All Chapters of The Charming CEO I Slept With Is My Ex’s Half Brother: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

It took me three days to write the list.Three days of crossing things out, starting over, calling Mia at midnight to read a line out loud and hear how it sounded outside my own head. By the time I finally sat down across from Henry in that same glass conference room, the paper in my hands was soft at the folds from being carried around and rewritten too many times.I brought my own list this time. Handwritten, not typed, because typed felt too much like his language and I wanted this conversation to start on my terms, in my handwriting, on paper he couldn't dress up with a letterhead."Separate rooms," I said, sliding the paper across the table. "In whatever house we end up in. I'm not pretending to be your wife behind closed doors just because we're pretending in public."Henry read the line, jaw tight, and nodded once. "Agreed.""An exit clause. Either of us can end it, no penalty, no public blame assigned to the other. If this stops working, I walk, and nobody gets to call me ungr

ERIC'S POVThe text came through during a board call I wasn't paying attention to anyway.Did you hear? Henry Kingsley's getting married. Some girl from marketing. Nobody knows who.I read it twice before the words actually landed. Then a third time, my pulse climbing with each pass, something hot and ugly gathering behind my ribs.Some girl from marketing.I knew exactly which girl.I excused myself from the call with some excuse about a client emergency and walked straight to the window of my office, phone still clutched in my hand, staring down at the street without actually seeing it. Henry. Marrying Roseline. My Roseline, the woman I'd spent two years with, the woman who'd cried in my bed the night I made the mistake that cost me everything, now walking down an aisle toward my own half brother like none of that had ever happened.I called her. Of course I called her. It rang twice and went to voicemail, which told me everything, that she'd seen my name and chosen silence over an

"Breathe," Rebecca Moore said, adjusting the collar of my dress with quick, practiced fingers.Henry's assistant had hired her the week after the contract was signed, a wedding coordinator who specialized, apparently, in exactly this kind of event, small, fast, and quietly explained away to anyone who asked. She'd shown up with a binder, a calm voice, and the particular efficiency of someone who'd planned a hundred weddings and judged none of them. "You look like you're about to walk the plank instead of down an aisle.""Feels about the same.""It never does, once you're actually standing there. Trust me." She stepped back, studied me with the critical warmth of someone who genuinely wanted this to go well, not just professionally. "You look beautiful, by the way. In case nobody's said it today.""Nobody has, actually.""Well, you do." She squeezed my hand once, brief and sincere, the first real warmth I'd felt all morning in a day built entirely out of careful arrangements and necess

"You could have just let me make the tea," I said, picking the dropped pan up off the floor before he could reach it."You shouldn't be the one cleaning up a mess I made. Especially not tonight.""Is there a schedule I don't know about?""There should be." He took the pan from my hands, his fingers brushing mine for half a second longer than necessary. "I startled you. Figured the least I could do was finish what I started."I should have gone back to bed. The rational, careful version of me, the one who'd written three pages of conditions and meant every line of them, knew exactly how I should have ended this moment. That version of me had a long list of reasons, all of them sensible, none of them loud enough to actually move my feet.I sat down anyway.He moved around the kitchen with quiet, careful efficiency, kettle, two mugs, a tin of loose leaf tea I hadn't known we owned. The silence between us had shifted somewhere in the last few minutes, less careful now, less like two stran

ROSELINE’S POVThe nausea hit before I'd even fully opened my eyes, a slow, rolling wave that had me bolting for the bathroom before coherent thought caught up with my body. I made it, barely, and knelt there afterward with my forehead pressed against cool tile, breathing through the aftershocks.A soft knock sounded at the door."Roseline?""I'm fine." My voice came out rough, unconvincing even to my own ears."You don't sound fine.""Pregnancy's glamorous like that."A pause. Then, quieter, "Can I come in?"I should have said no. Some vulnerable, stubborn part of me wanted to handle this alone, the way I'd handled everything alone for most of my life. But the tile was cold, and my legs felt unsteady, and I was so tired of pretending strength I didn't currently have."Okay," I said.Henry eased the door open slowly, like he expected me to change my mind, and crouched beside me without a word. He didn't say anything dramatic. Didn't hover with obvious concern or ask a dozen questions