Page 47 of Billionaire's Fake Wife: A Single Mom BWWM Romance

I give her my number so that we can stay in touch.

She chuckles.

"No problem. Now, go get your girl," she says before driving off.

I hurry into the train station. I check the schedule of arrivals, and to my relief, her train doesn't arrive for at least thirty more minutes.

I look around, flowers, balloons, and toys in hand, but see no sign of Sonya, or Lauralee.

I decide to wait by the train platform, feeling hopeful and undeterred. She's going to come here eventually if she's going to board the train.

I stand firm, waiting for Sonya and Lauralee, the two people who taught me just what love is.

Twenty-Three

Sonya

"When are we going back, Mommy?" Lauralee asks me innocently. I'm closing our apartment door for the last time. This may seem really drastic, but for the sake of my daughter, and my sanity, we need to go away.

Lauralee's hugging Teddy as tight as she can as the sun just rises. She yawns and rubs her eyes, never letting go of her best friend. At least out of everything that happened between Grant and me, Lauralee got something good out of it.

"It might take a while, dear," I say as I lock the door. A deep sigh escapes from my mouth. This was the apartment that I got when I first started working for Gloria.

There were a ton of hurdles back then, but at the end of the day, I'd always go home, get back to my safe space here in our old apartment.

"Okay," Lauralee yawns. I thank God every day for giving me such a beautiful child. Most kids her age would be yelling fits right about now. Why, I remember when I first dropped her off daycare, all five of her other classmates were wailing their lungs out as their parents dropped them off.

But Lauralee? She just went down to the playpen and jammed out to her pretty xylophones.

As I'm walking Lauralee down to the car, I can't help but remember that on the same day I took her to daycare, it was also the first time I got to work with Gloria. It didn't take me to lunch to have my soul sucked out of me.

But don't get me wrong, I loved being there. The stress, the anxiety, the rush, all those things made me want to jump out of the window, but those were the times that I really felt alive.

I was next to my life-long idol, the woman who inspired me to take risks and be independent. It didn't matter to me that people were laughing or talking behind my back as I delivered her coffee. I'd been given other opportunities to show my skills to her as well.

Especially when Grant and I started to work together.

Bah. Here I go again.

I put my bags on the back of our car and ask Lauralee to put Teddy back there also.

"No, Teddy will get cold back here," Lauralee complains.

I try to give her the stare of doom, telling her that I was not taking 'no' for an answer. But all I got in return was her puppy eyes watering in front of me.

"Sigh, you win," I say. "Come on, let's get going before we miss our train."

"Yey! Train!" yells Lauralee as she runs and sits on the passenger seat. The things we do for our children.

The road is quiet and serene. The sun had just risen, but the air is still minty fresh, my favorite part of the day. Lauralee, who'd spent the first twenty minutes singing to Frozen soundtracks, is now snoring peacefully beside Teddy. The more I look at her, the more she reminds me of me.

The me who usually slept at the office once a week, slaving over one of Gloria's projects.

From the moment I set foot out of the elevator and into her office, Gloria had always assigned me to some of the most challenging tasks at hand. In fact, there were some times when I'm pretty sure she had assigned ALL of her duties to me, while she just relaxed at her lovely corner office.

But the more I think about it now, Gloria never took a leisurely day off. She was there, watching me whenever she had nothing else better to do.

The more I think about it now, the way Gloria talked to me, the way she always tasked me around, and even the way she observed me even when she thought I was looking. She was nurturing me.

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