He Chose Her So I Left Carrying His Heir novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Squirrel Hill

Cameron's POV

I let myself in at eight with the key I wasn't supposed to have anymore.

The house on Squirrel Hill was cold.

Odette had never believed in heating rooms she didn't sit in.

I found her in the morning room, in the high-backed chair by the window, still dressed in last night's black.

She had not been to bed.

The cane lay across her knees, and the tray of tea at her elbow had gone cold with the cup untouched.

"You've come to gloat," she said without turning around.

"No."

"The board met until three. They've asked me to step down as chair by the end of the month." Her voice was dry and steady. "Forty years. They gave me a vote of thanks."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be useful. Sit."

I stayed on my feet.

I took a folded paper out of my coat and set it on the little table beside the teapot.

"This is your lawyers' withdrawal," I said. "Of the petition on the nineteenth. You sign it today, and you tell the court the filing was made on false information from Celia Moncrieff."

"It was made on information I believed."

"Then it's true that you were lied to. It's also true that you went after a pregnant woman with a lawyer and a cane."

She finally turned her head.

Her eyes were red-rimmed.

I had never seen her eyes red in my life, not at my parents' funeral, not once.

"I was not wrong to want a child in this family," she said.

"You weren't wrong to want one."

"Your father was thirty-four. Your mother was thirty. A wet road, a truck, and I was left with a nine-year-old boy and a company and nobody else." She pressed one hand against the arm of the chair. "I decided then I would never again be a woman with one name left to write on the door."

← Chapter 17 · All chapters · Chapter 19 →

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