Chapter 89: Tacit Understanding (Part 1)
In the kitchen, Yu Ling was half-circled by Zhao Chen on the edge of the spacious and cold center island, her back against the hard marble countertop, and in front of her was his warm chest.
One of his hands was still loosely around her waist, and the other hand he had just used in anger to try to cover her mouth for "sabotaging" her was now being dodged by Yu Ling, who smiled and turned her head away, and his fingers only barely brushed her soft hair.
Her cheeks flushed from laughing, she was breathing slightly, and there was still a lingering cunning in her eyes.
Zhao Chen looked down at her. The feigned embarrassment in his eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses had long been replaced by a thick and indissoluble doting. There was an indulgent smile on the corner of his mouth. The blush on his ears had not yet completely faded. There was an extremely light, yet extremely ambiguous red mark on his neck where she had accidentally scratched it when she struggled.
Zhao Chen's gaze was too focused, too intense. Yu Ling's smile slowly faded, but her heart raced uncontrollably. The warm warmth of the kitchen, his clean, pleasant scent, the single-minded focus in his eyes, focused solely on her... It all felt too good to be true, like a layer of cloyingly sweet frosting.
Yet, beneath the icing, the thorn Gu Qianqian had personally inflicted at the Cloud Top Cafe hadn't truly vanished. The wet embrace by Stanford Lake, the frenzied roar of engines shattering windows on the street... those "sweet memories" of another woman's past hadn't completely faded.
She looked at Zhao Chen's face, so close, so gentle it could drown someone. The warmth from his fingertips seemed to linger in her hair. He was so real, so warm, as if the man who had coldly warned Gu Qianqian across the radio waves, the man who had overlooked the world from his top-floor office, issuing orders to destroy them, were just a figment of her imagination.
But Yu Ling knew that the man wearing an apron and baking cookies for her might actually be a wealthy man who controlled a huge business empire.
That complex curiosity was mixed with a subtle bitterness that even she herself didn't want to delve into. What he had been like in the past, another side of him that she had never revealed to her... What was this "Brother Chen" that Gu Qianqian mentioned really like?
Zhao Chen's hand was still loosely around her waist, his fingertips unconsciously stroking the soft fabric of her waist.
Yu Ling raised her eyes, and her clear gaze met his deep eyes directly. There was no dodging, no probing, only a calm exploration after the dust had settled.
"Zhao Chen," she began, her voice slightly hoarse from the laughter, yet remarkably clear. "You and Gu Qianqian...were you really together before?"
The moment she asked the question, she clearly felt the hand around her waist stiffen for a moment, almost imperceptibly and very briefly.
Time seemed to freeze for a second.
The smile on Zhao Chen's face remained unchanged, but the doting deep in his eyes seemed to settle for a moment, replaced by a deeper, more complex emotion. He didn't answer immediately, nor did he look away. He simply stared at her deeply and intently, as if trying to carve her expression into his heart.
The only sound in the kitchen was the faint gurgling sound from the stew pot, like small bubbles bursting in the silence.
Yu Ling didn't press him, just staring back at him quietly, waiting for his answer. Her question was frank, not a question, but more of a confirmation, a desire to understand the man in front of her more completely.
The silence of a few seconds seemed to be stretched out very long.
Finally, Zhao Chen sighed softly. It was a gentle sigh, filled with a sense of relief that things had finally settled, yet also a subtle heaviness. He withdrew his hand from her waist, but didn't let go. Instead, he lifted it naturally and, with his warm fingertips, gently brushed away the biscuit crumbs that had accidentally stained the corner of her mouth during her laughter.
The movements were incredibly gentle.
Then he spoke, his voice low and steady, as if he was recounting an old story that had nothing to do with him and happened long ago.
"Yeah." He admitted it straightforwardly, without any concealment or excuses, "We were together."
Yu Ling's heart sank slightly at the sound of that affirmative syllable. Although she had been mentally prepared, hearing his admission in person still pricked her heart slightly.
Zhao Chen's fingertips did not leave her cheek, but slid to her chin, slightly lifting her face, forcing her to see more clearly the honesty and... a hint of disgust in his eyes.
"Very short," he emphasized. There was no trace of nostalgia or tenderness in his voice, only the calmness of an objective statement, even a hint of coldness and alienation. "Probably less than three months? In my last six months at Stanford, she pursued me very closely."
He paused, as if recalling the unpleasant past, his brows slightly furrowed, and a clear trace of boredom flashed across his eyes.
"At that time, I was young and full of energy, with great academic pressure and a restless environment. She came from a strong family background, and her methods... you know, she was very good at creating an atmosphere and knew how to use public opinion and pressure from her circle."
His tone was flat, but every word was clear, as if he was peeling off an old, uncomfortable scar. "Everyone around us thought we 'should' be a couple, there were some who encouraged us, some who tried to bring us together... it was very annoying. Plus there were some family interests involved at the time." When he mentioned "interests involved", his tone was filled with undisguised sarcasm.
"I admit, I handled it terribly during that time." Zhao Chen's gaze was as calm as water as he analyzed himself frankly. "On the one hand, I was extremely annoyed. On the other hand, I did have a frivolous attitude of 'it doesn't matter' and 'let's give it a try'. I didn't invest any emotions. It was purely due to my youthful naiveté."
He said the words "young and confused" in a decisive and complete manner, as if he was evaluating the mistakes made by a stranger who had nothing to do with him.
"I soon discovered that she was not the person I was looking for. She was paranoid, controlling, and her values were completely different from mine."
Zhao Chen's eyes grew sharper, like a knife scraping across ice. "More importantly, she treats her feelings like a trophy to show off. That time she fell into the lake..."
He mentioned this "sweet" incident that Gu Qianqian had tried so hard to exaggerate, and a cold smile appeared on his lips. "She deliberately lost her balance and fell, just to see if I would 'rescue the beauty' in front of everyone, to satisfy her desire for performance and vanity."
The truth was so naked and ugly, like a basin of ice water, it instantly extinguished the last bit of bitterness in Yu Ling's heart, leaving only a sense of absurdity and deep disgust for Gu Qianqian.
"As for the speeding and stealing the silver sailboat," Zhao Chen's tone became even more indifferent, with a nonchalant air, "She just made a bet with her friends and used me as a tool to satisfy her vanity. At the time, I was just bored to death and didn't want to be harassed, so I used the most brutal and direct method to resolve it. Now it seems so stupid."
He criticized his own reckless past mercilessly, with only disgust and contempt in his tone.
"So," Zhao Chen concluded, his voice low and clear, every word hammering at Yu Ling's heart, "the so-called 'being together' was a mistake from the very beginning, a farce. I never fell in love with her, nor did I ever harbor any attachment to her. It ended cleanly and neatly, without any drag."
He leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between them, his warm breath caressing Ling's hair. His gaze locked firmly with her clear eyes, which contained no doubt, only quiet listening and understanding.
"Lingling," he called her name, his voice filled with unprecedented solemnity and an almost pious earnestness, "That was an extremely terrible, extremely stupid, and extremely regrettable experience in my life.
If I could, I'd even like to completely erase it from my memory." He paused, his eyes filled with deep emotions, "Because it has nothing to do with you, or anything I have now, and it doesn't deserve to be mentioned."
He reached out his hand, no longer to brush away the biscuit crumbs, but used his slightly cool fingertips to touch Yu Ling's eyebrows very gently and carefully, as if to smooth out any wrinkles there that might have existed because of his past.
"To me, she's just a hassle I'm eager to get rid of, a mistake I've already put behind me." Zhao Chen's voice was deep and powerful, filled with a determination to cut off the past. "It's over, completely and thoroughly."
His fingertips slowly moved down from Yu Ling's eyebrows, with a soothing warmth, gently tracing her brow bone, the corners of her eyes, and finally stopping on her warm cheek.
"As for her obsession..." Zhao Chen's eyes instantly turned cold, like a blade tempered with ice. The warmth he had just felt vanished without a trace, leaving only a piercing indifference and a condescending, undisguised contempt. "That's her own illness. It has nothing to do with me, and even less with you."
The coldness and disgust in his tone were even stronger than in the warning call at the cafe. "She's just a pathetic creature lost in her own fantasy, unable to see reality. Everything she does, everything she says, is like the buzzing of a fly, meaningless except to annoy me."
He narrowed his eyes slightly, the glint behind his lenses as sharp as a hawk, carrying a powerful aura of control over everything: "If she dares to bother you again, or tries to disgust you with those ridiculous 'pasts'..."
He paused, his lips curled up in an extremely cold and emotionless arc, "I don't mind letting her completely disappear from your world. In a physical sense, or... in any other sense."
This naked threat, spoken calmly from his lips, carried a terrifying intimidation. But as Yu Ling listened, she felt strangely free of fear, only a sense of security, a sense of being closely guarded by a powerful force.
The coldness in Zhao Chen's eyes only lasted for a moment. When he refocused his gaze on Yu Ling's face, the biting coldness quickly receded like a tide, and was replaced by a bottomless tenderness and fear that almost drowned people.
He held her face in his hands, as if holding a rare treasure. His fingertips trembled slightly, barely perceptibly, revealing the unsettled ripples in his heart.
"Lingling," he called softly, his voice hoarse, with a sense of fragility and fear, as if he had just survived a disaster. "Do you... believe what I say?"
He asked cautiously, his eyes full of uncertainty, like a child waiting for the final verdict. Where was the cold and ruthless look just now?
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