One Night Stand, Eight Surprises: Pampered by My CEO Husband --- - Chapter 93: Chapter 93

Jonah sat in the corner of the living room while the rest of the house moved like a dance he hadn't been taught. Elijah was researching business schools again. Iris was surrounded by canvases. Lily had climbed onto Arielle’s lap with the wide-eyed certainty of the youngest. And Jonah—Jonah just… watched.
He didn’t know when it started. This quiet invisibility. The feeling of being the pause between exclamation points.
He didn’t complain. He didn’t cry. He just got quieter.
That night, he stayed up later than usual, staring at the ceiling in the dark. His mind wouldn’t stop spinning, thoughts chasing each other like shadows without shape.
He remembered being six.
A night when the thunder rolled in heavy, and his lungs stopped working the way they were supposed to. His tiny chest had felt like it was closing in on itself. Panic. A full storm inside a small body.
And Damien had come in, barefoot and calm, despite the hour.
He’d sat on the edge of Jonah’s bed and whispered, “Close your eyes and breathe like this.”
Jonah had tried. Failed. Tried again.
And then Damien had taken Jonah’s hand and placed it over his own heart.
“Feel that?” he’d whispered. “Mine’s steady. Yours can match it.”
They’d stayed like that for what felt like forever—Jonah syncing his breath with Damien’s heartbeat until the world didn’t seem so loud.
“I see you, son,” Damien had whispered in the dark. “Even when you think I don’t. You don’t need to be loud to be loved.”
The memory wrapped around him now like a threadbare blanket. Not warm enough. But still precious.
He wiped his face and rolled over.
Arielle noticed the shift, though she didn’t name it at first. It was the way Jonah sat at dinner but never really joined the conversation. The way his answers got shorter. The way his smile came half a second too late.
It hit her one evening when she came home and found his backpack sitting neatly by the door, his shoes arranged perfectly side by side, his homework done—but no Jonah in sight.
She found him in the backyard, lying on the trampoline, staring up at the stars.
She didn’t say anything. Just climbed on and lay beside him.
“I miss him,” Jonah said after a while.
“I do too,” Arielle whispered.
“He always made me feel like I wasn’t just the middle one.”
“You aren’t.”
“But sometimes it feels like everyone else is more important. Elijah has Dad’s brain. Iris has his art. Lily’s… Lily. And I just… am.”
Arielle turned to face him. “You’re the glue, Jonah.”
“That’s what people say when they don’t know what else to call you.”
“No,” she said. “You’re the one who notices when someone’s sad before they say it. You help Iris clean her paints. You walk Lily to the bathroom when she’s scared. You make Elijah laugh when he forgets how. You’re the pulse between us.”
He was silent.
“I’ve been busy,” she admitted. “But I see you. I see how kind you are. How thoughtful. How brave in the quietest ways.”
Jonah turned to her, eyes glossy. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Will you draw with me sometime?”
Arielle smiled. “Tomorrow. Just us.”
The next day, she cancelled two meetings and took Jonah to a quiet studio space across town. They didn’t talk much. Just sketched side by side. And for the first time in a long while, Jonah looked at his paper like it mattered.
Because he mattered.
And he knew it now.