Lahat ng Kabanata ng Thirty Days Before I leave: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

Chapter 21 Sera I put it back exactly where it had been, under the paperback, behind the hand cream. I slid the drawer shut so carefully it didn't make a sound. Then I sat there with both hands pressed flat on my knees, breathing slowly, trying to make my chest stop hurting.When I finally got back into bed, I did it the same way I'd left. Slowly. Carefully. Easing under the covers inch by inch so I wouldn't wake him.He found me anyway.Not awake. He didn't open his eyes. But the second my back touched the mattress his arm came around me and pulled me in against him, his chest warm against my spine, his face pressing into the back of my neck. He sighed into my hair, a deep, contented sound, and his whole body relaxed around mine like he'd been waiting.I lay there in the circle of his arm with my eyes wide open.Tell him, said a voice in my head.Just tell him. Wake him up right now and tell him everything. The notebook. The estate. The account. Lucien. Victoria's phone call in the

Chapter 23Sera I wanted to believe him. I wanted it so badly that I had to look away from him again.He came around the bed with a sweater in his hand, pulling it over his head as he walked, and stopped beside me. "Do you want to come down with me?"The question surprised me. I'd expected him to want to do this alone. To keep it private, the way he kept everything private."You'd want me there?""I'd want her to see that you're my wife. That I'm not hiding anything from you." He shrugged a little. "But I won't make you. It's freezing, and she'll probably cry, and it's going to be ugly."I thought about it. I thought about standing on those front steps in a borrowed shirt and a robe, watching Evelyn Cross cry over my husband while he explained to her, gently, that it was over. Watching her look at me the whole time like I'd stolen something.Then I thought about Julian standing beside me while he did it, his hand at my back, making a point of it, using me as the full stop at the end

Chapter 25 SeraI lay on his chest with the rain still hitting the window hard. His skin was warm under my cheek and his heart beat slow against my ear. One of his hands moved up and down my back in lazy circles. Every few passes he pressed his palm flat between my shoulder blades like he needed to feel me breathing before he could keep going.I did not move. I did not want to break whatever this quiet was.His fingers trailed lower, over the small of my back, then up again. “You were jealous.”I kept my eyes closed. “No.”“Liar.” His voice was soft but I heard the smile in it. “You wiped another woman’s lipstick off my mouth and threw me on the bed.”“I was making a point.”“Sure you were.” He huffed a quiet laugh that moved his chest under me. “I’m glad you did it. I’ve been losing my mind for a week over Lucien’s flowers and Cassian’s letters. Now at least we’re even.”I smiled against his skin before I could stop myself. The smile felt easy. That scared me more than the jealousy

Chapter 27JulianThe smoke alarm went off at seven fifteen, which was exactly what I'd been waiting for.I stood at the kitchen counter with a dish towel in one hand and the grill pan in the other, watching four slices of bread turn black under the flame. The sugar on top had bubbled and gone dark and bitter, the edges were charred, and a thin grey cloud was curling up toward the ceiling where the alarm was screaming its head off. I had never in my life deliberately ruined food. I'd never really made any food at all. The staff did that, and before the staff, my grandfather's cook, and before that, nobody, because my mother didn't believe in kitchens.But I'd said it last night, half asleep, with Sera's head on my chest. Tomorrow I'm going to burn you some.And I didn't break promises to her anymore. Not even the ones I made by accident.I heard her running before I saw her. Bare feet slapping on the back stairs, fast and panicked, and then she burst through the kitchen doorway in not

Chapter 29SeraI almost put it in my bag.The thought came to me clearly and calmly while I stood there holding it against my chest. I could take it home. I could open it alone in the sewing room with the door locked, where nobody could watch my face while I read whatever my father had needed to say to me. That was what the old Sera would have done. She'd have folded it away and waited for a private moment, the way she'd folded away every feeling she'd had for three years.But I had already waited eleven years. I had spent eleven years thinking my father had simply walked out of my life one ordinary morning and decided not to come back. I couldn't wait the forty minutes it would take to drive home.I sat down at the wooden table by the window.Neither of them said anything. Julian pulled out the chair beside me and sat, close enough that I could feel him there without him touching me. Lucien stayed standing on the other side of the table with his hands in his coat pockets, watching t