All Chapters of The Perfect Match; Billionaire's Surrogate Mother : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Louisa's point of view Mom and Michelle were already settled into the new house, a small penthouse I'd paid for in full.I didn't stay there much myself. Part of me still hurt and felt uneasy about our last conversation, but I deserved that, and moping wasn't going to change anything.I pulled up in front of a store I'd found online, one that claimed to carry the best, most luxurious pieces available.There was absolutely no real reason to go all out for my college people — in truth they hadn't earned me even bothering to show up, given how they'd all treated me — but if I was going to be in the limelight, I wanted to fully erase whatever traces of that poor, pitiful girl they might still remember.The inside of the store smelled like money. The kind you don't work for. The kind you just have."Good afternoon, ma'am, how can we help you?" the attendant asked the moment I walked in."I'm looking for a dinner dress. Not flashy, but very luxurious." I didn't need flashy to draw attentio

Louisa's point of view It was the night of the get-together, and I was clammier than I expected to be. I'd had my hair dyed honey blonde two days prior, my entire body shaved and scrubbed like it would even matter, like they'd actually be seeing any of it. I was jittery, determined not to let them see me as the girl they used to know. I'd changed, and they needed to know it. At first I thought Damien was going to flake on me — we hadn't really spoken since the night he came home with Claudia's lipstick on his cheek and reminded me exactly where I stood. Maybe I'd had some ideas about Damien, but that was over. I wasn't going to overstep, wasn't going to let myself believe we could be more than employer and employee, no matter how much we slept together, no matter how good the sex was. And no matter how kind he could act when it suited him, like right now. He sat still beside me, eyes never leaving his phone the entire ride to the event. "Thank you for coming," I felt the need

Damien's point of view I lost track of Louisa somewhere between the second round of drinks and whatever conversation I'd gotten pulled into about quarterly projections with someone's husband who clearly didn't care about the answer any more than I did.By the time I actually noticed she wasn't beside me, I couldn't have said how long she'd been gone.I scanned the room once. Twice. No honey-blonde hair catching the light, no flash of gold from that stunning dress she'd worn all night. She looked like a goddess in it. "Has anyone seen Louisa?" I asked the nearest cluster of her old classmates, a group of women who'd spent most of dinner talking at her rather than to her.They exchanged a look I didn't love the shape of."Oh — she went that way, I think?" one of them offered, gesturing vaguely toward the terrace doors without actually looking at them. Her attention had already redirected fully onto me. "Damien, I don't think we've properly met — I'm Sasha.""I'm just looking for Louis

Louisa's point of view I woke up to the sound of a machine beeping somewhere near my head and a weight on my hand that turned out to be Damien's fingers, curled loosely around mine like he'd fallen asleep holding on. For a second I didn't remember. There was a strange, blank kindness to that second, before it all came rushing back in at once — the rooftop, the cold concrete, his weight over me, the sound my own voice made when it stopped sounding human. "My baby," I said, out loud, before I'd even fully processed I was awake. Damien's head snapped up. "Louisa—" "Where's my baby." I already knew. I think some part of me had known since the rooftop, since I felt something leave my body along with the blood, but knowing something and hearing it confirmed were two entirely different kinds of pain. He didn't answer right away, and that was answer enough. "No." I said it flatly, like refusal alone might undo it. "No, no, no—" "Louisa." His voice cracked on my name. "I'm so sorry."

Louisa's point of view Damien took me home and told me to rest. I didn't rest. The second the door shut behind him I had my phone in my hands, thumb hovering over Jude's contact like it might bite me if I actually pressed down. I typed and deleted six different messages before I sent one. Where are you. No response. I tried again ten minutes later. “You can't just ghost me after what you did to me.” Still nothing. Not even the courtesy of him leaving me on read the way he usually did, just to make me sit in the not-knowing. I called. Straight to voicemail, his usual smug outgoing message playing in my ear like a slap. I don't know how long I sat on the edge of my bed refreshing his social media, checking his location on an app he didn't know I still had access to from years ago, scrolling through old messages for some detail I might have missed, some address, some name, anything. Nothing. He'd gone completely dark, and the not-knowing crawled under my skin worse than anythi