Alle Kapitel von My Ex Called Me Fat, Now His Father-in-Law Wants Me: Kapitel 41 – Kapitel 50

Chapter 42: Math I Didn't Ask For POV: Odette I made it to my room before I let myself cry, and then I didn't actually cry, which somehow annoyed me more than crying would have. I just sat on the edge of the bed with my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped around them, staring at the wall, waiting for the shaking to stop. It took a while. The room had gone cold, the window left cracked from earlier, and I sat there in the draft without bothering to get up and close it, some part of me almost grateful for the discomfort, a small, physical thing to focus on instead of the mess still churning in my chest. I kept replaying the library. Not the kiss, the part after. ...I won't destroy his career for your revenge... Like five years of my life came with an asterisk next to it now that it was inconvenient for him. Like the second his daughter's feelings entered the room, mine automatically dropped a few rungs down whatever ladder he was keeping in his head. I told myself it didn't matter.

Chapter 44: A Promise Bigger Than the Plan POV: Odette I didn't answer him right away, because I didn't want to give him the fast version of a promise, the kind adults hand kids just to make the moment stop hurting. He'd already told me he could smell those coming a mile off. So I made myself actually sit with the question first, the worksheet forgotten between us, the afternoon light shifting slow across the desk, his eyes fixed on me like the next ten seconds were going to decide something permanent. "No," I said finally. "I'm not leaving." "You say that now." "I know I do. That's the only time you can say anything, Cai. Now." I reached over and took the pencil out of his hand, gently, just so he'd stop turning it over and over and actually look at me instead, the wood still faintly warm from his grip. "I can't promise you what happens in a year, or even three months, because I don't know that, and I'm not going to lie to you and pretend I do. But I can tell you this part, and I

Chapter 46: An Apology He Doesn't Know How to Give POV: Odette I found the garden before he did, which felt right somehow, I'd started coming out here in the late afternoons when Cai went for his swim, sitting on the low stone bench near the herb beds where Greta grew things nobody in this house seemed to actually cook with. It was quiet. Nobody's business but mine, the smell of crushed rosemary and thyme thick in the warm evening air whenever the wind shifted through the beds. So when I heard footsteps on the gravel path behind me, I already knew who it was before I turned around. "I thought you'd be with Cai," Nikolai said. "He's swimming. I like it out here." I didn't get up. "Did you need something?" He didn't answer right away, which was unusual enough on its own that I actually looked at him properly. He'd changed out of his suit into something plainer, dark shirt, sleeves rolled, and he stood there at the edge of the path like a man who'd walked somewhere with a plan and l

Chapter 48: Replaced POV: Clara I wasn't spying. I want to be clear about that, at least to myself, because the word makes it sound like I planned it, and I didn't. I'd just come back from the stables and cut through the side garden on my way in, hay dust still clinging to my sleeves, and the study window was lit up gold against the evening, and I looked in because that's what you do when a lit window is right there in front of you. I shouldn't have looked in. They were on the window seat, all three of them, Cai's head on her shoulder, fast asleep, one hand curled against her knee the way it used to curl against a blanket when he was small enough to still be carried to bed instead of walked there. My father sat across from them in the reading chair, and I've known that man my entire life, watched him run boardrooms and territory disputes without so much as a flicker crossing his face, and I have never once seen him look the way he looked in that window. Soft. Open. Like something

Chapter 50: Very Close POV: Odette Elena settled into the house fast, faster than I would've expected from someone who supposedly lived elsewhere most of the year. Within two days she'd rearranged a sitting room she said "never got enough light," had the kitchen staff prepping a specific tea blend she claimed Sofia used to love, the scent of bergamot drifting faint through the halls each morning, and taken to appearing at breakfast in a robe soft enough to suggest she wasn't a guest so much as someone returning to a place she'd never fully left. She was also, I noticed almost immediately, considerably less warm the moment Nikolai left a room. "You must be exhausted," she said to me on the second morning, once Nikolai had disappeared toward his study, her voice dropping several degrees the second the door clicked shut. "Running after Clara's brother all day. It's a lot to ask of someone with your particular background." "My background?" "Diners. Cleaning houses. That whole unfortu