Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 50

Chapter 48: Picking The Pieces Of Her Life

Sedona’s POV

The room was very quiet.

Rachel’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Sedona. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you went through that alone.”

“I wasn’t alone at the end. Cameron found me. Or I found him, I guess. I called him when I-” I stopped, realizing I’d almost revealed the cancer diagnosis, which I’d been carefully avoiding, because I didn’t want them to know yet. “When I needed help.”

“And your son,” Enzo said carefully, speaking up since the story started. “Nick. You left him with Logan?”

The question hurt in a specific way that had no way for me to deal with it. It was still a sore wound, one that I was actively managing as I nodded my head.

“He didn’t want me as his mum anymore. He made that very clear. And I didn’t want to force a child who hated me to-” I stopped again, fighting for control as I exhaled before continuing.

“I gave Logan full custody. I signed away my parental rights. It was the clean break everyone wanted, and I was getting worse with each passing day, so it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“But what about what you wanted?” Rachel’s voice was fierce suddenly, anger warring inside her as she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists.

“What about your rights as his mother? What about the fact that you spent three years keeping him alive and you deserved better than just being known as a nuisance nobody wanted anymore and then being erased from his life?”

“It doesn’t matter what I wanted,” I said. “Nick is better off with Logan and Catherine. That is the simple truth, I am dealing with facts and not emotions. They can give him everything I couldn’t-stability, happiness, a mother who doesn’t make him feel like he’s being suffocated.”

“That’s not true-”

“Rachel.” I looked at her directly. “I need you to hear this. I need you to understand. I made the choice that was right for Nick. Not the choice that was easy for me, or the choice that made me feel good about myself. I made the choice that protected him from having to watch his mother-” I stopped, catching myself again.

Rachel and Enzo were both watching me with expressions that suggested they’d caught what I hadn’t said.

“I’m in treatment, I have good doctors, my family is here supporting me through it all. I’m not giving up. But I needed you to understand why I made the choices I made. It wasn’t because I didn’t love Nick. It was because I loved him too much to make him carry this.”

Rachel was out of her chair and had her arms around me before I could say anything else, careful of Molly between us, careful of my IV lines. She held me tightly, and I felt her shaking with sobs that she was trying to muffle against my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I’m sorry you went through this alone, I’m sorry-”

“It’s okay,” I said, though we both knew it wasn’t but the sentiment was nice. “It’s okay. I’m here now. I’m home. That’s what matters.”

Enzo had moved closer too, one hand on Rachel’s back, his expression devastated in a way that I had never seen on his face. He truly looked sad about my condition, we might have not kicked it off on a good start but that didn’t mean he wanted the worse for me. “What do you need?” he asked. “Tell us what you need and we’ll do it. Anything.”

“This,” I said, looking at them both, at Rachel’s face streaked with tears, at Enzo’s concern, at Molly sleeping peacefully through everything. “This is what I need. People who knew me before. People who can help me remember who I actually am.”

“You’re Sedona Preston,” Rachel said fiercely, pulling back to look at me. “You’re brilliant and stubborn and occasionally infuriating. You’re one of the best tennis players your generation produced. You’re my best friend. You’re Cameron’s sister. You’re a mother who loved her son enough to let him go when she thought it would protect him. You’re a fighter. And you’re going to beat this, do you hear me? You’re going to beat this and then you’re going to figure out what comes next.”