Chapter 49
Chapter 49
Nolan POV
“When are you going to marry Felicity p>
The question took me completely off guard. I stared at her lently for a long moment, unable to think of a reaction. How could she be so completely indifferent to the act that Felicity was basically announcing to the entire pack her intention to steal me from Ellie?
She sat there, taking another bite of pasta, raising her eyebrows at me as if waiting for an answer,
This couldn’t be the same woman who cried when I ignored her, who clutched my arm and begged for my attention whenever I was gone for too long.
The sick feeling in my stomach only intensified, the unease spreading through my body as I stared at Ellie. She wasn’t acting. There was no mask or hidden pain in her eye. She really didn’t care.
But that couldn’t be true.
She loved me so much-embarrassingly so.
It couldn’t just be gone.
She’d played these games before, where she pretended that she didn’t care about me in order to try to gain my attention. On more than one occasion, she had pretended to be distant and uninterested, only to fly into a jealous rage later when I spent too much time with Felicity or didn’t involve her in a pack event.
This had to be the same thing, right? She was putting on some kind of act to get a response from me. To get a reaction that showed I cared, at least in some way.
She couldn’t get positive attention from me, so she was trying to get negative attention. She was acting out like a child, just like she always did.
“Well?” she asked, prompting me to answer her question. “Are you going to do it as soon as our contract is up? Or wait a little after the divorce is finalized so it doesn’t look too bad p>
I stared at her. She glanced back at the television, where Felicity was still talking, saying something about her gym
routine.
“I haven’t decided,” I answered evenly, then turned and walked into the dining room.
But the interaction with Ellie left me unsettled. Something about the look in her eye- the lack of interest-got under my skin.
Later that night, as Ellie was getting ready for bed, I went to her room. I leaned against the doorway, watching her move around, plugging in her phone and putting her hair up.
“Do you need something?” she asked, barely sparing me a glance.
“Are you coming to our room tonight?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure why I asked. Ellie had been making it more of a point to sleep in her own room, even though in the past she would have begged to sleep by my side.
Tonight, I felt like having her with me, just so I could keep an eye on her. Look for some slip-up in the act she was putting on. Some proof that she did still love me.
Sometimes she talked in her sleep. And sometimes, when she was tired, she was more honest.
Ellie gave me a dismissive look and approached the door.
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Chapter 40
“No,” she said.
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“No?” I repeated, standing straighter, feeling a mixture of confusion and irritation at her clipped response.
“You take up too much of the bed,” she explained, then closed the door in my face.
I stood there, staring at the wood of the door, unable to react.
The sheer audacity of her-to close the door in my face, to respond to me so coldly-
It was hard to even process.
Was it really possible that I was wrong about everything?
Could it really be that Ellie had changed?
That she felt nothing for me anymore?
Ellie POV
I was starting to show a lot of signs of pregnancy, and it was making everything just
a little bit more difficult, especially dealing with Nolan.
My morning sickness was still a problem, and I was finding myself hungry more and more often. I was starting to get food cravings, especially for carbs. I wanted pasta all the time.
I was also starting to get mood swings, which I was able to hide pretty well at this point, but I knew they were going to get worse. One second I would be completely fine, sitting on the couch eating my food, watching TV, not a care in the world-and the next, I wanted to cry for no apparent reason.
I wasn’t trying to avoid Rae exactly, but I was staying in a little more often. Partly because I was nervous about anyone witnessing my behavior and putting two and two together.
I kept remembering seeing Nolan holding my bottle of multivitamins, the questioning look on his face. He wasn’t stupid. He was a lot of things-but not that. And there was good possibility that if I wasn’t careful, Nolan would figure out what was happening, no matter how hard I tried to hide it.
So it was better to try to avoid him as much as I could, or at least keep his attention off me.
When I realized he’d been standing in the doorway staring at me while I ate, I knew I had to deflect his attention, especially when he started going on and on about how he knew I still loved him.
God, that pissed me off. Maybe it was the mood swings, but I really wanted to just tell him off at that moment.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I distracted him by asking about Felicity.
“When are you going to marry Felicity?” I asked, my tone light and conversational. He seemed genuinely surprised by her little TV appearance which shocked me. I didn’t expect her to keep things like that from him, not when she was basically doing a victory lap already about stealing him away.
His reaction to my question was interesting, though. He just stared at me for a long time, like he was thinking really hard about it, or like he was trying to see through me or something.
When he did finally answer there was a tightness to his voice. I watched him walk away feeling satisfied. He was upset. Good, he deserved to be. He made this mess with Felicity all on his own, he had no one to blame but himself.
So when he came to me later that night asking if I was going to sleep in the bed with him, it confused me even
more.
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Chaar 49
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Was he getting suspicious?
I couldn’t take that risk.
What if I talked in my sleep?
What if there was some other symptom he could sense?
What if I got nauseous while I was lying in bed?
My heartburn was getting worse, apparently that was normal with pregnacy too.
What if he noticed that I was tossing and turning a lot and started asking questions?
It wasn’t worth the risk-and honestly, it was very satisfying to see the moment he realized I was closing the door
in his face.
The shock. The outrage.
I expected him to pound on the door, to scream at me. But he didn’t.
I don’t know if he walked away or if he was just standing there, processing what had
happened, but I got into bed, curled up under the covers, and got comfortable without him.
I had better things to focus my attention on than Nolan.
Much better things.
And I had to get up early in the morning for a doctor’s appointment-so I wasn’t about
to let whatever was going on with him cause me to lose any sleep.
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