Rebirth: The New Bride Wants A Divorce-Chapter 383: Is this your way of giving me permission

Anna closed the bathroom door quietly and leaned back against it, pressing her palms flat against the cool wood as she held her breath. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might bruise her ribs from the inside. Each thud echoed in her ears, loud and accusing, refusing to calm no matter how hard she tried.

"Lip-read?" she whispered hoarsely, eyes staring straight ahead. "Seriously?"

A shaky laugh left her lips, but there was no humor in it. "He lip-read my conversation with Kathrine," she muttered, disbelief wrapping tightly around every word.

The realization sank deeper with every passing second, twisting something unpleasant in her stomach. Daniel hadn’t just walked in at the wrong moment. He hadn’t just overheard a sentence or two. He had been there. Watching. Observing. Reading words she hadn’t intended anyone else to ever know.

Anna dragged a hand down her face and inhaled sharply.

She remembered fragments. The bar. The noise. Kathrine’s voice blending with music and laughter. Daniel appearing later, his presence grounding yet unsettling. But she had never once thought he had been there all along, silently taking everything in while pretending not to see.

"That’s just... creepy," she muttered, even though she knew it wasn’t entirely true. Daniel had always been watchful. Protective. Too perceptive for his own good. Still, knowing he had been reading her lips felt like a violation she hadn’t prepared herself for.

She took a few deep breaths, counting them in her head like she always did when things spiraled. One. Two. Three. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Her shoulders slowly loosened, but the tight knot in her chest refused to budge.

Closing her eyes, Anna tried to recall her conversation with Kathrine. She strained, digging through the haze left behind by alcohol and exhaustion. Faces blurred. Words slipped away the moment she reached for them. The harder she tried to remember, the emptier her mind became.

Nothing.

Not a single clear sentence.

Her brows furrowed in frustration. "Seriously?" she groaned, knocking the back of her head lightly against the door. "Nothing at all?"

The absence of memory only made things worse. If she could remember, she could deny. Rationalize. Twist it into something harmless. But this blank space left too much room for truth, and that terrified her.

"Argh!" she hissed, clenching her fists. "I am never getting drunk again if this is how it ends."

The anger surged suddenly, hot and sharp. Anger at herself for letting her guard down. Anger at Daniel for seeing too much. Anger at Kathrine for being there when she was vulnerable, even though she knew that part wasn’t fair.

She pushed herself off the door and walked to the sink, gripping its edge tightly as she stared at her reflection. Her eyes looked brighter than usual, restless. Too awake for someone who had supposedly had too much to drink the night before.

One thing was certain.

She had said something.

Something she had buried carefully, layer by layer, over years. Something she had promised herself would never leave her mouth. Not in this life. Not again.

Daniel’s words echoed in her head. Tired of pretending not to remember.

Her jaw tightened.

"So that’s what slipped out," she whispered to her reflection.

A bitter smile tugged at her lips. All that discipline, all that control, undone by a few drinks and a moment of weakness. If Kathrine remembered even half of what she had said, it was bad enough. But Daniel remembering it—analyzing it—was far worse.

She straightened, splashing cold water on her face. "Get it together, Anna," she told herself firmly. "Panicking won’t change anything."

Still, as she dried her hands, a quiet fear lingered beneath her composure.

Daniel hadn’t pushed. Not yet. He had laughed it off when she did. Let her pretend it was nothing more than drunken nonsense.

But he wasn’t fooled.

And that meant the secret she had sworn to keep might not stay buried for long.

***

Meanwhile, inside Ethan’s condo, Kathrine lay sprawled against the sheets, her body still humming as if it hadn’t quite realized the moment was over.

After her first orgasm, it felt like she had been reborn, every nerve awakened, every thought briefly erased. And if that wasn’t enough, Ethan devouring her with such unrestrained hunger had been the perfect, sinful cherry on top. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

She stared at the ceiling, chest rising and falling unevenly, trying to steady herself when a low, amused voice broke through her daze.

"You must be starving now."

Kathrine blinked and slowly turned her head, her eyes landing on Ethan beside her. He was lying on his side, one arm tucked beneath his head, watching her with a lazy confidence that made her heart skip.

Her brows knit together before she scoffed softly. "Aren’t you saying the wrong thing?" she muttered, her voice quieter now. "It’s you who’s starving, not me."

The words were meant to be teasing, but the embarrassment crept in anyway. Heat rushed to her cheeks, tinting them pink as the realization of what they had just done finally settled in. She tugged the sheet closer to herself, pouting slightly, suddenly hyper-aware of his gaze.

Ethan chuckled under his breath. "Funny," he said. "Didn’t look like that a few minutes ago."

Kathrine shot him a glare, though it lacked any real bite. "You’re impossible," she accused, turning her face away, only to smile despite herself.

Lying there, she couldn’t help but think about how wrong she had been about him.

Kathrine had always assumed Ethan was cold. Indifferent. That was the image burned into her memory from their first meeting at the restaurant.

The way he had looked at her as if meeting her was an inconvenience he hadn’t planned for. As if she were the last person he wanted to sit across from. Those assessing, doubtful eyes that never seemed to soften no matter what she said.

Back then, she had walked away convinced that he was made of walls and sharp edges.

Now, stretched out beside him, she realized how flawed that judgment had been.

This Ethan was different. Relaxed. Unapologetically attentive. There was no trace of that distant man here, no emotional armor in sight. Instead, there was warmth in the way he looked at her, an intimacy that went far beyond what they had just shared physically.

She glanced at him again, quietly studying his face. The way his jaw relaxed when he smiled, the faint crease between his brows that hadn’t fully disappeared. This was a man capable of tenderness, of passion, of losing control when he allowed himself to feel.

And somehow, she had been the one to see it.

Kathrine swallowed, her chest tightening with something unfamiliar yet overwhelming. Because she had changed too.

After what they had done, after how he had touched her like she was something precious and irresistible all at once, she knew she could never see Ethan the way she once did. The cold stranger from the restaurant no longer existed for her.

Nor did the cautious woman she had been before this moment.

She shifted closer to him, her shoulder brushing his chest, seeking his warmth without thinking twice. Ethan stiffened for a brief second before relaxing, his arm instinctively coming around her.

That simple gesture did something dangerous to her heart.

"Is this your way of giving me permission, Kathrine?" he inquired, and Kathrine looked up puzzled.

And the moment the corner of his lips curled, she knew what he was thinking.