The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 243

ELIJAH’S POV: 

She was completely composed. She looked like a woman who had chosen where she was standing and intended to stand there and nobody was going to have any thoughts about that. 

After the statement there were two questions from journalists. I answered both of them steadily and briefly and then we thanked everyone and went back inside. 

In the elevator up to my office I exhaled for what felt like the first time since six forty-three that morning. 

“You did not have to do that,” I said. 

“I know,” she said. “Stop saying that. I did it because I wanted to. Because you are my husband and because whoever put that story out there wanted you to feel alone and isolated and I am not interested in giving them that. 

I looked at her. 

“Also,” she added, “I want Voros to know that going after you was not the distraction he thought it would be. Coming after your family does not separate us. It just makes us harder to move.” 

The elevator opened and we walked out. 

And somewhere in the back of my mind, in the place where I kept the things that were going to take time to fully feel, I noted that this woman, who had every reason in the world to be careful about who she gave her full loyalty to, had given it to me. Without hesitation and without calculation. Just fully and without reservation. 

I had done nothing to deserve her in the beginning and I had spent the past year trying very hard to be someone who did. 

“I will phrase that slightly differently,” she said, and we ended the call. 

I sat in my office for a moment after that. The room was quieter now than it had been all day. My phone had stopped ringing quite so constantly. The worst of the morning had passed and what was left was manageable, the type of work that was hard but solvable, which was the best you could ask for on a day like this. 

I thought about the cabinet. About standing there with my hand on the bottle and the silence of the kitchen around me and how close it had been before I stepped away. 

I thought about Jacob’s voice saying that version of you is the one that counts. 

And I thought about Hannah on the steps of the building with her shoulder against mine, in full view of cameras and people and the whole ordinary spectacle of a press statement, just standing there because she had decided that was where she was going to stand and that was the end of the conversation.