Final draft pending signatures.
A note attached, short and precise:
Tomorrow at 2 pm. My office. If these terms are acceptable.
I set the folder down on the table and just stand there, staring at it.
My legs feel weak.
This week has been nothing but survival, negotiation, and pretending I’m okay when I’m not. I press my fingers to my sternum, grounding myself, fighting the sting behind my eyes.
This isn’t done yet.
But it’s close.
My Wife.
I sink onto the couch and pull my knees up, hugging them like that might hold everything in place. I haven’t signed anything.
Not yet, but I will.
So, I allow myself to close my eyes and daydream about a future that is mine. A love that is real and a family that isn't always in crisis.
Chapter 28 - Julian
Lucy Bennett doesn’t slam doors. She doesn’t storm out, doesn’t spit fire, doesn’t throw a fit that makes the room remember her long after she leaves. She does something worse.
She takes the contract from Claire on Monday, folds it into her arms like it’s nothing more than another set of vendor terms, and walks out of my office without a word.
No reaction I can measure.
Just a quiet, controlled exit that leaves the air wrong behind her, like the room itself is still trying to catch up.
Claire returns ten minutes later with a look on her face that tells me she noticed the silence too.
“Will you need anything else, Mr. North?” she asks, voice perfectly neutral.
“No.”
Claire pauses in the doorway, with an almost imperceptible hesitation.
“Ms. Bennett didn’t appear… affected.”
That is not a reassurance.
That feels like a warning.
A premonition.
“Noted,” I say, and Claire leaves.
The door clicks shut, and I sit there, staring at the empty space where Lucy had been standing a moment earlier, a familiar kind of calm settling over me.
I know what this is. It’s a negotiation.
And Lucy Bennett just told me, without speaking, that she isn’t going to be handled.
I don’t go to the hospital.
