Chapter 66. [Revised] "That day you were drunk, I..."
When He Yan's aura swept over her, Wen Xue froze as if struck by lightning, her mind went blank, and she completely lost all reaction.
As his kiss deepened, he was no longer satisfied with just their lips touching. He began to penetrate her, forcing her to open her mouth, just like before, letting him take over every inch of her mouth. The smacking sounds of their lips and tongues intertwining were like a thunderclap in Wen Xue's ears.
She woke up suddenly, struggling desperately, but could only make muffled noises. She tried to push him away, but he grabbed her arm.
He was too domineering and too forceful, like a mountain blocking her way, forcing her not to say anything he didn't want to hear.
From that night of National Day—no, even earlier, when He Yan discovered that Lin Baizhou had appeared in her life two years earlier than expected—his rationality diminished with each passing day, and the little rationality he had left vanished completely when she said she was leaving.
He knew he had no way to keep her; he was not He Heng, not Lin Baizhou, and not Zhou Xian.
His body was faster and more honest than his mind; he kissed her with almost all his might, preferring her to hate him, preferring them to suffocate each other, rather than watching her walk further and further away.
Wen Xue was completely stunned and dumbfounded.
In the dead of night, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, she considered many possibilities, each one acceptable to her, and she had long been mentally prepared to lose him. But she never expected that he would kiss her without warning...
You can't escape it, you can't avoid it.
Shock and fear, shame and humiliation overwhelmed her at the same time, and a sudden despair engulfed her.
Immediately, tears welled up in her eyes, and her face became wet.
Completely immersed in the kiss, He Yan suddenly tasted a bitterness. It wasn't his imagination; it was her tears. This was a kiss they had shared while both of them were fully conscious, and it was also the second kiss in which he had lost his mind. He finally released her, but their breaths still lingered. He said in a hoarse voice, "You know about this too?"
If she knew his feelings, then she should also know his despair.
He wanted it but couldn't have it, desired it but couldn't have it, wanted to love but couldn't love. He thought she knew nothing, but in the end, she smiled and said that she had seen everything all along, coldly watching him struggle and suffer.
Wen Xue felt her lungs burning; she gasped for breath, her lips trembling.
She looked at him with teary eyes, his face blurred and indistinct, and for a moment she didn't even know if it was He Yan.
The two stared at each other in silence, or rather, in a standoff, amidst each other's panting.
The peaceful situation they had been trying to maintain for so many days was completely shattered at this moment.
Wen Xue was not only trembling, but her voice was also shaking, as if the warm house had turned into an ice cellar, making her teeth chatter. "Do you...do you know what you're doing?"
She really hoped this was a dream she had while lying in bed, exhausted.
But the stinging sensation on her lips, and the deep, misty look in his eyes when he looked at her, were not fake.
He Yan approached her again.
Her breath hitched, and she instinctively raised her hand, intending to push him away and distance herself from him. But he misunderstood, quickly grabbing her hand and pressing it against his face. "Hit me if you want, I won't stop you," he said, his gaze fixed intently on her. "But since you know everything, you should understand that I won't let you go, Wenxue. You can do whatever you want with everything else, but you can't—"
He paused, his voice low and restrained, "Leave me."
He completely disrupted the order in Wen Xue's mind, leaving it in a mess, chaotic and incomprehensible, leaving her at a loss for where to begin.
She wanted to escape, she wanted to hide, but he held her captive and she couldn't move. Faced with a situation she had never dealt with or imagined before, she felt like the whole world was spinning. Tears streamed down her face. "What exactly do you want?"
"Yes..." She was completely flustered and anxious, desperately wanting to find a reason for his unreasonable behavior, even if it was absurd, it was better than nothing. "Is it because you were angry that time? I'm sorry, it was my fault that time, I shouldn't have drunk..."
The more she spoke, the softer her voice became.
I don't know if I'm saying this to him or to myself.
If she hadn't been drinking that night, none of this would have happened. So, who is responsible for this situation?
Seeing that she was swaying unsteadily, He Yan interrupted her in a deep voice, "You were drunk that day, I wasn't."
Wen Xue stared blankly at him, shook her head, and tried to plead with him—
Stop talking, stop talking...
But he insisted on saying it, enunciating each word clearly: "Have you thought about why I haven't pushed you away all this time?"
Wen Xue painfully turned her eyes away, refusing to look at him.
He Yan held her hand tightly and whispered, "What exactly do I want to do?"
He suddenly laughed, a laugh tinged with sadness, "I knew what happened but didn't tell me, so I thought you really didn't remember anything. And now you still want to ask me what I'm trying to do? Wen Xue, didn't you say you knew everything?"
Wen Xue felt suffocated, as if she couldn't breathe, and wanted to back away, as if she could get oxygen if she got a little further away from him.
This was He Yan, whom she didn't know.
This was a side of He Yan she had never seen before: indifferent, out of control, and dangerous.
"I just don't want you to leave me." He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again, asking calmly, "Is it that hard? If I hadn't asked a friend to deliver something to your house today, how long were you going to keep this from me?"
Wen Xue pursed her lips, unwilling to answer the question.
Her heart felt as if it were being gripped by a merciless hand, tightening and tightening. She lowered her neck, and tears fell drop by drop onto the back of his hand, burning one hole after another that she could not see.
He Yan was stunned for a moment. He loosened his grip, but less than half a second later, he clenched it tighter, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. "Speak."
He was still pressuring her.
He insisted that she give him a reason for deceiving him.
"Don't do this..." She finally couldn't take it anymore and tried to break free, her voice fluttering, "Go away..."
She was completely helpless.
She could only bury her head in the sand and beg him to leave. If he were anyone else, if he weren't He Yan, she would have driven him away long ago. No, she wouldn't have let him in at all. Because it was him, she couldn't even bring herself to blame him.
He Yan stared at her intently, his gaze now deep and undisguised.
"Can."
After a long silence, he nodded, but did not back down. "You'll come with me."
Wen Xue was annoyed by his persistent, vine-like clinging. She looked up at him and said, "I've already said I don't need your care anymore, and I don't want to trouble you any further. Why are you still pressuring me like this?"
"Give me a reason," he said, his face stern.
"Isn't what happened today enough?" she choked up.
He Yan didn't believe it. He couldn't accept it. To him, as long as she was by his side, he didn't care what she thought of him. He seemed calm, but he was actually about to lose his temper. His tone was heavy. "Weren't things fine before?"
He desperately tried to find evidence that they were "okay" before. "When I went to America, you rushed to the airport to see me off and told me to come back soon. I didn't reply to your messages while I was in America, and you were worried about me. You knew I was hospitalized after returning to China—"
"Stop talking..." Wen Xue tried to interrupt him, her breath uneven and her face pale.
“You were very sad to see my injuries,” he said, ignoring her words and staring intently at her. “You even bought me scar medication and reminded me to apply it every day—”
"Stop talking!!"
She suddenly shouted, her eyes reddening and her shoulders shaking.
In Wen Xue's past life, she rarely argued with people and always endured and backed down. Just a second ago, she was thinking that if she insisted on him leaving, perhaps he would leave.
She had no desire to voice her deep-seated, despicable suspicions.
How could she put it? Every day after New Year's Day, the scent of Ye Manni's perfume in her dormitory brought a subtle pain to her.
“I can’t do it, I have a sense of shame.” She wept. “Yes, I remember what happened that night, I remember everything. I wish I could forget it. If I forget it, can I live with a clear conscience like before?”
"Were things alright before?" She looked at him and decided to say everything she wanted to say today, because tomorrow was New Year's Eve, and she was worried that she might be too attached to warmth and disrupt the order of her true feelings, making them seem hypocritical. "If you think things were alright before, what about now? I can't bring myself to wish you and her well after something like this has happened twice."
He Yan stared at her sternly, his expression fierce.
However, upon hearing this, his restrained anger dwindled to only seven-tenths, with the remaining three-tenths being confusion. He frowned and said coldly, "Who are you talking about, 'me and her'?"
He leaned closer, staring sharply into her eyes, not allowing her to look away, and pressed her for an explanation: "Explain yourself."
Wen Xue was stunned.
Her chaotic thoughts regained some of her rationality; she was bewildered, and then, belatedly, she felt a sense of fear.
Her mind was in turmoil; she pressed her lips tightly together and remained silent.
He genuinely seemed unaware of who she was referring to. At such a critical juncture, no one would lie anymore. Therefore, there was only one possibility: her guess was wrong.
He and that foreman...
"Wen Xue." He remained silent, having used up all his patience in this life on her. "Tell me clearly, who is she? Speak!"
He had never been so fierce in front of her. She looked at him with suspicion and uncertainty, not because she was frightened, but because she felt helpless as if she had done something wrong. It was as if she had returned to her childhood, when she accidentally broke her grandfather's watch and panicked so much that she could hear her own heartbeat.
A shattered watch dial.
He Yan's loss of control.
It was all punishment for her carelessness.
"Perfume, the perfume in your drawer, wasn't it given to that supervisor?" she asked, bewildered.
Her voice was very soft, as if she were talking to herself.
He Yan understood; he used all the comprehension he had ever possessed to understand that sentence.
The thought that she might have deceived him and distanced herself from him because of some ridiculous speculation made him laugh mockingly. His laugh was more terrifying than when he was angry.
As he stopped laughing, the room fell into a deathly silence.
"I see," he said softly.
After saying that, he finally let go of her hand, his smile vanished, and he exuded a low-pressure aura. He gave her a deep look, strode out, and stepped out of the house. The door slammed against the wall with a loud bang, breaking the silence of the hallway. The motion-sensor light at the door turned on, illuminating his cold and stern face.
Wen Xue stood there, stunned, her breathing slowed, and her mind went blank.
He Yan descended the stairs, exuding a menacing aura. Other residents who entered the hallway instinctively gave way.
He stopped on the first floor, remained silent for a few seconds, then went upstairs again, his jaw clenched. He had just reached the third floor, and before he even reached her door, he heard suppressed sobs in the darkness. He listened for a while, gritted his teeth, abandoned the idea of letting her see with her own eyes that the perfume was still there, and turned to go back downstairs.
…
The rumble of a jeep starting up could be faintly heard from downstairs.
He's gone.
But she knew he would come again.
Wen Xue seemed to lose all her strength and retreated to sit down on the sofa. Suddenly, the rice cooker in the kitchen beeped, indicating that the rice was cooked.
Numbly, she got up and walked inside. In the short distance, she was absent-minded and stumbled. When she turned on the rice cooker, she accidentally burned the back of her hand with the scalding steam. Reflexively, she turned on the tap, and the icy cold water hit her hand. She could no longer hold back and burst into tears.
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