Chapter 241 - 0241: Take Your Lunch And Leave

Chapter 241: Chapter 0241: Take Your Lunch And Leave

Graham’s Point Of View

The silence after my last words hadn’t settled yet. It still hung there, thick and stretched and almost visible, when the door opened again.

I turned fast, too fast, and some part of me already knew it wasn’t Scott. He wouldn’t come back that quickly, and he never came back empty-handed. Still, some stupid corner of my brain hoped, foolishly, desperately, clinging to the idea that maybe this time things could be simple. The second I saw her, that thin, fragile hope snapped clean in half.

Lillian.

Of course. Apparently today had decided subtlety was overrated.

She stood framed in the doorway, one hand resting instinctively under her belly, the other clutching a tote bag like it meant something. Her eyes lit up the moment they landed on me, soft and warm and completely out of sync with the storm still raging inside my head.

She looked tired too, I noticed distantly, faint shadows under her eyes that makeup hadn’t quite managed to hide, the kind of tiredness that came from carrying more than just a child. But I didn’t have room to care about that right now. I barely had room to care about anything beyond the next five minutes, the next decision, the next disaster waiting to detonate.

"Graham," she said gently, like the name alone was supposed to soften me.

It didn’t. If anything, it made everything worse.

She walked toward me without hesitation, carrying that familiar glow about her, the one people always noticed first, the one that used to make strangers smile at her on the street. Pregnancy had changed her, rounded her edges and slowed her down and made her softer in ways that used to make me feel something.

I remembered, vaguely, like recalling a dream someone else had, how that softness once felt like an anchor. Now it just made me tired. Now it made me feel like a man watching his own life happen to someone else, someone kinder, someone who still had it in him to want this.

Before I could step back, she wrapped her arms around me, and the contact hit like static. My entire body went rigid instantly, every muscle locking, and for a split second I almost shoved her away before my brain caught up. Pregnant. Heavily. My child. The reminder slid in like cold steel, and I exhaled slowly through my nose, forcing my hands to stay where they were instead of pushing her off.

She leaned into me, her cheek brushing my chest like she belonged there, like this was normal, like the world wasn’t quietly tilting off its axis, and that more than anything made something sour twist in my stomach. I hated how natural it still felt to her. I hated that I couldn’t remember the last time it had felt natural to me.

There had been a time, hadn’t there, when her weight against my chest meant something steady, something I could return to. I couldn’t find that memory anymore. I wasn’t sure I’d even looked for it.

Carefully and deliberately, I pried her arms off me, not rough but not gentle either, just enough distance to breathe. Her hands lingered a second longer, fingers curling faintly in the air, like she didn’t understand why they weren’t welcome anymore.

I stepped back. "What do you want?"

The words came out colder than I intended, not sharp and not loud, just empty, and somehow that made them worse.

She blinked at me, confusion flashing across her face instantly. "What do I...?" She gave a small laugh, like she thought I was joking. "What do I want?"

"Yes. What do you want, Lillian?"

Her brows pulled together slowly, hurt starting to creep into her expression. "I came to see you," she said quietly, then softer, almost playful, like she was trying to drag the mood back to somewhere familiar. "Baby."

The word grated against my nerves.

"And," she continued, lifting the tote slightly, "I decided to bring you lunch. I figured you haven’t eaten. You get like that when you’re stressed."

I stared at her, really stared, at the hopeful tilt of her head, the small smile trying to stay alive on her lips, the way she shifted her weight slightly because standing too long was starting to hurt now. Some distant, better version of myself noted that she looked almost vulnerable standing there, that another man, a man with room left in him, might have felt his chest ache at the sight, might have crossed the room and taken the bag from her hands and told her to sit down before she tired herself out further.

I wasn’t that man anymore. I wondered sometimes if I ever truly had been, or if I’d just been good at playing the part when it cost me nothing. Instead of warmth, irritation flared hotter. Couldn’t she read the room? Couldn’t she feel it? The tension in the air was practically suffocating, and she had walked in carrying homemade lunch like we were living inside some domestic fantasy neither of us had actually earned.

"Can’t you read the room?" I said, the edge finally slipping into my voice.

Her smile faltered.

"I’m not in the mood to eat," I went on, each word clipped and controlled, but barely. "Take your lunch and leave."

Her face changed immediately, like I’d slapped her.

"And don’t come here without telling me first," I added, because once the irritation started spilling, it didn’t know how to stop.

A crease formed between her brows, and she folded her arms slowly over her chest, defensive now, wounded pride rising to the surface, chin lifting slightly in that way she had when she was trying not to cry in front of someone. I’d seen that chin-lift a dozen times before, always right before she either won an argument or lost one badly. I braced for either.

"Graham," she said, her tone shifting, not soft anymore, tight and trembling just slightly. "I’m the mother of your unborn child. Your first child, and you’re treating me like this?"

Something inside me twitched, not guilt exactly, something more complicated that I didn’t want to examine too closely, something with teeth.

"You said that last week," I said flatly. "And the week before. You say it every time I don’t give you what you want, and it works, and we both go home pretending it didn’t. I don’t have the bandwidth for it today."

"Bandwidth." She repeated the word like it was foreign, like I’d spoken in some language reserved for boardrooms and strangers. "I’m standing here with your child inside me, and you’re talking to me like I’m one of your portfolio problems."

"Then stop standing here. That’s the solution I’m offering."

She stared at me, and I watched her collect herself, watched her decide to change strategies the way she always did, softening her voice and stepping closer, just one step, though it felt like ten. I recognized the maneuver. I’d watched her execute it in boardrooms and in bedrooms alike, and some tired part of me almost admired the precision of it even as it exhausted me further.

"I was worried about you," she said gently. "You haven’t been answering my calls. You’ve been distant for weeks. I thought maybe if I came here and..."

"Lillian." My voice wasn’t loud, but it sliced through everything, and she stopped immediately, hurt deepening in her eyes, waiting, and that waiting pressed against something already fraying inside me.

"You saw the news?" she tried instead, quieter now. "Graham, what’s happening? Is it Elena? Is this about the divorce? Because if it is, then you need to tell me where we stand, because I’m six months pregnant and I’ve been patient, and patience is starting to feel a lot like stupidity."

"There we stand," I repeated.

"Yes. There WE stand. Because in case you’ve forgotten, you made me promises. You said the marriage was already dead. You said the papers were a formality. Graham, am I the reason your life is on fire?"

The question hung there, and I didn’t answer it, because the honest answer was a shape I refused to look at directly, something I kept locked behind a door I had no intention of opening, not here, not now, maybe not ever. I could feel the edges of it pressing against the lock anyway, patient and relentless, the way truths always are when you try to starve them of air.

"No," I said finally. "This has nothing to do with you."

"You’re lying. I can always tell when you lie, your voice goes flat, like it is right now."

"Then stop asking questions you don’t want answered."

She swallowed, her voice thickening but still trying to stay composed. "At least... at least if not for anything, for the baby."

Her hand dropped instinctively to her stomach as she said it, fingers spreading protectively, a gesture that used to undo me completely and now just made my head pound harder, a dull throb building behind my eyes in time with my pulse. I remembered, with a kind of detached clarity, the first time she’d made that gesture in front of me, how I’d felt something crack open in my chest, wide and warm and terrifying. That crack had long since sealed shut, scarred over by everything that came after.

"The food took me time," she continued, her voice wavering despite her effort to stay steady. "I spent the whole morning in the kitchen. I put my time, my energy, my..." She hesitated, like the last word mattered more than the rest. "My love into it."

That word lingered between us. Love. God. The room suddenly felt too small again, too loud, too much, because love was the last thing I had space for right now, and love didn’t fit into encrypted threats and disappearing investors and shadows that moved without names.

Love was a luxury for men whose lives weren’t currently unraveling in real time. I almost laughed at the thought, bitter and short, because there had been a time I would have given anything to hear her say that word, and now it just sat there between us like something spoiled.

I dragged a hand down my face, feeling the pressure building behind my eyes again, the frustration and exhaustion and the constant, grinding tension that hadn’t let up all day. Scott’s warning was still looping in the back of my skull.

Do whatever the message says. The memory alone made my temper snap tighter, made my jaw ache from clenching it.

I looked at the bag in her hand, at the careful way she was holding it, like it mattered, like it meant something, and something in me just shut off, cold and clean and final.

Her voice came again, smaller now, almost childlike in its hope. "I just wanted to do something nice for you."

That did it. I let out a short breath, humorless and exhausted, and rubbed my temple slowly, trying to push the headache back down where it belonged. Then I looked straight at her and said flatly, "But I never requested for it."