Home / Romance / MISTLETOE,MOONLIGHT AND MY SECRET / Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

All Chapters of MISTLETOE,MOONLIGHT AND MY SECRET: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

49 Chapters

THE MISSING TWO MONTHS(MAYA'S POV)

Victoria didn't sit back down. She remained standing, one hand resting against the back of her chair, addressing not just me now but the entire table, all faces turned toward us like a single held breath."I'll be direct," she said, "because I find directness is the only currency anyone at this table still trusts me to spend honestly. My investigator has spent five days looking into Maya's background. Most of what he found is exactly what she told me two nights ago. A canceled engagement. A family she left behind. A life rebuilt from nothing in a town small enough to hide in." She paused, letting that land, generous almost, before the next sentence arrived. "But there is one piece that story doesn't explain.""Mother...." Julian's voice, low, warning."Let her finish, Julian," I said, and felt the table's attention swing toward me instead, surprised, I think, that I'd said it. "I'd rather know what I'm actually defending myself against than guess."Victoria's mouth curved, something t

Last Updated : 2026-10-12

THE ANSWER (JULIAN'S POV)

Everyone was waiting for an answer I hadn't fully built yet, and the only thing I knew with certainty was the shape of Maya's face in front of me, open, braced, not pleading."Do I believe her," I said, repeating Bianca's question back slowly, buying myself the half second it bought me. "You're asking if I believe the woman who held my hand through a blizzard, moved into a house full of strangers who'd already decided to hate her, and sat at this table tonight telling the truth even when the truth made her look guilty instead of lying to make herself look innocent.""That's not an answer, Julian," my mother said. "That's a character reference.""Then let me give you an answer." I didn't look away from Maya. "Yes. I believe her."The table exhaled, a ripple of released breath moving down both sides, though I felt rather than saw it, my attention entirely on the woman across from me, watching something in her shoulders loosen by a fraction before it tightened again, like she knew, the s

Last Updated : 2026-10-13

THE QUESTION I COULDN'T STOP ASKING (JULIAN'S POV)

The dinner ended the way these things always ended, polite goodnights, my mother's hand cool and brief in mine, Bianca's unreadable glance as she gathered her coat,My dad's single nod that somehow carried more weight than anything he'd said all night. By the time we reached the elevator,with Maya's hand in mine, I told myself the worst of it was over.It wasn't the worst of it. I just hadn't found the rest of it yet."You were magnificent back there," she said, once the doors closed, leaning her head against my shoulder, exhaustion finally allowed to show now that the audience was gone. "I don't think I've ever had anyone defend me like that. Not once, in my whole life.""I meant every word.""I know you did. That's what made it magnificent." She closed her eyes. "Thank you."I meant to leave it there. I wanted to leave it there. I watched the floor numbers climb instead, counting them like they might slow the question building behind my teeth, and found, by the time the doors opened

Last Updated : 2026-10-14

SOMETHING'S WRONG(MAYA'S POV)

I didn't remember deciding to text Chloe. I remembered the pain arriving, sharp and sudden and entirely unlike anything the books had warned me about, and then my phone was in my hand and the words I typed didn't look like words by the time I was done, letters doubled, sentences folding in on themselves. 'somethings rong cant brethe hurts.' I dropped the phone before I could see if it sent. The pain had started as something small, a tightening low across my stomach I told myself was the stress of the night finally settling, the kind of ache I'd half expected after an evening like that one. I sat on the edge of the bed and breathed through it, counting the way I'd read somewhere you were supposed to count, certain it would pass the way everything else this week had eventually passed. It didn't pass. It came back harder, a vise closing low across my stomach, and I folded forward, both arms wrapped around myself, trying to breathe through it the way no book had ever actually taught

Last Updated : 2026-10-15

THE WAITING ROOM(JULIAN'S POV)

The emergency bay doors swallowed Maya on a gurney before I'd even registered the car stopping, nurses materializing out of fluorescent light with the brisk, practiced urgency of people who did this every day and still somehow made it feel like the first time it had ever mattered."Sir, you'll need to wait here.""I'm not leaving her.""Sir." The nurse's voice gentled, but didn't yield. "We need the room to work. The fastest way to help her is to let us do our jobs. I promise someone will update you the second there's anything to say."I watched the doors swing shut on Maya's face, pale and terrified and reaching for me even as they wheeled her away, and felt something in my chest tear loose that I didn't think would ever fully stitch back together, whatever happened next.Ren caught my arm before I could follow anyway. "Julian. Let them work.""You don't understand what could be wrong with her.""I understand better than you do." His voice was low, urgent, careful even now not to say

Last Updated : 2026-10-16

FETAL B(JULIAN'S POV)

The office they led me to was small, fluorescent-lit, smelling faintly of old coffee and antiseptic, nothing like the kind of room where anything significant should happen. A nurse set a clipboard in front of me, several pages thick, and clicked a pen against the edge of the desk while she waited."Most of this is routine," she said. "Insurance, contact information, the usual. I'll flag anything that needs her signature instead of yours."I nodded, barely listening, scanning the top page without really seeing it, my mind still back in the waiting room with Ren's steady hand on my shoulder and the doctor's careful voice telling me Maya was stable. I signed where the nurse pointed, initialed where she pointed, and let the relief of the last ten minutes carry me through the motions without asking much of my attention.Then my eyes caught on a field halfway down the second page. Estimated conception date.I don't know why I read it. Habit, maybe, the same compulsive need for information

Last Updated : 2026-10-17

TWO HEARTBEATS(MAYA'S POV)

I came back to myself slowly, the hospital room taking shape around me in pieces, pale light through the blinds, the quiet beep of a monitor, Julian in the chair beside the bed, watching me with an expression I couldn't immediately place."Hey," he said, voice rough, like he hadn't slept at all. "You're alright. Everything's alright.""The baby." The words came out before I'd fully surfaced, old fear still clinging to the edges of sleep. "Is the baby......""The babies are fine," he said, and something in the plural landed strange, a half second too slow to register. "Maya, the babies are fine."I stared at him. "What did you say?"He took my hands carefully, like he was handling something that might still shatter. "There are two of them. Twins. I saw it on the chart when I signed the forms. A nurse confirmed it." His voice caught slightly. "You didn't know either. Did you?"The room tilted, just slightly, the way it had the night Ren first told me about the proprietary rumor, except

Last Updated : 2026-10-18

BORROWED QUIET(CHLOE'S POV)

The hospital cafeteria at six in the morning served exactly two things worth eating, burnt coffee and a muffin that had clearly been baked sometime during the previous presidential administration, and Ren set both down in front of me like an offering he wasn't entirely confident I'd accept."I didn't know what you'd want," he said. "I got coffee and whatever the vending machine seemed least likely to actively harm you.""High praise for a muffin." I wrapped both hands around the cup anyway, grateful for the warmth more than the taste. "Thank you."He sat across from me, and for a moment neither of us said anything, the adrenaline of the last several hours finally draining out of both of us in the hollow quiet that follows a crisis nobody had the energy to be afraid of anymore. My hands were still shaking faintly, a leftover tremor from gripping Maya's ankle in the car, and I pressed them flat against the warm cup until it settled."They're both okay," I said, half to myself, half to m

Last Updated : 2026-10-19

WHAT VICTORIA CARRIED IN(MAYA'S POV)

Someone had strung tinsel along the nurses' station sometime in the last few hours, cheap and silver and slightly crooked, and a small plastic tree blinked red and green from the corner of the hallway outside my door, the kind of determined, understaffed cheer hospitals always seemed to manage even in the middle of a crisis. Somewhere down the corridor, a radio played carols low enough to be more felt than heard, the same three songs looping on a rotation nobody had bothered to change.Ren and Chloe had come and gone an hour ago, Chloe crying over the ultrasound printout like it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, Ren quiet and visibly moved in a way he tried and failed to hide. Julian had stepped out to find real coffee, promising to be back before I finished the terrible hospital version currently going lukewarm on my tray.I wasn't expecting Victoria.She stood in the doorway a long moment before I noticed her, still in last night's dress, a coat thrown over it, looking

Last Updated : 2026-10-20

THE LAST FORMALITY (MAYA'S POV)

Ren came alone the next afternoon, snow still caught in his hair from the walk across the parking lot, something formal and careful in the set of his shoulders that hadn't been there in the cafeteria the night before."Chloe's getting lunch," he said, by way of explanation, settling into the chair Victoria had occupied the day before. "I asked for a few minutes. Alone. There's something I need to do before I can fully let go of it."Something in his tone made my stomach tighten. "Ren.""This isn't what you think." He held up a hand, steadying. "I'm not here to ask you to come home. Not for myself, anyway. But I made a promise to your mother before I left, and I intend to keep it, even though I already know what your answer's going to be."Outside my window, the hospital's small courtyard garden had been strung with lights for the season, white and gold, glowing faintly against the gray afternoon, a string of them looped crooked around a leafless tree that someone had clearly decorated

Last Updated : 2026-10-21

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