Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Then I went home.

My mind worked the whole way.

I was calm now. The shock had settled and underneath it, the calculation had started running again the way it always did.

Why Helix Research. That was the question I kept returning to.

Julian had been the one who helped me leave. He had funded the whole thing.

But Dominic did not know I had left Helix.

I had never told him. Every time he asked about work I had been vague, the way I was vague about most things, and he had never pushed. He thought I was still there. He thought I was still Pat and Celeste’s colleague, still running experiments in the same lab we had all started in together.

So he had partnered with Helix because of me.

He thought he was doing something for his wife. He thought he was investing in the work his wife was part of. And because he thought I was still there and thought I was at my mother’s, he had called the person he believed was my closest friend and invited Celeste in my place.

The smile came back.

This was fixable. This was more than fixable.

When Dominic came home I would tell him the truth. That I had moved on from Helix. That I had my own lab now, funded by my mother, bigger and better and more deserving of his investment than a small underfunded operation like Helix Research. I would explain it carefully. I would be the devoted wife who had been quietly building something worthy of him all along.

He would withdraw the Helix partnership and redirect the grant to me.

Ten billion dollars. My lab. My name.

I had never felt this close to everything I had ever wanted.

The house looked small.

It had always looked small, but tonight it looked smaller, like I was already seeing it from the other side of the life I was about to have. The modest furniture. The modest everything. I walked through it and thought about what I would replace first.

I cleaned.

I could not remember the last time I had cleaned this house but I cleaned it tonight, every room, because Dominic was coming home and everything was different now and I needed him to see that I was different too. That I had always been the wife he deserved. That the distance between us had been

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circumstance and not intention.

Then I cooked.

His favorite. I stood in the kitchen and I made it from scratch and the smell filled the house and I set the

table properly and I sat down to wait.

He did not come.

I checked the clock. I checked it again. I called his number.

Voicemail.

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