Unforgiven: The Billionaire's Amnesiac Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Lydia sets two rules and moves into Stefan's penthouse for thirty days, answers the press on camera, and finds a locked door he will not explain.

"Who is him?" I asked.

Stefan stood in the doorway and didn't answer for a moment.

"You never said," he finally said. "I assumed me."

"You assumed."

"There's a lot I don't know about the last five months, Ms. Garrick."

Sybil rose from the chair and smoothed her cardigan.

"Let's not do this now. Lyddie needs rest and a quiet house. She'll come home with me."

"Which house?"

"Alder Road. Your old room is waiting."

I looked at her pearls, her kind face and her gloves.

I couldn't have told anyone why, but I didn't want to sleep under her roof.

"No, thank you," I said. "I'll go to Jessamine's."

The door banged open and a redhead in a flour-streaked apron came through it at speed.

"Family only, my ass," Jessamine said. "I told that security guard I'm her sister, and he looked at my hair and said sure."

She climbed straight onto the bed and hugged me so hard that my stitches pulled.

"I remember you," I said into her shoulder. "You were crying at graduation."

"Because I'd ruined the cake. Lyd, I've got six years of news for you, and most of it is good."

"Jessamine Kerrigan," the doctor said. "Do you live alone, and do you work nights?"

"I bake at four a.m., so yes and yes."

"Then she can't stay with you. For thirty days, Ms. Garrick needs someone in the home overnight in case her symptoms change. That's a condition of discharge."

"I'll take a week off," Jessamine said.

"A bakery of one doesn't take a week off," I said. "You told me that when you signed the lease. Or I think you did."

"I did," she said, and her eyes got wet.

The doctor tapped his clipboard.

"Your emergency contact on file is still Mr. Kingsland. I can release you into his care today, or you stay here."

Jessamine and I looked at each other.

I looked at Stefan.

He hadn't moved from the doorway, and he hadn't offered.

"Why are you still my emergency contact?" I asked.

"You never changed it."

"And you never asked me to."

"No," he said.

I sat up against the pillows.

I was twenty-two in my head, in a bed that wasn't mine, with a stranger's name on my divorce.

I had one thing I could still decide for myself.

"Fine," I said. "Thirty days, your place. But I have terms."

Sybil made a small, shocked sound.

Stefan's face didn't change.

"Go on."

"One. You never lie to me. If I ask you something, you answer it, or you tell me you won't. But you don't lie."

"Agreed."

"Two. You don't touch me unless I start it."

"Agreed," he said again, much faster.

That was the second thing that made me look at him twice.

"Stefan," Sybil said, "this is a mistake. Be sensible."

"I'm being sensible," he said. "She asked for a bed and a door that locks. She'll have both."

He picked my bag off the chair.

"Jessamine gets a key," he added. "Whenever she wants one."

Jessamine raised her eyebrows at me.

"Cold," she whispered. "Hot, but cold."

An hour later a nurse pushed my wheelchair through a hospital lobby that had been rearranged for cameras.

Behind the glass doors, the sidewalk was full of people holding phones and microphones.

Stefan's driver waited with the car at the curb.

"I'll go first," Stefan said, quietly.

"I can walk."

"You're wearing a hospital bracelet."

"Then I'll walk with my bracelet."

I stood up, and the room swung once and settled.

He didn't reach for my arm.

I noticed that he didn't.

The doors slid open and the noise hit us.

"Lydia! Lydia, over here!"

"Do you regret taking twelve million dollars from the Kingsland family?"

"Who's the other man, Lydia?"

"Is it true you left him a week after his father's funeral?"

Stefan stopped walking, and a man next to me shoved a microphone at my face.

I took it from his hand.

The whole sidewalk went quiet.

"I don't remember any of this," I said. "I'm told I'm a villain, and I'd like to meet her before I apologize for her."

Somebody laughed, and a phone camera lifted.

"Ask me again when I remember what I did," I said. "Until then, it's a rumor, and I'm the one it's about."

I handed the microphone back.

Stefan's hand twitched at his side and stayed there.

In the car, he looked straight ahead.

"That was very good," he said.

"Do you think so?"

"I think my mother is going to be unbearable about it."

His penthouse took up the top floor of a glass tower.

It had white walls, grey sofas, and a long kitchen with nothing on the counters.

It had no photographs.

"Your room," he said, and opened a door at the end of the hall.

Bed, lamp, a window over the river, and a bag of my clothes that Jessamine had packed.

"The lock works," he said. "I'm across the hall."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Ms. Garrick. I've done nothing yet."

He turned to go.

Next to my door there was another door, at the end of the hall.

It was steel grey, and it had a keypad.

"What's in there?"

"A room."

"Whose room?"

For a second the only sound was the air handler humming in the ceiling.

"I won't answer," Stefan said, and went into his bedroom and closed the door.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend