chapter 4
On the way to the hotel, Xie Chen kept trying to defend himself. Apparently unable to invent a defense, he opened his mouth several times without speaking.
At the hotel, he even tried to enter my room.
I looked at him. “You’ve known me for seven years, Xie Chen. Do you honestly think I use things after someone else has used them?”
The temper he had suppressed after being caught finally erupted.
“Momo, can you show even a little restraint when you speak?”
I smiled. “I certainly can’t compare to Lin Yue. She doesn’t have to help you with anything. She only has to smile sweetly and beckon, and you run to her like a dog—even abandoning your morals for her. As for me, you know what years of fighting for this company’s interests have done to my tongue.”
After a silence, he said, “I’m sorry, Momo.”
I slammed the door in his face.
The instant it closed, the tears I had held back for hours began to fall.
Seven years of memories flashed through my mind.
When we first met, he said, “Ji Mo, you and I will make the perfect team.”
When we got drunk together, he said, “Momo, one day we won’t have to drink with anyone for business again.”
When we began dating, he said, “Momo, companionship is the longest declaration of love. We’ll spend our lives together.”
When we registered our marriage, he said, “Momo, please take care of me for the rest of our lives.”
And now…
He had destroyed seven years of hope.
Only after the tears began did I register the suffocating pain in my chest. It spread through every nerve, as if stripping flesh from bone, until all my strength was gone.
While I sobbed uncontrollably, Lin Yue sent me a private message.
“Xie Chen never wanted to make our relationship public. Do you know what I had to do to coax that post out of him?”
The thought that he had slept with her after marrying me sent acid surging up my throat.
I vomited so badly that I ended up in the hospital with another attack of gastritis.
Traveling all the way to City B only to land myself in a hospital was miserable enough.
Somehow, it got worse.
Perhaps out of guilt, Xie Chen stayed beside me the entire time, despite my refusal to have him there.
He silenced his phone, yet the screen kept lighting up. Lin Yue must have been contacting him from other numbers.
Since I had arrived in City B, he had stopped answering her calls and refused to see her. As proof of his supposed loyalty, he deleted and blocked all her contact information.
On my third day in the hospital, a desperate Lin Yue messaged me again.
“I’m not trying to take Xie Chen from you, Ji Mo. I only wanted to fulfill the promise we made when we were young and travel together before your wedding. Why did you have to appear?”
“If I truly wanted him back, do you think the two of you would ever have had a chance?”
When I ignored her, she sent another message half an hour later.
“I never intended to fight you for Xie Chen. But from this moment on, I will make you watch as I take him away from you, one step at a time.”
It was not an empty threat.
Minutes later, Xie Chen’s phone lit up once more.
He happened to glance down. One look at the screen drained every trace of color from his face.
After refusing to leave my side for days, he sprang to his feet.
I looked at him. He sat down again and asked, “Momo, something urgent has happened. I’ll be right back, all right?”
I pretended not to understand. “If I say no, will you stay?”
He had no answer.
He murmured an apology and left anyway.