grain in the wood. There were a hundred professional ways to handle this and none of them survived

ELENA He showed up at my desk at three-forty with his jacket on and an expression that had already decided the rest of my afternoon. Dana glanced up from her screen. Jess’s fingers froze over her keyboard. Damien didn’t bother lowering his voice into something discreet enough to spare me. “I need you for the rest of the day. Grab your bag.” The floor’s attention tilted toward us like a plant toward light. I stood because sitting under that stare felt worse, not because I intended to obey. “I have a deadline.” “It can move.” “No, it can’t.” I kept my tone professional for the audience and lethal for him. “If you need something signed, send it down. I’m not leaving early.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. For a second I thought he might actually argue in front of them, and the prospect of that kind of scene made my stomach turn for reasons that had nothing to do with nausea. Instead he nodded once, sharply, and walked toward the east stairwell. The expectation that I would fol

Damien stepped back an inch. The radio on the other side of the door kept spitting fragments of location updates while we stood in the stairwell trying to put our faces back into shapes that would survive fluorescent light. My mouth felt kissed. My shirt was twisted where his hand had gripped it. When I smoothed it with unsteady fingers, Damien watched the movement with a heat that had not gotten the message about interruption, eyes still dark, breathing still not fully even. For one reckless second I thought he might close the distance again despite the radio, despite his father, despite the entire building above and below us, and the worst part was the way my body leaned toward that possibility before my mind could veto it. “Fix your mouth,” I whispered. “My mouth.” “You look like you’ve been…” “I have been.” The edge of his voice was still rough from the kiss. He dragged a hand over his own lips once, as if that would erase anything, then reached out and tucked a st

ELENA He came back to my desk near the end of the day looking like someone had taken a fine blade to the parts of him that still bothered with public polish.The darkness was in the eyes, in the set of his mouth, in the way the space around him seemed to empty without him asking. Dana took one look and found a reason to be elsewhere. Jess mouthed what happened across the monitors and I shook my head once because I didn’t know, not really, only that Alexander’s office had swallowed him and returned something harder.“I’m driving you home,” he said.It was not a question this time. I still almost fought it on principle, then caught the particular stillness in him and decided the principle could survive one car ride. In the passenger seat I waited for an explanation. He gave me fragments instead: the floor, the optics, Alexander being Alexander. Nothing about the specific shape of the threat. Every time I pushed, his hands tightened on the wheel and his answers got shorter, until the qu