Chapter 2

“I used your phone to call him, and he didn’t pick up once.

“Look at the last message he sent!”

She tossed me the phone.

Lu Chenzhou’s messages were as brief as ever.

[Busy.]

Just one word. Not a trace of feeling.

I silently closed the phone.

Perhaps the gas poisoning had been too severe. Right then, I discovered I didn’t even have the strength to feel hurt.

Dongdong stayed at the hospital and looked after me.

It wasn’t until the third day that Lu Chenzhou called.

“Wen Yu, you actually ran away from home?

“Are you still upset about me helping Xia Miao?

“Could you stop making trouble? I’m exhausted.

“When are you going to be a little more reasonable?”

His voice was hoarse with fatigue, his patience apparently spent.

“Wen Yu, if there really were something between Xia Miao and me, do you think I’d need to hide it from you?”

I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white.

After a moment’s silence, I hung up, my face blank.

A proud man like Lu Chenzhou wasn’t going to call again.

He didn’t.

What I hadn’t expected was a visit from Xia Miao.

She stood elegantly in the doorway in a custom-made designer outfit, her smile sweet and innocent.

“I asked your staff. They said you were in the hospital.

“I’m sorry, Wen Yu. Chenzhou has been so busy with my exhibition that he’s neglected you these past few days.

“Let me apologize on his behalf.”

The triumph and provocation in her eyes finally struck a nerve.

I met her gaze coldly.

“Xia Miao, you’re always apologizing on Lu Chenzhou’s behalf.

“What gives you the right to speak for him? Being his ex-girlfriend?”

Her perfect smile finally cracked.

Jealousy showed plainly in her eyes.

“Wen Yu, you just took a place that was never yours!

“I’m his first love. The one he’ll never forget.

“If I hadn’t left, I would be Mrs. Lu! He would never have spared you a glance!”

I curled my lips.

“You left because you thought he was penniless.

“Now that you know what family he comes from, you’ve shamelessly come crawling back.

“Do you really think that doesn’t bother him? Have you ever wondered why he keeps putting off divorcing me and taking you back?”

Her face flushed, then paled. I had found the sore spot.

“Say what you like. I’m the only woman he loves!”

I lightly tossed a document toward her.

“In that case, tell him to divorce me.”

She stared at it, then looked up in disbelief.

“You really want a divorce?”

I nodded.

Four years of unrequited love. Three years of marriage.

I was tired.

After we married, he had been good to me—attentive and extraordinarily patient.

Once, I lost a keychain he had given me and went searching the streets in the middle of the night.

Amused, he followed me without hurrying me, patiently keeping me company.

We never found it.

I got so angry with myself that I burst into tears.

He held me and kissed me over and over.

“You lost my present. You deserve a punishment. Tonight, you’re on top.”

I had thought he loved me.

But on the night he heard Xia Miao was coming home, he shut himself out on the balcony and sat lost in thought for a long time, smoking, though he had given it up ages ago.

Only then did I remember.

He hadn’t always loved like this.

His love wasn’t a gentle rain slowly soaking into the earth.

It was fierce, scorching as a wildfire, earth-shattering as a sudden summer thunderclap.

But he had only ever given that kind of love to Xia Miao.

So when I discovered I was pregnant, there wasn’t a single moment when I wanted to keep the baby.

I was already so wretched.

How could someone as wretched as me be a child’s mother?

When Xia Miao left, she clutched the divorce agreement and demanded reassurance again and again.

“Wen Yu, you can’t change your mind! You have to keep your word!”

5

I spent a week in the hospital.

On my first day back at work, Lu Chenzhou came to my company.

My assistant clutched her chest, stealing glances at him.

“He’s gorgeous. Those features! That body!”

A colleague teased her.

“What good does that do you? He has a girlfriend. He’s here with her today to meet the special guest.

“You couldn’t book that master of traditional Chinese painting just by throwing money at him. Mr. Lu had to approach him personally. His presence is going to take Xia Miao’s exhibition to a whole new level.”