Drowning in Love Chapter 09

Drowning in Love Chapter 09

As I thought back on last night’s intense showdown, my scalp tingled.

Never mess with someone who’s been holding back for six months.

My silence only made Wendy laugh harder.

“Oh, so you were just trying to provoke him? So all that divorce talk earlier was just part of the flirting?”

The word ‘divorce’ snapped me to attention.

Oh no. The agreement.

I flew out of bed and rushed to the vanity, only to find the document from last night was gone.

+25 BONUS

My first instinct was that Travis had taken it.

The thought was mortifying. After last night’s… situation, he finds out I want a divorce? I couldn’t imagine the look he’d give me.

So I did my makeup carefully and drove straight to Travis’s company.

It was my first time stepping into Chancer Industries’ headquarters. The receptionist recognized me instantly and respectfully led me to the CEO’s office. The secretary signaled that Travis was inside and told me to go right in.

I hesitated at the door, worried I’d interrupt a meeting. Then I thought, so what if I do? I’m his legal wife.

I knocked twice and pushed open the heavy oak door.

Travis was on the leather sofa with his usual crew of close friends. At the sound of the door, they all turned in

unison.

When our eyes met, something in Travis’s normally unreadable gaze shifted. He stood and walked toward me.

“What are you doing here all of a sudden?”

Half the speech I’d practiced on the drive evaporated at the sound of his gentle tone. If he’d seen the agreement, wouldn’t he be furious right now? Had he not noticed it yet?

“Since Anna’s here, we’ll stop being in the way,” his friends said, getting up smoothly.

But as they filed out, the looks they gave me felt… off. Like I was some cold, manipulative woman playing with people’s feelings.

It made my skin crawl.

Once they were gone, I got straight to the point. “This morning, when you left, did you see anything on my vanity?”

Travis leaned over to pour me coffee. His lowered lashes hid the restless tension in his eyes.

Still composed, still elegant, he asked, “Did you lose something?”

I studied his profile for any crack, any hint. Nothing.

Maybe the housekeeper had put it away. I shook my head and changed the subject, inviting him to dinner instead.

In the days after we returned to the estate, I became a “prisoner” of the bedroom again.

At first, I didn’t buy his excuse that he’d held back because he was “afraid of hurting me.”

But recent experience had made me painfully aware of his almost addictive intensity.

On the terrace. In the home theater. In the bathroom.

He had me doubled over, and he still didn’t seem like he could stop.

And even when his touch was rougher than it had been that first night, there was an inexplicable tenderness underneath it all.

Half-dazed, I suddenly remembered the first time I met Travis.

My sister had just run off to Europe, and my family was desperate to fill that high-society marriage slot. So they shoved me forward.

I’d been upfront about my conditions, and yet Travis agreed to the engagement that very night.

I’d always assumed he was just giving in to family pressure. If I hadn’t found his private account, I never would’ve known he’d had a quiet crush on me for so long.