My Billionaire Brother Destroyed My Cheating Ex Husband novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: What He Kept

Elias's POV

Alasdair had gone to the lawyers' office for the night, and the penthouse was quiet enough that I could hear the city through the terrace glass.

I stood outside in my shirtsleeves with a drink I hadn't touched.

The door slid open behind me.

Rochelle came out barefoot in my gray T-shirt, with her arms folded against the cold.

She had worn it twice now, and neither of us had mentioned it.

"You're freezing," I said.

"So are you."

She stood beside me at the rail.

For a while we looked at the river, and I knew she was working up to something, because she did it with her whole jaw.

"You said you saw me at the window," she said. "In the black dress. And you told Alasdair I'd chosen."

"I didn't tell him that. He said it. I walked him to the car."

"Why didn't you say anything afterward?"

I had been asked that question in my own head every day for three years, and I had never once answered it out loud.

"Because I'd have had to say I saw you and left," I said. "Alasdair was standing in the rain and I let him. I told myself you were looking for somebody else. It was easier than the other thing."

"What was the other thing?"

"That I knew."

She turned her head.

"I drove past the Wilmette house four times," I said. "In three years. I parked across the street and watched your porch light, and I never once got out of the car."

"Elias."

"I wasn't brave."

"You were waiting for me?"

"For you to come out and tell me to go to hell. That would have been an answer."

"I never came out."

"No. So I kept being a coward."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"You thought I'd go back to him," she said. "You said it to Alasdair. That I keep going back to that house."

"I did."

"I never wanted Chad. I wanted my mother's piano and the last place she was alive."

She turned all the way toward me.

"I'm not going back, and I never was. Say you believe me."

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