All Chapters of Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Aurora’s POVThe gift box was so small it disappeared inside my fist, and I kept squeezing it like it might vanish if I let go.Three nights. I'd stayed up three nights finishing it, my fingers raw from the thread, and now the ribbon was already going soft from my sweat."Ma'am, are you on the list?"The girl at the door had a tablet and a smile that didn't reach anything."Aurora Blackwood," I said. "It's my husband's event."She scrolled. Her thumb went up, then down, then up again."I'm sorry, I don't see Blackwood.""Try Bennett." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Aurora Bennett."Her thumb stopped. "Oh. Here you are." She stepped aside like she was doing me a favor. "Enjoy the evening."Bennett. Not Blackwood. On the guest list for my own anniversary.I told myself it was a mistake, an assistant rushing through names, nothing.I've told myself a lot of things this year.Inside, the ballroom glittered so hard it hurt. Champagne towers, white orchids, a string quartet sawing

The rain hit me the second the hotel doors opened, and I was glad, because it meant no one could tell which parts of my face were tears.I didn't take the valet. I ran for the parking garage with the folder under my arm and the little gift box still crushed in my other hand, and my heels slid on the wet concrete and I didn't care if I fell.I got in the car. Slammed the door. Locked it, like locking a door could keep any of it out.Then I fell apart.It came out of me in these ugly, ripping sounds, sounds I didn't know I could make, and I pressed the gift box to my mouth to muffle them because even now, even alone, I was ashamed of being loud.The rain drummed on the roof. The garage lights buzzed. My phone lit up on the passenger seat, buzzing and buzzing, and I finally grabbed it just to make it stop.I looked down at the gift box in my other hand before I answered. The ribbon had come undone. Three nights of my life, a cufflink I'd engraved myself with the date we met, and I never

They'd already changed the code on the front gate.I had to be buzzed into my own home like a delivery driver, and the guard at the box didn't meet my eyes when he said, "You've got one hour, Ms. Bennett. Those are the instructions."Instructions. From who, I didn't ask. I knew.Inside, the house was too quiet. My heels echoed off marble that used to feel like ours and now felt like a hotel I'd overstayed.I didn't go to the closet first. I should have. The clock was running.I went to the kitchen.It still smelled faintly of the same coffee. There was the stove where Damien burned the rice. The first month we could afford a place with a real stove, both of us laughing so hard we cried, eating cereal for dinner instead.I put my hand on the counter and I let myself feel it for exactly one breath. Then I made myself stop.The little office down the hall was worse.That's where I wrote his first three proposals, hunched over a secondhand laptop until the sky went grey, while he slept be

At three in the morning I stood at my mother's window and watched a street that was watching me back.The news van had finally left around midnight. But the street didn't feel empty. It felt held, the way a room feels when someone's in it before you turn on the light."You should be sleeping." Clara's voice, soft, behind me. "For them, if not for you.""I can't."She came and stood beside me in her robe, and she didn't tell me it would be okay, which is the thing I loved her most for right then."I keep waiting to feel scared," I said. "Isn't that strange? I did the crying. I did the shaking. And now I just feel, I don't know. Awake.""That's not strange." She looked out at the dark. "That's a mother waking up.""I'm not a mother yet.""Aurora." She turned to me. "You've been a mother since the second that doctor said four. The rest is just paperwork."My throat went tight."Listen to me," she said, and her voice changed, went low and hard in a way I hadn't heard since I was small. "Y

I woke up on a velvet couch that smelled like perfume and dust, with a stranger holding a glass of orange juice two inches from my face."There she is." The woman had a wild dark bob and a measuring tape around her neck like a scarf. "Drink this before you argue. You went down like a sack of flour outside my window, and I did not haul you in here to watch you die on my good sofa.""Where," I started, and my mouth was dry as paper. "Where am I.""My shop. Grace's, technically, that's the sign, that's me, Grace." She pushed the juice into my hand. "You're in San Diego, you're on the couch I'm still paying off, and you're going to drink that or I'm going to be very annoying about it."I drank. It hit my empty stomach like sunlight."Good girl. When did you last eat?""I don't." My head throbbed. "Yesterday? The day before?""The day before." Grace stood up, appalled. "You fainted on my sidewalk because you haven't eaten since the day before yesterday. In this economy. Sit there. Do not m