All Chapters of Secrets of a Hidden Marriage: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

Preston looked at Liam and waved one hand with the idle authority of a man who has decided the topic is closed."Forget my problems." He dropped back into the chair. "Let's talk about yours. When are you going to go get your wife?"Liam's gaze stayed on the window. The city. The ten thousand lights that were easier to look at than anything else right now."I'll figure it out.""That's not an answer.""It's the only one I have."Preston studied him — the rigid set of his shoulders, the way his hand pressed flat against the glass, the particular stillness of a man who has run himself into a wall and is still deciding whether to try to climb it or just stand there."You were insufferable, you know," Preston said. "When you first got together. Walking around like you'd invented happiness. Made the rest of us want to push you into traffic." He paused. "And now you're standing at a window at midnight like something out of a Victorian

She doesn't let the tears fall.She tips her head back, jaw locked, forcing them down by sheer stubbornness. The November sky above The Ashwood is dark and moonless, the kind of dark that makes a person feel small, and Allie stands on the private drive watching the place where Liam's taillights disappeared and tells herself, very firmly, that she is not going to cry about this twice.She cried on the bus bench.That was her one.He left again.She asked for one thing — one real, human thing — and he drove away. Which tells her everything she needed to know about where this marriage currently is, and she is done being surprised by information she's been collecting for eleven days.She has nowhere to go.Chloe's apartment is — occupied, in ways that cannot be undone — and she cannot go back there tonight. The Ashwood is technically Liam's building, and even in the borrowed unit she'll spend the whole nig

Saturday passes in slow, airless increments.Allie stays in her room. Sleeps until noon. Eats the lunch the housekeeper leaves outside her door without opening it all the way. Stares at Liam's three-line apology until the words stop looking like words and start looking like architecture — the shape of something she can live inside, or something she has to walk around.She doesn't respond.She doesn't know how.By four in the afternoon she's sitting cross-legged on her old bed with her thesis notes spread around her and a cup of tea gone cold, and the house is quiet, and she's almost — almost — okay.Then: a knock.Soft. Considerate. The knock of someone who has decided to be pleasant tonight.Her stomach immediately tightens.Vivian does not knock soft and considerate.Allie opens the door.Vivian is standing in the hallway in a white dress — clean lines, minimal jewelry, hair stra

Vivian is practically vibrating with suppressed fury.She sets the dish beside Allie's plate with enough controlled force to rattle the table setting, smiles her most devastating smile, and retreats to her seat. But her jaw is locked. Her fingers, wrapped around her chopsticks, have gone white at the knuckles. Her eyes keep cutting to Liam — to the easy, unhurried way he's already resumed conversation with David, as if the last thirty seconds didn't happen, as if Vivian isn't sitting three feet away fantasizing about setting something on fire.Allie eats the prawn.It's perfect. Of course it is.She does not look at Liam again.Dinner ends. David and Liam migrate to the living room, the conversation shifting to equity markets and something about a waterfront development, the language of men who have made money and are making more. Lisa disappears into the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of someone who has realized this evening we

She waits.Liam said I have something to tell you and then he went completely silent — standing in the middle of her childhood bedroom with his hands at his sides and something building in the space between them that she can feel pressing against her skin like weather."What?" she finally says. "What did you want to tell me?"He exhales. Looks at her. His jaw is tight in the way it gets when he's about to say something that costs him."Can you stop fighting me on this?" he says. "Just — stop."She blinks. "Are you serious? I'm fighting you? You accused me without evidence. You drove away. Twice. You said the family's reputation was at stake—""Adam likes you."The sentence drops into the room like something thrown from a great height.She stares at him."I said—""I heard you." Her voice comes out flat. She heard him and her brain is refusing to process i