Married the Right Billionaire, Now My Family Begs Me Back のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

CHAPTER 21The chocolate box was open when Tatiana came in. Not emptied. Not hidden. Just open, as if Rafael had decided that pretending he had never touched it would take more energy than leaving the evidence on the table.He was already awake. The curtains had been drawn halfway, the way she used to do it before he could glare at her for knowing the room too well. Morning light cut across his legs and made the stillness of them look even more deliberate. Tatiana closed the door behind her. She waited for the first sentence.Get out. But it didn’t come.Rafael looked at her the way a man looked at weather he could not change. Tired. Aware. Unwilling to admit that the night had left anything behind. "The therapist is on his way," Tatiana said."I heard." His voice was clearer than yesterday, though it still carried the roughness of unused days. "Claire talks too much in the hallway."Tatiana set the t

CHAPTER 23Tatiana woke with her hand already on her stomach, as if her body had known a second before her mind did. It was not pain. It was smaller than that, and stranger. A press from the inside, brief, definite, gone before she could decide whether she had imagined it.Then it came again.She went still against the pillow. The room was gray at the edges, the curtains not yet open, the house holding the quiet it kept before Claire started moving through the halls. Tatiana did not breathe for a moment. She was afraid the smallest sound would scare the feeling off.There you are.Her palm stayed where it was. The second kick was softer, almost polite, as if the child had only wanted to announce that the night hadn’t taken him. A boy. Six months of a secret, and this was the first time he had spoken in a language her hand could answer.Tatiana sat up slowly. The dress she had slept in pulled loose across her waist. Rafael’s dresses did that. Soft fabric. Nothing tight. She had not tha

CHAPTER 25Harris drove. The city moved past the glass in late streaks of light, shopfronts, a red signal, a bicycle that was not Bella’s. Tatiana sat with her bag on her knees and Rafael’s palm still at her waist, exactly where he had set it in the doorway of the shop. He had not moved it when the car door opened. He had not moved it when the street took them away from the bell that stuck. The cane lay across his thighs. His weight favoured the left side of the seat. None of that had persuaded him to let go.Her wrist burned. Four marks were already deciding whether they meant to become bruises. She kept that hand in her lap and tried not to look at the other one, spread over the pale dress as if the fabric had become a fact he intended to keep.“Harris.”“Sir.”“The side entrance. Not the front.”“Yes, sir.”Tatiana’s throat felt too narrow. “But, Bella—”“Claire will call her.” Rafael didn’t look at her when he said it. He watched the road the way a man watched a door he had alread

CHAPTER 27.“Rafael,” Tatiana said.“I’m looking.”“I noticed.”“Good.” His thumb shifted on the bone of her hip. “Stop turning your eyes to the carpet. There is nothing on it I want.”She made herself meet him. That was the mistake. At this distance the afternoon was still on him, soap and the iron of a walk he should not have taken, and the attention in his face had nowhere left to pretend it was only a question about a child. Her pulse climbed. The pale dress felt like an argument she was losing.His free hand rose. Not to her hair. To her mouth. The pad of his thumb touched her lower lip, once, testing the give of it, and stayed.Tatiana went still. “Don’t.”“You keep saying that.” He traced the lip again, slower. “Your mouth hasn’t agreed yet.”The touch was nothing. It was also the first time anyone had put a hand there and meant it. Heat arrived low in her stomach, shameful and immediate, a flush that had nothing to do with the room. She had done the procedure. She had lain sti

CHAPTER 29.Tatiana was off his lap before the second knock. It was not graceful. The dress had ridden up, her hair had decided to take a side, and her knee caught the mattress on the way down so that she landed standing, flushed to the roots, with both hands pressed flat against a skirt that had stopped cooperating.Rafael didn’t move at all.He sat on the edge of the bed with one hand still open where her waist had been, and he looked at her the way a man looks at a ledger he has finally balanced. Unhurried. Entirely unrepentant.“You planned that,” Tatiana hissed.“I didn’t plan a doctor.”“You planned the rest.”“I planned not to stop.” His eyes went to her mouth, then, deliberately, to the ceiling, as if even he had decided that was enough for one minute. “Fix your collar.”“Which one is my collar?”“The one that’s open.”She fixed it. She smoothed her hair. She found, with real horror, that her lip was still warm and that there was nothing on earth she could do about it.“Come i