Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 15

Space

Lydia POV

I felt it before I could name it.

The air was different.

I closed the door behind me and stood still.

Then I frowned.

The house didn’t smell like home.

Not that this place had ever fully felt like home, but over the past few weeks, it had at least started to smell familiar.

Clean linen.

Polished wood.

That faint lavender scent that usually floated through the downstairs hallway and into the staircase landing.

Now?

It smelled… sharper.

Tangier.

Citrusy in an expensive, overconfident way.

Like a perfume ad had exploded in the vents.

I looked around the foyer slowly.

Nothing seemed obviously different.

The flowers were still in place.

The console table was still where it belonged.

The lighting hadn’t changed.

But the atmosphere had.

And suddenly, I knew.

Not fully.

But enough to make my shoulders tense.

I started upstairs.

Each step made the unease worse.

By the time I reached my room, my chest was already tight with irritation.

Then I pushed the door open.

And froze.

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+15 Bonus

No.

no, no.

I stepped inside slowly, staring.

My bed had been remade.

Not by housekeeping.

By war.

The soft beige sheets I had picked from the linen closet three weeks ago were gone.

In their place were dark silk sheets.

Charcoal.

Sleek

Cold–looking.1

The throw pillows had changed too.

Even the little ceramic diffuser on the side table was gone, replaced with some sculptural glass nonsense that smelled like bergamot and arrogance.

I looked toward the window.

The curtains had been tied differently.

My vanity tray had been moved.

My books had been stacked in a different order.

Someone had touched my room.

Not cleaned it.

Touched it.

Rearranged it.

And for one terrifying second, I was back in my parents‘ house.

Back in that old familiar feeling of people entering my space like it belonged more to them than it ever did to me.

My jaw tightened.

I turned so fast I nearly marched straight back into the hallway.

“Bernard!”

My voice carried through the upstairs landing sharper than I intended.

A few seconds later, I heard quick footsteps.

Then he appeared at the door.

“Ma’am?”

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58gnus

+15 8cnus

I pointed at the room behind me.

What is this?“L

His expression shifted almost immediately into the face of a man who had hoped this conversation would happen later. Preferably never.

“Ma’am…”

“No,” I said. “Don’t ‘ma’am‘ me yet. What happened to my room?”

He glanced once over my shoulder, as if maybe the room itself would explain things better than he could.

It did not.

“Miss Cyn visited earlier,” he said carefully.

I stared at him.

Then laughed once.

A very humorless sound.

“Of course she did.”

He said nothing.

I stepped fully into the room and gestured around me.

“She changed my sheets.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“She changed the scent.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“She moved my things.”

A pause.

Because to them, maybe this was normal.

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