Chapter 5

At the time, Fu Chongzhou seemed to notice that I was unhappy. He often visited me on set and brought me meals.

When I developed a high fever, he was the one who discovered it. He called in a helicopter to fly me to the hospital and stayed by my side without rest.

That day, my burning tears soaked the shirt he wore as he held me.

As I said before, our profession came with enormous pressure and erratic hours. We desperately needed care and companionship.

Fu Chongzhou appeared when I needed both. He stayed with me, looked after me, and slowly made me depend on him.

Falling into a relationship seemed almost inevitable.

Admittedly, my desire to get even with Gu Yuancheng played the biggest part.

On Fu Chongzhou’s thirty-second birthday, he invited me to dinner. During the meal, he asked what present I had prepared for him.

Until then, our relationship had been entirely one-sided. He cared for me, and I accepted it. When I was miserable, I used him as an emotional dumping ground, and he accepted that too. Whenever I wanted to lean on him and draw warmth and strength from his body, he let me.

But if he tried to hug me, I pushed him away.

I never bothered to ask whether he was happy. If he came to me, I used him. If he stayed away, I acted as if he did not exist.

So when he asked about his present, I grinned. “I’m here in person. What better gift could there be?”

Looking back, I cannot believe how audacious I was to play that game with him.

Fortunately, he was a normal man. He laughed.

We drank red wine, and I decided we counted as friends. I even promised myself that I would serve as his emotional dumping ground in return.

I asked him to drive me back to the set.

Instead, he drove to his villa.

I fell asleep in the car. By the time I came around, he had dropped me onto his bed.

He leaned over me, watching me closely, and kissed me with incredible tenderness. The way he treated me made me feel like a treasure worthy of being cherished.

It had been a very long time since Gu Yuancheng and I had slept together. Fu Chongzhou stirred my desire, and I wanted him too.

What followed happened naturally.

But a person’s true nature never changes, not even in bed.

Fu Chongzhou began with patience and gentleness, then became a storm.

He was the same in daily life. At first, he presented himself as a mild, patient, mature older man with a good temper. Once I knew him better, I discovered how domineering he truly was.

If I had not been skilled at getting along with people—and willing to overlook a great many things—we would never have survived together.

But that came later.

My relationship with Fu Chongzhou continued. To be honest, sometimes I did not know what we were. I had a husband, so Fu Chongzhou could only be my lover—the other man.

He had neither a wife nor a girlfriend, but he had never called me his girlfriend either. That made me his mistress or, at best, a friend with benefits.

Whatever we were, it was neither healthy nor normal.

Sometimes I despised myself. I felt that I had learned all the wrong lessons and become stained by the filth of our fame-obsessed world.

I also understood the distance between our social positions. A relationship like ours could never have a future.

Three months ago, I asked to end it.