All Chapters of Rented Husband : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Chapter Fifty-OneSylvia's POVI watched him in the car.I don't think he knew I was watching. He was sitting beside me, his head turned toward the window, his hands resting open on his thighs like he'd forgotten they were there. The city lights slid past the glass and moved across his face, and none of it seemed to reach him. Not the lights. Not the sound of the engine. Not me, sitting right next to him, close enough that our shoulders were almost touching.I'd known Adrian for years now. And I realized, sometime around the second hour of the drive, that I had never actually seen him like this. I mean, I’d known Adrian to be broody and serious but never in this tone and of recent? I had seen him in a entirely different light, the bright kind of light. Not the Adrian who proposed to me in front of his family. Not the Adrian who made burnt pancakes and laughed about it. Not the Adrian who painted with me on his grandmother's floor, or danced with me at the wedding, or held my hand at

Chapter Fifty-ThreeSylvia's POVHe opened his arms, and I walked into them.I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have words. I had a hundred things I wanted to say, and none of them felt right. It's going to be okay. It wasn't. I'm sorry. That was nothing. I understand. I didn't. I couldn't. I had never lost a father the way he had, not really. I had lost mine in a way I still couldn't talk about, and there was no version of that grief that let me sit across from Adrian tonight and say I know how you feel.So I didn't say anything.I just held him.His arms came around me slowly, like he was remembering how. One arm across my back. The other hand pressed flat between my shoulder blades, like he was trying to hold something in and hold something out at the same time. His chin came down to rest on the top of my head. And then he stopped moving. Completely. The way a person stops when they're trying not to fall apart and they don't trust their body to help them anymore.We stood like

Chapter Fifty-FiveSylvia’s POV "Why should we listen to you?" Adrian interrupted.Francesca turned to him. "Because I am family, and I want to tell the both of you the truth." She waved her hand, as if that gesture alone could wave away every doubt in the room."No," Adrian said.The word landed flat and hard, like a door closing."Leave."There was a look in his eyes I had never seen before. Not anger, exactly. Not cruelty. Just command. Absolute. The kind of look that didn't leave room for a conversation to continue.Francesca stared at him."Adrian Whitmore," she said.Her voice had gone up, not loud, but sharp. Shocked. She hadn't expected this. She had walked into that apartment like a woman who had assumed the room belonged to her, and Adrian had just taken it away from her in a single word.He didn't flinch at his own name. He didn't blink. He just kept looking at her."Get out, Francesca," he said quietly. "Before I do something we're both not going to be fond of."The room

Chapter Fifty-SevenAdrian's POVShe was standing in the doorway.I don't know how long she'd been there. Long enough to hear me say what I said. Long enough to hear Romano's silence after it. Long enough to hear the whole thing.Her face was still. That was the thing I noticed first. Not angry. Not hurt. Not anything I could read. Just still. The way she got when she was holding something in.I didn't move. Romano didn't move. The three of us stood in that small study like the floor had opened up under us and none of us knew what to do with our feet."Sylvia," I said."I heard you.""I know.""You said you don't want me to know."I didn't answer. Because there was nothing to answer with. She'd heard me. She was standing right there. There was no version of this where I could talk my way out of what I'd said.Romano stood up. "I'm going to give you two a minute.""No," Sylvia said.He stopped."Stay," she said. "Whatever he has to say, he can say it in front of you."Romano looked at

Sylvia's POVI walked down the stairs.I don't remember deciding to. I don't remember standing up, or leaving the study, or passing Romano in the hallway, or getting to the front door. I just remember that suddenly I was outside, and the night air was cold, and I was standing on the front step of Romano's building, and there she was.My mother.Standing by a black car at the curb.She was wearing a long coat and she looked exactly the way she had the last time I'd seen her, thin, pale, tired. The hospital bracelet was still on her wrist. She'd left the hospital without being discharged. She must have. That was the only explanation.She saw me.She didn't move.I walked toward her.I don't know how. I don't know how my legs worked. I don't know how I got across that sidewalk. I don't know how my voice came out when it did. But it did. And it was quiet, and it was steady, and I was shaking so hard I could barely hold myself upright."Mom.""Sylvia.""Elizabeth told me."My mother's face