One Night Stand, Eight Surprises: Pampered by My CEO Husband --- - Chapter 184: Chapter 184

It always began the same way.
A creak on the stairs. A soft knock. A whisper: “Mom?”
And Arielle would slip from bed, light the kettle, and meet one of her children in the kitchen for tea—sometimes with words, sometimes with just presence.
Julian came first.
He held the mug with both hands and stared into it.
“I don’t think I’m ready for everything I’ve asked for,” he said.
“You’re not supposed to be,” Arielle answered. “You grow into your own prayers.”
He smiled, barely. “What if I fail?”
“You will,” she said gently. “But then you’ll rise. That’s how you’ll know it was real.”
Ava came next.
“I feel too much,” she whispered. “It drowns me sometimes.”
Arielle took her hand. “You feel deeply because you care deeply. You were born to carry light—but not everyone else’s shadow.”
Ava cried into her lap. Arielle held her.
“You’re allowed to put some of it down.”
Skylar brought silence.
No words, just trembling shoulders. Arielle poured tea, then opened a notebook, handing it over.
Skylar wrote:
“I don’t know if the world will ever see me like you do.”
Arielle wrote beneath it:
“Then we show them. Together.”
Aiden paced the kitchen.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore. About God. About good. About… anything.”
Arielle didn’t flinch.
“That’s faith. Not certainty. But the courage to keep searching.”
He stopped. “Will I disappoint you?”
She stood and kissed his forehead. “You never could.”
Amara came with her stage makeup still on.
“They said I’m too much. Too loud. Too dramatic.”
“They don’t understand the gift of your fire,” Arielle replied.
“I just want to be loved without needing to shrink.”
“You already are. In every octave.”
Amara beamed. For once, tears glittered more than her eyeliner.
Leila arrived holding a book.
“I’m scared I’ll be forgotten. That I’ll never make a mark.”
“Some marks are carved into marble,” Arielle said. “Some are etched in hearts. Both endure.”
Leila nodded. “I’d like to do both.”
“You already are.”
Zane leaned against the fridge.
“Do you ever regret not chasing more? More fame? More money? More… ‘you’?”
Arielle smiled softly.
“I chased all of that. Then I chose this. I chose you. And I’d do it again.”
Zane hugged her tighter than he had in years.
And finally, Damien appeared one night.
He poured her tea instead.
“They’re almost gone,” he said. “And we’ll still be here.”
“Yes,” Arielle whispered.
He sat beside her.
“Will that be enough?”
She looked at him. At the life they built. At the home still warm with memory.
“It always was.”
The next morning, the mugs still sat in the sink.
And Arielle’s heart brimmed with the quiet, midnight truths of the children she raised—each a universe.
Each heard.
Each held.
Each home.