The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 281

The Shape of Survival 

HANNAH’S POV: 

We went to St. Louisiana for a week in the autumn. 

It was not a working trip but an holiday, which was something I had not taken properly in a long time and which Elijah had been quietly advocating for since before the launch. He had booked the beach house without telling me and presented it as a done thing on a Wednesday evening, which was a very Elijah way of handling a situation where he knew I would agree in principle but find a reason to delay. 

“You booked it without asking me,” I said. 

“I asked you three times if we could take a holiday,” he said. “Each time you said yes, absolutely, soon. This is soon.” 

I thought about it. “That is fair,” I said. 

The twins were thrilled. Amelia packed two days in advance with a level of organization that was both impressive and slightly alarming and she presented her packed bag to Elijah for inspection with the confidence of someone who expected to be commended. He looked through it and said it looked thorough. She said she knew. She had made a list, then checked the list against a second list, and then created a third list to confirm the second list was complete. Elijah said that was very organized. She said yes it was. 

Andrew packed the night before in fifteen minutes flat. When Amelia asked him if he had packed everything he said yes. She asked if he had packed sunscreen. He said yes. She asked if he had packed the specific sunscreen or just any sunscreen because there was apparently a difference. He said it was the specific sunscreen. She said okay, good, and went back to her own preparations. 

In the car on the way to the airport Amelia reviewed her packing list one more time and Andrew looked out the window with the expression of a person who was comfortable. I caught Elijah’s eye in the rearview mirror. He gave me a very small look that said he was thinking the same thing I was thinking, which was that these two children were the best thing we had ever done. 

The beach house was exactly as I remembered it. 

Warm and slightly salt-smelling and full of light in the afternoons when the sun came through the big windows facing the water. The porch had the same chairs and the same table and the same view of the water that went on until it became sky. I had been here before and I had thought each time that this was the sort of place that took the difficult things you arrived with and made them feel slightly more manageable, just by being what it was. 

The twins were in the water before I had finished bringing the bags in. 

All of it. All of it had happened and we were here, on the porch of the beach house with the ocean doing what oceans do and the twins in the water and Elijah at the shoreline watching them. 

I thought about where I had been seven years ago. Sitting in my house in Frerus with two children and a set of designs everyone loves. I had not known then what was coming. I had not known about the fire or the rebuild or the folder or Adele’s kitchen table or Castellan’s dry precise voice saying the word substantial. I had not known would still end up with Elijah again, yes, this man standing at the shoreline with his shoes off and his trousers rolled up watching our children like there was nowhere else in the world he needed to be. 

I had not known any of it was coming. 

And it had come anyway. 

That was the thing about building something and keeping faith with it. You did not always get to see the shape of what you were building until you were far enough along to look back at it. You put in the work and you made the decisions and you kept going and sometimes, if you were lucky and you were stubborn and you had the right people around you, you ended up somewhere that was more than you had been able to imagine when you started. 

I was very, very far from where I had started.