She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 75

Chapter 75 More Arrivals

(Natasha)

The waiting room has stopped feeling like a room and started feeling like a pressure chamber.

Plastic chairs. Bad coffee. Too many expensive coats thrown over the backs of seats.

Too many people pretending not to watch one another while listening to every change in breathing from the corridor outside the NICU.

Nathanial is standing by the window with his phone in his hand and no attention on it whatsoever.

Mason is leaning against the wall near the coffee machine, talking quietly to Gloria.

Piper is seated with her legs crossed and her shoulders set like she’s bracing for impact.

Julian is somehow managing to make a hospital chair look like a throne.

Eleanor is stiff with contained fury. Sonia is very still beside her, which is somehow more unnerving than her

usual look-at-me attitude.

Chase is across the room, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, staring at the doors as if concentration alone might force them to open.

It feels like there are undercurrents swirling that I’m not aware of, but I’m too tired and scared to care.

Then the elevator opens and my parents step out.

My father looks like he got dressed in under thirty seconds and drove here on pure adrenaline.

For a second, I just stare.

Relief hits me so hard it almost hurts.

I’m out of my chair before I know I’ve moved.

“Mom. Dad.”

My mother gets to me first, wrapping me up so carefully that my throat closes.

My father is right behind her, one hand on my shoulder, warm and steady.

“Oh, sweetheart,” my mother breathes. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

I pull back enough to look at them. “I didn’t hear it.”

“Mason answered,” my father says. “I called him when you didn’t pick up.”

“Thank God for Mason,” my mother says, then immediately looks guilty for saying it in a room that contains my husband.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell them, and I mean it more than I can say.

“How is she?” my father asks.

“Better than she was. They say she’s responding to the treatment.”

His jaw tightens anyway.

A nurse appears with a clipboard, still working through names for blood typing, and both of my parents turn immediately.

“We’ll do it,” my father says.

The nurse nods and moves on.

For the first time in hours, I feel less like I’m holding myself upright through force of will alone.

Then my mother looks past me.

Whatever she sees stops her cold.

I know her too well to miss it. The stillness. The way her fingers tighten on my arm.

I turn and follow her line of sight.

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