Free Web NovelChapter 258: You are not my ex. We never dated
"You think someone took my babies and they are not dead," she said. Very quietly.
"I think someone switch all of our babies," Julian said. "And I think yours ended up with us. And I don’t know yet where your two babies are yet." He held her gaze. "But I am going to find out. That I promise you."
Yvette sat back in her chair. She looked down at the table. Her hands were very still in her lap.
When she looked up again, her eyes were bright, but her jaw was set.
"Okay." Yvette sat up straighter and reached for her bag. "Let’s go see my baby then. At your home."
"No." Julian shook his head once. "We go to the hotel first. I’ll come with you, we’ll get my baby, and then I’ll take her home." He paused.
"My wife is in a delicate state right now. I need to walk through that door today with our baby. That’s the priority."
Yvette stopped rummaging in her bag and looked at him.
"Your wife," she said slowly, something shifting in her expression. Not quite wistful. Just thoughtful.
"She must be something else. You know that? The kind of man who moves mountains doesn’t do it for just anyone." She tilted her head slightly.
"She must be incredible. An incredible woman." A small smile. "Can’t wait to see what kind of person she is to have you devoted to her all this years."
"We are not doing that," Julian said immediately.
"Doing what?"
"That." He looked at her steadily. "Whatever that is."
Yvette blinked innocently. "I just said I wanted to meet her. What are you afraid of? That your wife finds out you have an ex?"
"I don’t have an ex," Julian said. Flatly. Patiently. The tone of a man correcting something for what felt like the thousandth time in a relationship that had never technically existed. "You are not my ex. We never dated."
"We never dated," Yvette agreed pleasantly, standing up and slinging her bag over her shoulder. "But I liked you. Tremendously. And I did so many things with you in my head..."
"Yvette."
"...so technically," she continued without pausing, "you are absolutely my ex."
Julian looked at her for a long moment.
"Can you please focus," he said.
She put a hand on her hip. "What, you’re still treating me like I’m some child. I am focused, Julian. Perfectly focused." She gestured toward the door.
"Fine. Hotel. Baby. Let’s go." Then, over her shoulder as she started walking. "Do you need to call your wife and let her know you’re going to a hotel with your ex?"
Julian stood up, picked up his jacket, and followed her out.
The street outside was bright, the morning had fully arrived now, people moving past with their coffee and their ordinary Sunday. Julian walked to the car. He heard Yvette’s footsteps stop behind him and didn’t need to turn around to know exactly what was happening.
He unlocked the car remotely and reached for the driver’s side door.
"Julian."
He paused.
"You’re a gentleman," she said from behind him. "Get around here and open the door for a lady."
He turned slowly and looked at her. Standing by the passenger side with her bag on her shoulder and her eyebrows raised, looking at him with the absolute certainty of someone who had never once doubted they deserved to be opened a door for.
"Get in the car," he said, "or I drive away, and you find a taxi." Yvette’s mouth dropped open slightly.
Then she grabbed the door handle, yanked it open, and got in. Julian got in on his side. Adjusted the mirror. Started the engine.
Beside him, Yvette sat with her bag in her lap, looking straight ahead with the expression of someone who had been mildly wronged but was choosing to be dignified about it.
He pulled out into traffic.
He couldn’t help it; the memory arrived without permission, the way old memories do when something in the present reaches back and pulls them forward.
The first time he had seen Yvette Alcantara, she had been in trouble. Real trouble the kind that happened fast in a bad part of the city when you were young and careless and in the wrong place. He had stepped in because that was what he was. Simple as that.
He had walked away with a knife wound just below his ribs, and Yvette had walked away convinced she was in love with him.
That had been eight years ago.
For five of those years, she had appeared wherever he was with a frequency that could not have been coincidental. Events, airports, and restaurants in cities he had not told her he would be in.
She had a gift for it. And her personality- loud, warm, sarcastic, relentless filled every room she entered so completely that leaving felt like the only reasonable option.
So he had. Every time.
And then three years ago, he returned to Verenza. He had assumed she had finally moved on. Apparently, she had moved on to Leo Vance instead. Leo Amira’s husband.
He kept his eyes on the road.
"You know," Yvette said after a while, her voice slightly quieter now, the sassiness sitting back just enough to let something more real through, "I did actually move on. I want you to know that. It wasn’t. I wasn’t pining forever. I’m not that person."
"I know," Julian said.
"I just..." She stopped. "I needed to say it."
Julian glanced at her briefly.
She was looking out of the passenger window, one finger turning the strap of her bag around and around.
"Leo was a mistake," she said simply. "But she isn’t. My baby girl isn’t a mistake. Whatever else he was, they aren’t."
"No," Julian agreed quietly. "They aren’t." Yvette turned back to the window. The city moved past them both. freёweɓnovel.com
"Which hotel?" Julian asked. Yvette straightened up and reached into her bag for her phone.
"The Meridian," she said. "Ten minutes from here."
Julian nodded and drove.
