All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Wife Does Not Exist: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Roman read the email and handed my phone back."That's a very big offer.""That's all you're going to say?""No. I'm currently having several selfish thoughts. I'm trying to separate them from the useful ones."I smiled despite myself. I told him it wasn't even a real offer yet, only something they'd discuss if the three months went well."Then don't make a five-year decision about a three-month opportunity."He was right, and it was such a relief not to have to argue him toward reason for once. We agreed to deal with the three months first."So we have twelve days," he said."Eleven, technically. I leave on the twelfth.""You've already taken one away?"That launched the countdown, though neither of us called it that at first.The days that followed felt like a version of our marriage I hadn't let myself hope for. He kissed me goodbye one morning while I was still half asleep, easy and unthinking. I left a restoration tool on the kitchen counter, and later caught him moving it, then

I expected him to tell me to take it if I wanted it.Instead, after a long moment, he asked, "Where would you want to live?""What?""If you took it. Where would you want us to live?"The *us* stopped me. I'd been quietly framing this as a choice between my career and my marriage. He was framing it as a problem our marriage might have to solve."Ashbourne is here.""Ashbourne has planes."I almost laughed. "That's your solution?""No. That's me refusing to accept that geography gets the first vote in my marriage."It was romantic, and I told him so wasn't enough. I didn't want him rearranging his entire life around mine and calling it growth."I don't want that either," he said.Good. Now we actually had a problem instead of a performance."Why are we already discussing who gives something up?" he asked."Because sometimes adulthood isn't romantic, Roman. Sometimes two things don't fit.""Then let's find out whether they fit before we cut one of them off."He admitted he didn't want t

I held the tickets, and the silence after his answer sat heavy between us before I could even find the right question."If you knew where I was for eleven months," I finally asked, "why didn't you come?"He didn't have a convenient answer ready. He told me he'd found out late in the first year, that he'd bought the first ticket almost immediately, packed a bag, driven to the airport."I couldn't get on the plane."Something in me went cold and angry at once. I'd spent two years believing he couldn't find me, or had stopped looking, or had simply let me go. Now I was learning that for nearly half our separation, he'd known exactly where I was.I remembered nights I'd wondered if he was out there searching. Birthdays I'd checked my phone without meaning to. The slow, humiliating moment I'd finally stopped expecting him to appear."How many times?" I asked."Several.""And every time you meant to go?""Yes.""And every time you stopped yourself.""Yes."He told me that during those first

I was still holding the old plane ticket when the weight of what Roman had just told me finally settled. Becoming Chairman hadn't been some distant possibility he'd casually walked away from. For most of our marriage, it had been the destination toward which everything else seemed to bend, the late dinners, interrupted weekends, and nights when Ashbourne kept him working long after I'd gone to bed."You wanted that position for years," I said. "You practically built our life around getting there.""I did." Roman didn't try to soften it. "I know."That was what made it difficult to understand. He hadn't turned it down after I came home, when changing might have helped him win me back. He'd done it during the second year I was gone, when he had no reason to believe I would ever know about the choice."Then why?"He told me the offer had finally come when he'd spent most of his adult life preparing to receive it. More authority, more control, the final confirmation that he'd become exact

Tessa had expected the Chairman offer to frighten her. Instead, what unsettled her was the way Roman stood there, looking as though wanting something for himself had suddenly become evidence against the husband he was trying to be."Say it properly," I said.He gave me a careful, qualified answer, the kind designed to sound honest without actually committing to anything."Don't tell me what you think a good husband is supposed to want," I told him. "Tell me what you want."He was quiet for a moment, and then he finally admitted it. Yes. Part of him still wanted to become Chairman. Not because his father expected it, not because the family needed another Ashbourne at the top, not to prove anything to anyone. There were things about Ashbourne he genuinely wanted the authority to change.That distinction mattered more than I expected it to. He'd changed, but his ambition hadn't disappeared, and some relieved part of me was glad of that. I didn't want rehabilitation to turn him into a man