Chapter 5

Chapter 5

In two days, my phone had accumulated several hundred missed calls.

Some were from my dad. Some were from Gu Ming.

After Gu Ming made a fool of himself, my dad was both furious and terrified. He called and launched into a tirade the second I picked up.

“Do you think the Gu Family is someone you can afford to offend?

“Go apologize to Gu Ming right now!”

My dad had married into the Xia family. He was lucky-my mom had died of complications when she gave birth to me.

After he teamed up with the Gu Family to kill me, all the Xia family assets ended up benefiting an outsider like him.

“When I feel like giving you face, I call you Dad. When I don’t, you’re just the live-in son-in-law.

“Live-in son-in-law, I’ve put the villa you’re living in on the market. It’ll be cleared out this afternoon. My mom’s assets were notarized before marriage, and she left a will before she died. You won’t get a single cent.”

I couldn’t spend all that money in ten lifetimes. If I died, I’d donate it all.

That would still be better than letting it end up in a dog’s belly.

On the other end of the line came a stream of enraged insults.

Well, now that we’d torn off all pretense, I was homeless.

For some reason, I suddenly thought of Chen Mu, who had washed my underwear for me today with a cold face.

“Brother Chen Mu.”

The moment he heard my voice, the call was snapped off.

Looked like he really was angry.

Chen Mu attended the police academy and usually lived alone.

His life was very simple: classes, work, and exposing every vicious scheme I came up with against Yang Yuzhi.

I waited downstairs at his place until midnight before he finally came back.

Chen Mu had just gotten off work. He wore a black T-shirt, and his arms were still mottled with black engine oil.

He had probably just come back from the market too. In his hand was a bag of greens and tomatoes.

When he saw me, his expression froze.

I raised my head pitifully and put on my sweetest act.

“Brother Chen Mu, I have nowhere to go.”

He ignored me and strode past on his long legs.

“Then I guess I’ll have to sleep on the street. Who knows if I’ll run into bad people?

“So everything you said in bed was a lie, Brother? All that talk about taking responsibility, about us being boyfriend and girlfriend.”

As I spoke, a few neighbors had already poked their heads out to watch the drama.

With a dark expression, Chen Mu stepped aside just enough to open a gap.

“Get in!”

It was an old one-bedroom apartment, cleaner and tidier than I’d imagined. The tablecloth and walls looked fresh, and the blanket on the bed was folded into a perfect block.

His clothes were neatly arranged, the air smelled faintly of old-fashioned soap, and there were even a few scallions growing on the windowsill.

Everything reflected its owner’s personality.

Disciplined. Tidy. Even a little obsessive-compulsive.

“…What are you doing here?” Chen Mu refused to give me a pleasant look.

“I’m homeless, Brother.” I sat on his desk, propped my chin in my hand, and looked at him. “So I can only stay with you.”

But Chen Mu no longer trusted me so easily.

“It’s late. You can stay here tonight. Tomorrow, you leave.”

He didn’t look at me and went into the kitchen, busying himself as he spoke.

“Brother Chen Mu, I’m hungry.”

He washed the greens, sliced the tomatoes, heated oil, fried the scallions until fragrant, and cooked two steaming bowls of tomato, egg, and greens noodles.

“Eat. This is all there is.”

Of course I wasn’t going to be polite with him.

I just hadn’t expected an ordinary bowl of noodles to taste so fresh and savory in his hands.

The meal was unusually quiet. I praised his cooking, but he ignored me and only gave a faint “Mm.”

He washed the dishes. I took a shower.

“Where’s the shampoo? The hair mask? The shower oil?” I was dumbfounded.

There was nothing. On the shelf sat only a single bar of soap.

“That’s all there is. Use it or don’t.”

Chen Mu was not going to spoil me.

Chen Mu had short hair, so he didn’t even own a hair dryer.

So after he finished washing the dishes, he saw me sitting by the bed in his T-shirt, my hair still wet, looking up at him.

A large patch of the T-shirt had been soaked by the ends of my hair.

Chen Mu went to borrow a hair dryer from a neighbor for me.

The neighbor was a middle-aged auntie. Covering her mouth, she laughed.

“Little Mu has finally grown up. He even knows to bring a girlfriend home now.”

Chen Mu turned back with a dark face, only to see me poking my head through the crack in the door and smiling sweetly at the neighbor.

“Thank you, pretty sister. Brother Chen Mu will go buy me a hair dryer tomorrow.”

I burrowed into Chen Mu’s blanket and was instantly wrapped in the scent of soap.

I was used to the blended fragrances of hotels and my own home. Smelling something like this all of a sudden actually made me feel especially at ease.

There was only one bed.

Chen Mu made a pallet on the floor and slept there.

In the darkness, I heard him turn over, then the sound of his even breathing.

I quietly climbed out of bed and slipped into his blanket, groping around.

Fine, he was sleeping on the floor-but he was wearing pants too?

He even had his belt fastened?

That level of guardedness was enough to freeze a girl’s heart.

Suddenly, I sensed his back go taut. His breathing paused for a beat.

Chen Mu easily pinned both my hands with one of his. Then came his low warning.

“Xia Li, behave.

“Or get out.”