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Chapter Nine
publish date:
2026-06-23 02:44:41
Latest chapter
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Chapter Twenty One
The Paris order shipped on a Tuesday. Thirty-two pieces, each one cut around the water marks or with the tide lines stitched into the design on purpose. I signed off on the final box and pressed my palm against the cardboard like I could send a message through it. This is what surviving looks like. This is what staying looks like.Tayo took a photo of me doing it and sent it to the group chat with the caption: Boss sending love to France. I rolled my eyes, but I saved the photo. Proof for the days I forgot.That night I couldn’t sleep. Not from panic. From the quiet that came after a storm. The studio was empty for the first time in weeks. No fans. No interns. No orders to fill. Just me and the hum of the fridge and the weight of a week I’d been holding up.James found me at the cutting table at midnight, running my fingers over the leftover blue silk. The scraps too small for dresses but too big to throw away. “You’re thinking loud again,” he said from the doorway. “Old habit,” I
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Chapter Twenty
The fans at the studio ran for three days straight. A low, steady roar that got into my dreams and made me wake up thinking I was still mopping water off the cutting table. By Thursday the floor was dry, the air didn’t smell like mildew anymore, and the restoration guys said we’d gotten lucky. “Lucky” still meant two weeks behind schedule and a Paris buyer who’d already emailed twice asking for updates.I answered the emails at 2 AM, short and honest. There was a flood. We lost some pieces. The collection will be late, but it will be worth the wait. I hit send before I could delete it and rewrite it ten times. That was new too. Not apologizing for things I couldn’t control.James slept on the couch at the studio the first night because I couldn’t stand being there alone. The second night he convinced me to come home. “The fans are loud, Aria. You need actual sleep, not the kind where you’re half listening for pipes to burst.” He was right. I slept eight hours for the first time in wee
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Chapter Nineteen
The morning after came soft. No alarms. No emails. Just light through the blinds and James already in the kitchen, moving quiet so he wouldn’t wake me. I heard the kettle click off and smelled coffee, then toast. Burnt, like always.I pulled on his hoodie from the chair and walked out barefoot. “You’re up early,” I said. He turned with a plate in his hand. Half the toast was black. The other half was just pale. “I was trying to get it right,” he said, setting it down. “Failed.”I sat at the table and took a bite anyway. Still tasted like him. “You don’t have to cook,” I told him. “I know,” he said, pouring me coffee. “I want to. You let me handle dinner last night. Fair trade.”Lily would’ve rated it a three out of ten. I gave it a seven, just to make him smile. He did, quick and real, then sat across from me with his own mug. No phone. No TV. Just the sound of the street below and us not filling the silence.My phone buzzed. Tayo. Studio flooded. Pipe burst. We’re moving
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Chapter Eighteen
The apartment was quiet when I got home. Too quiet. Lily was at her dad’s for the weekend, so there were no shoes by the door, no half-finished drawing on the table. Just the hum of the fridge and the city outside the window. I dropped my bag and stood there for a second, not sure what to do with my hands.James looked up from the couch. He’d been reading, but the book was closed in his lap now. “You’re early,” he said. “Traffic was light,” I lied. Traffic was never light. I just couldn’t stand the studio anymore. Too many eyes, too many questions about the new collection.He stood and came over, not touching me at first. He knew. He always knew. “Bad day?” “Long day,” I said. Then, because he was waiting, “They want me to explain the inspiration again. Like I owe them a reason for making clothes that don’t make women feel small.”James nodded. He didn’t try to fix it. He just said, “You want to talk about it, or you want me to make pasta and we don’t talk?”I almost laughed.
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Chapter Seventeen
Forever started looking different once we stopped waiting for it to end, it looked like mornings where the coffee was still terrible but James made it anyway and Lily rated it one to ten every single time like she was a judge on a cooking show, it looked like Luminère’s new studio with windows that let the sun in all day and fabric hanging from the ceiling like we lived inside a dream we’d sewn ourselves, it looked like me not checking my phone for bad news first thing because bad news didn’t own my mornings anymore, joy did, and joy was louder now. The “After After” sketch became a whole collection faster than I expected because once you start designing from peace instead of pain the ideas don’t stop, they just flow, soft knits that felt like being held, dresses with hidden pockets for notes and keys and courage, pieces in blue because blue was the color of the first stitch Lily and James gave me and now it was the color of us, and when it launched women sent me videos of themselves
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Chapter Sixteen
Two years after Paris and the world still hadn’t forgotten my name, but I had finally forgotten how to be afraid of it, and that made all the difference because when you stop flinching at your own shadow you start noticing the light, and the light was everywhere, in Luminère’s new studio space that was three times bigger but still smelled like thread and Lily’s crayons, in the way James now had his own chair at the cutting table even though he swore he wasn’t “part of the business,” in the way Lily had grown three inches and lost her front tooth and decided she wanted to be a designer too because “Mama makes people feel brave and I want to do that.” The “Home” collection dropped and it wasn’t loud, it wasn’t trying to prove anything, it was just honest, soft fabrics and clean lines and that one blue stitch at every hem so the women who wore it would know someone thought about them while they were making it, and the orders came in slower than Dubai but steadier, from women who wrote l
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Preparing
CHAPTER FOUR"Every single word,” I seethed, my voice hard. “Every single insult and shame you painted on my name. I heard every bloody thing, Marcus.”"Aria, please. I know what you're probably thinking, but I swear– I regret every single thing. Let me explain—""Explain what? That you married me
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother The Return
The plane touched down at JFK and my stomach turned inside out.Six years. Six years since I'd set foot in this city that had broken me. Since I'd run with nothing but a bag and Marcus's baby growing inside me."Mommy, look!" Lily pressed her face against the window. "Is this where Daddy lives? Does
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother Survival
The contractions started at 3 AM in a London studio apartment I rented– it barely fit a bed. I was alone, rain hammering the window,and no one to call for help. I dialed emergency services with shaking hands."My water just broke. I'm alone,”I cried into the phone. A few minutes later, the ambulanc
He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother The truth
I was going to surprise him. I had just gotten back from the hospital where I was told I would be having a girl. My stomach looked so swollen and I felt so fat.But it didn't matter, because my husband, Marcus Blackwell said I looked just okay.“You might look ugly and fat now, but I promise that d
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