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All Chapters of He Wants Me More After Divorce: Chapter 231 - Chapter 240

378 Chapters

Chapter 231

Karl’s POVMy father picked up on the first ring.“Karl.” Not a question. Not surprised. Just my name, dropped flat like he’d been sitting there waiting.“Dad,” I said. “Mom told me about the snake.”A pause. I heard him shift—the creak of his chair, the one by the kitchen window he’d claimed twenty years ago and defended against all challengers since.“She told you it was nothing, didn’t she,” he said.“She told me you think someone left it there.”“Because someone did.”No hesitation. No hedging. He said it the way he said everything, like the matter had been settled before I called and he was simply informing me of the outcome.“Dad—”“Listen to me,” he cut in. “I’ve lived in this house for thirty-one years! I know every animal that comes through that garden. Foxes in winter. Hedgehogs under the shed. That fat pigeon your mother insists on feeding even though it’s destroyed every tomato plant I’ve ever grown.”I leaned back in the chair and pressed the phone harder against my ear.

Chapter 232

Harrison’s POVI was standing behind my desk when my new lawyer called.She was Grieves’s associate. A woman named Erica whose voice I’d never heard before this week and who spoke with the calm of someone who delivered bad news for a living and had learned to do it in small, careful doses.I paced behind the desk while she talked, phone pressed to my ear, one hand gripping the back of my chair as I passed it each time. The office felt too small for standing still.“Mr. Emerson, I’ve reviewed the Donovan demands in full,” she began. “Mrs. Donovan’s requests fall into three categories.”“Go ahead,” I said.“First: financial arrangements for the child. Formal child support, structured and ongoing, not a lump sum, not a settlement designed to make the situation disappear quietly. She’s specified regular payments indexed to your income, reviewed annually.”“Fine,” I said.“Second: public acknowledgment of paternity. Your name on the birth certificate, issued formally, without hedging or am

Chapter 233

Harrison’s POVI said nothing.My hand stayed flat against the cold glass, fingers spread as I stared at the glass. My breath left a small fog circle on the surface.“I’m not advising you either way, Mr. Emerson. I’m—”“Laying out the shape of it,” I said flatly. “I understand.”“Is there anything else?”“No.”“I’ll have the Donovan agreement drafted by end of day. I’ll send it to your personal email.”“Thank you, Erica.”She hung up.I lowered the phone and stood at the window for a long moment, staring down at the car park where the delivery van was pulling away and a woman in a red coat was walking briskly toward the building entrance.I dropped into my chair and pressed my thumbs into my eye sockets. Hard. The pressure bloomed red and black behind my eyelids.I held the position, grinding my thumbs against my own eyes because there was nowhere to go and nothing to do that didn’t cause damage to someone.Report the intimidation and my mother’s entire past would spill into public re

Chapter 234

Harrison’s POVI closed my eyes.“Mother,” I said. “I need you to say it plainly.”“I am saying it plainly.”“No.” I rubbed my forehead. “You’re saying it the way you’ve said everything for thirty years. Carefully. You’re placing each word down like it might break if you drop it.”“Harrison—”“They listed your lies,” I said. “That’s what you’re not telling me, isn't it? They wrote down every credential you fabricated and every connection you invented and they sent it to your door at six in the morning.”For several seconds she didn’t answer.My mother rarely left space like that in a conversation. Normally she had a response ready before the other person finished speaking.This time she didn’t.“At the bottom of the page,” she said finally, and her voice had gone very even, very flat, the way it did when she forced herself back into control, “there was a single line.”I waited.“‘This is what we release first,’” she said quietly.I sat without moving. My hand rested on the desk, finge

Chapter 235

Harrison’s POVHer breathing changed on the other end of the line. Faster now. A slight ragged edge to each inhale, barely perceptible but there, the sound of composure being held together with effort rather than habit.“You are being extremely unfair.”“I am being extremely accurate, and you know the difference.”“You’re asking me to—” she began.“I’m asking you to tell me the truth,” I said. “That’s what I’m asking. Possibly for the first time.”“That is cruel,” she whispered sharply. “That is an incredibly cruel thing to say to your mother.”“It’s not cruel. It’s honest. There’s a difference, and I think you know that too.”“I have always done everything—”“I know what you’ve done,” I said. “I know about the council flat. I know about the offices you cleaned before dawn. I know about the toast. I know all of it, Mother, and I have never—not once in my life—thrown any of it in your face!”My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles ached.“But I also know you built a life on li

Chapter 236

Claire’s POVI put the phone down on the table beside the envelope.Harrison had hung up on me. Or I had hung up on him. It didn’t matter which. The line was dead and the kitchen was quiet and the cream-colored envelope was still sitting exactly where I’d left it two hours ago.I pulled the page out.I’d already read it three times. Standing at the door after the man walked back to his car. At the counter while the kettle boiled. Sitting down, with the tea poured and untouched beside me.Each time I’d gone through it the same way I went through any document—top to bottom, line by line, with the focus I’d trained myself to bring to anything that mattered.The Whitmore Academy for Young Women. No alumni directory, no campus, no students or faculty located anywhere.I’d put it on my CV when Harrison was nine. I’d referenced it at dinner parties for twenty years, casually, breezily, with the particular ease of someone who genuinely remembered the place.The trick was never to oversell. Yo

Chapter 237

Claire’s POV“Your address on the label, my name scrawled across the top in marker,” Margaret said, thrusting the box forward. “I’m starting to think that new postman is doing it on purpose.”“Thank you, Margaret,” I said pleasantly.“Last week he left Mrs. Green’s blood pressure medication on my porch.” She shook her head. “Blood pressure medication, Claire! The woman needs those pills. I had to walk them over in my slippers.”“That’s ridiculous.”“It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s a public health hazard.” She shifted the box into one hand and gestured broadly with the other. “I called the depot. Twice. I said to the woman—very politely, mind you—I said, either train him or replace him, because at this rate he’s going to kill someone.”I took the box. My grip closed too tight around the cardboard and the surface buckled under my fingers.“And the bins,” Margaret continued, entirely unbothered by my silence. “Did you see the email? Thursday now. I missed it completely last week. The whole

Chapter 238

Claire’s POVI opened my contacts and scrolled.Harrison’s name sat pinned at the top, where it had been for years. I moved past it.Past James. Past Gerald the landscaper. Past Agata, the maid who never asked personal questions, which was precisely why I’d kept her for six years.Past Margaret Kane—added only six months ago, despite eleven years of living three doors down, because for most of those years I hadn’t considered Margaret the sort of contact worth storing.I rubbed my thumb across the screen and kept scrolling.Past the solicitor. Past the insurance broker whose name I could never remember. Past the decorator who’d overcharged me by four hundred pounds for the sitting room, whom I’d paid without arguing because haggling was something the woman I’d constructed didn’t do.I stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the front garden. The hedges were trimmed. The path was swept. I turned back to the phone.More names. Women I’d sat beside at fundraisers. Men I’d charme

Chapter 239

Claire’s POVI pressed my free hand flat against the table, fingers spread.“Harrison,” I said quietly. “It’s your mother.”I stopped. Not deliberately. The next sentence wouldn’t come. My jaw had locked and I had to work it loose, rolling it once to the left before the muscles released.“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” I said.My fingers dug harder into the wood grain. The edge of the table bit into my palm.“Come tomorrow,” I said. “Morning. Whenever suits you.”I swallowed. My throat clicked in the empty kitchen.“Bring Estelle if you want.”I heard the name leave my mouth. Seven years of working to erase that woman from my son’s life—from his vocabulary, his memory, his future—and I’d just dropped her into a voicemail invitation like I was telling him to bring a bottle of wine.“I don’t care anymore,” I said flatly.I hung up. The phone landed on the table beside Margaret’s parcel.I sat there for maybe thirty seconds, looking at the objects on the surface. The parcel with i

Chapter 240

Claire’s POVThe soil sat on the windowsill across the room. Dark crumbs against white paint, scattered when I’d knocked the watering can off the shelf. I could see every speck from where I was sitting.I didn’t stand up.I reached over, pulled open the drawer beside the stove, and took the envelope out from under the oven mitts. I slid the page free and read the bottom line one more time.This is what we release first.I set the page on the table and pressed it flat with both hands.Helena Donovan was not a stupid woman. She’d married into the kind of family that had been managing situations like this for three hundred years—scandals absorbed, reputations adjusted, inconvenient truths folded into settlements and sealed behind signatures.She understood exactly how this worked.You didn’t start with the worst thing. You started with the most provable thing.A finishing school that didn’t exist was provable. A charity board with no record of my name was provable. A cousin who couldn’t

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