Read The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins novel by Artemis Z.Y. Updated 2025 -26 - The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 489

The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 489

The champagne is making me careless, making me say things that should stay locked in the dark places where I keep my ugliest truths.

Kyle doesn’t respond right away. The jazz fills the silence that saxophone again, climbing up into something that sounds like a question.

“I always look at you,” he says finally. Quiet. “Whether you’re harsh or kind or anything in between.”

“I know.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Because your eyes do something to me. Because when you look at me I feel like I’m being seen in a way I’m not ready to be seen.

I don’t say any of that.

“Because you’re very good at it,” I say instead. “Looking. You’re very good at making people feel like they’re the only thing in the room.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s a dangerous thing.”

“Dangerous how?”na

“Kyle.” My voice comes out sharper than I intended. “Stop.”

He glances at me. Brief. Just a flicker of those grey eyes before they return to the road.

“You’re looking at my hair,” he says.

“What?”

“You keep looking at it. My hair.” His mouth does that thing—that almost-smile that’s worse than a real one. “It’s different.”

It is different. I’ve noticed it all night, even through the champagne haze. The Kyle I married had hair that was always perfect-controlled, managed, every strand in place. The Kyle driving this car has waves. Actual waves, curling slightly at his temples, falling across his forehead in a way that looks almost accidental.

“The medication,” he says. When I don’t respond. “One of the side effects. It changes the texture. Makes it—” He shrugs. A small movement. “-less cooperative.”

“Less cooperative.”

“It doesn’t obey the way it used to.”

Something about that sentence makes my chest tight. I don’t examine why.

“I wasn’t looking at your hair,” I lie.

“You were.”

“I was looking out the window.”

“You were looking at my hair and thinking something. Something you don’t want to tell me.”

I turn away. Press my forehead against the cool glass of the window. The city is thinning out now-fewer buildings, more trees. We’re getting close to my neighborhood. Close to the end of whatever this is.

“If you must know,” I say to the glass, “I was thinking that you look more human now.”

Silence.

The jazz keeps playing. That woman’s voice again, singing about loss and time and all the things that slip away when you’re not paying attention.

“More human.” Kyle repeats.

“Before-when we were married-you always looked so-” I search for the word. “—finished. Like you’d been assembled somewhere. In a factory that makes perfect men. Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle in your suit. Not a single sign that you were actually alive.”

“I see.”

His jaw tightens.

We drive in silence after that. The music playing. The city sliding past. The space between us filled with all the things we’re not saying all the history and hurt and hope that has nowhere to go.

The car stops.

My building. The familiar entrance. The security light casting its fluorescent glow over the sidewalk. Everything exactly where I left it hours ago, even though I feel like a different person entirely.

Kyle puts the car in park. Turns off the engine. The jazz dies mid-note, leaving silence that feels too loud.

I should get out. Should say thank you for the ride and goodnight and all the normal things people say at the end of an evening. Should go upstairs and check on my children and take off this dress and wash off this makeup and pretend this was just another night.

I don’t move.

Kyle doesn’t move either.

We sit there. In the dark. In the quiet. The streetlight outside throwing long shadows across the dashboard.

“Mia.”

His voice is barely a whisper.

I turn my head.

He’s looking at me. Of course he is.

Those grey eyes that see too much, that always see too much. The streetlight catches them and turns them silver. Makes him look like. something out of a dream-of a nightmare, depending on how you feel about beautiful men who’ve broken your heart.

“Thank you,” I say. “For-for tonight. For coming to get me. For—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t thank me like I did you a favor.” His hand moves. Slowly. Deliberately: Like he’s giving me time to pull away. His fingers find my chin-tight, barely touching, just face

enough pressure to tilt my get.ne

toward his. “I would drive across the country for you. Across the

Across anything. Getting you from a club ten miles away is-”

“Kyle=”

“—is nothing. It’s less than nothing. It’s the bare minimum of what I should be doing

for you.”

His thumb traces my jaw. That same gesture from earlier, by the river. But different now. More intentional. More aware.

“You should go inside,” he says. Even as his hand stays where it is. Even as his eyes stay locked on mine. “It’s late. The kids will be up in a few hours. You need to sleep.”

“I know.”

“And tomorrow” His thumb moves again. Tracing the line of my jaw up toward my ear. “-tomorrow I’ll be here. Nine o’clock. We’ll take them to the park. All of us. Together.”

His eyes hold mine. Steady. Unwavering. His hand moves again. Up. Into my hair. His fingers tangling in the strands. “—I can promise that tomorrow, I will show up. And the day after that. And the day after that. For as long as I can. For as long as I have.”

My throat is doing something. That tightening thing that happens before tears.

“Kyle=”

“Nine o’clock.” His forehead drops to mine. Just rests there. His breath warm against my lips. Close enough that I can smell the faint trace of cigarette smoke, the coffee from earlier, the underlying scent that’s just him. “Don’t be late.”

“I’m never late.”

“You were late to our wedding.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“I was nervous.”

His mouth curves against mine. Not a kiss. Just a smile that I can feel more than see. The brush of his lips against the corner of my mouth. The whisper of his breath across my cheek.

And then-

His lips find my ear.

Not my mouth. Not my cheek. My ear. The soft lobe of it, where the skin is thin and sensitive and no one ever touches because it’s too intimate, too strange, too—

He kisses it.

Soft. Slow. His lips pressing against that small piece of flesh like it’s something precious. His breath warm and close, stirring the hair at my temple, sending shivers

down my neck that have nothing to do with the cold.

“Nine o’clock,” he murmurs against my skin.

Then he pulls back.

And I’m out of the car somehow stumbling onto the sidewalk, my legs unsteady, my heart doing something impossible in my chest. Kyle’s coat is still around

by should ould give it back

coat is still around

Should take it off and hand it

through the window and say

something normal.

I don’t.

I just stand there. On the sidewalk. In the cold. Watching as he starts the engine

again, as the jazz comes back to life, as he pulls away from the curb with a small

wave that I might be imagining.

The car disappears around the corner.

I touch my ear.

It’s still warm.