One Night Stand, Eight Surprises: Pampered by My CEO Husband --- - Chapter 146: Chapter 146

The morning after the storm dawned impossibly calm. The ocean shimmered like glass, the breeze was gentler, carrying the scent of wet sand and blooming hibiscus, and the villa—after a long, sleepless night—breathed easy again.
Arielle awoke to sunlight slicing across the floor, painting golden stripes across the cotton sheets. Damien’s side of the bed was empty but still warm. Somewhere down the hall, she could hear the distant thump of bare feet and the unmistakable sound of sibling bickering.
She stretched slowly, a sigh escaping her lips. For the first time in what felt like weeks, her body didn’t ache with grief or pain or confusion. Just a quiet soreness in her muscles—a reminder that she was healing, inch by inch.
Down in the kitchen, the chaos had already begun.
“I told you that’s not how babies are made!” her son declared, arms crossed.
“You said they come from kisses,” her daughter argued back, brandishing a butter knife like a gavel. “That’s what the movie said!”
“I never said that!”
Arielle walked in barefoot, robe tied loosely around her waist, hair still tousled.
“Good morning, tiny debaters,” she said, pouring herself a mug of coffee.
They turned to her in tandem, eyes wide and expectant.
“Mama,” her youngest said, climbing onto a barstool, “where do babies actually come from?”
Arielle blinked.
Damien, standing at the stove flipping pancakes, froze. The spatula hovered mid-air. He turned very slowly.
“They… come from love,” she said carefully.
“That’s what I said!” their daughter cried in triumph.
“But how?” the middle child pushed, eyes narrowed with the relentless curiosity of a detective-in-training.
“Well…” Arielle glanced at Damien, who was now pretending the pancakes required his full attention.
“It’s complicated,” she tried.
“So you don’t know?” their son asked innocently.
“I do know,” she said quickly.
“Then tell us.”
Arielle took a sip of coffee and muttered, “Where’s a thunderstorm when you need one?”
After breakfast, they moved to the porch. The kids had decided it was “Parent Interrogation Hour,” and Arielle found herself on a lounge chair with a pillow over her face.
“Is kissing what makes the baby?” the youngest asked again, head cocked.
“Sort of,” Damien said, sitting beside Arielle, clearly enjoying her suffering.
“Does it hurt?” their daughter asked, more seriously.
Arielle sat up, now fully awake. “Making babies?”
“No. Love.”
The word hung there—unfiltered, weighty.
Damien’s gaze softened.
“Sometimes it does,” he said. “But the best kind of love? It also heals.”
The kids nodded solemnly, apparently satisfied.
Then the middle child leaned in conspiratorially.
“Do you still love each other when you’re mad?”
That stopped both parents.
Arielle looked at Damien.
He smiled gently. “Especially then.”
Later, while the kids built forts and turned towels into superhero capes, Damien and Arielle lay side by side on the sand, exhausted by the morning’s emotional ambush.
“Did we handle that well?” Arielle asked.
Damien groaned. “Define well.”
She laughed, rolling onto her side to face him.
“I never thought I’d have to explain intimacy between sips of orange juice.”
He grinned. “At least they didn’t ask how many times we—”
She covered his mouth. “Don’t jinx it.”
They lay there a moment, hands twined in the warm sand.
Then Arielle whispered, “They see everything. Even the things we think we hide.”
Damien turned toward her. “We’re not hiding anymore. Not from them. Not from each other.”
She nodded.
And in the aftermath of thunder, in the wake of laughter and awkward questions, their family felt more real than ever.
Messy. Curious. Unfiltered.
And deeply, beautifully theirs.