Chapter 21 If you want to stay...
Xia Zhiyao took out her key and opened the door. Zhou Yue was leaning against the sofa.
His shirt collar was wide open, and a pair of metal-framed glasses perched on his nose. The warm yellow light reflected off the lenses, making his features appear even sharper.
He held a short glass between his fingertips, the amber-colored liquor swirling gently in his palm, casting a warm glow on his face. The bottle on the coffee table was half-empty, and ice cubes clinked in the glass.
He had been looking down, but when he heard Xia Zhiyao return, he slowly raised his eyes. His eyes looked particularly deep under the light, with a hint of languor from drinking, yet they were sharp enough to see right through people's hearts.
"Where did you go today?" Zhou Yue's voice came through, carrying a hint of alcohol and a barely perceptible probing.
"Let's take a walk around the neighborhood." Xia Zhiyao lowered her head, put the shoes into the shoe cabinet, and moved slowly and deliberately, avoiding his gaze.
Zhou Yue put down his cup, leaned back on the sofa, tapped the rim of the cup with his fingertips, and stared intently at her: "I left work early, thinking we could have dinner together, but you weren't home, and you didn't reply to my WeChat messages."
Xia Zhiyao placed the shopping bags on the dining table. Her tone was indifferent: "My phone died."
He looked at her for a moment, then suddenly stood up, his long shadow stretched out by the living room light. His steps were unhurried, yet carried an unavoidable sense of approach.
When he reached her, he lowered his head, his magnetic voice, slightly drunk, almost whispered in her ear: "Are you... deliberately avoiding me?"
She didn't answer, she just stood there. Her silence, and the aura around her that seemed as if she might disappear at any moment, made his chest tighten suddenly, and unease surged up like a tide.
"Xia Zhiyao." He called her name, his voice low and hoarse, carrying a hint of restraint that had been suppressed to the extreme.
She slowly turned her head and met his gaze. He almost instantly stepped over her, bent down, and cupped her face in his hands.
His lips pressed down hard the next second, with a force that was uneasy, suppressed, and almost angry. His breath and the faint scent of wine mingled between his lips and teeth. His kiss was urgent and forceful, as if he wanted to forcibly pull her back from this silent escape.
Even after he slightly distanced himself, his breath was still hot as he pressed in a low voice, "Xia Zhiyao, tell me the truth, why did you come to New York?"
She froze, his burning heat still lingering on her lips, her eyelashes trembling slightly, but she didn't answer immediately.
He straightened up, his gaze darkening, and the vulnerability he had been trying so hard to hide surfaced in the night.
"Tell me the truth." His voice was extremely low, as if it would shatter if pressed any lower. "What exactly happened?"
His gaze narrowed inch by inch, and his tone gradually turned cold, filled with deeper urgency and a hint of annoyance: "Did something happen to you in Beijing?"
He didn't wait for her response, as if afraid that if he stopped, he would never get an answer again, and his tone became increasingly sharp: "Why did you suddenly resign? You, Xia Zhiyao, are a workaholic, the kind who feels uncomfortable if you don't work every day. But you came here, didn't answer the phone, didn't check emails, and did nothing every day... When have you ever been like this in your life?"
His voice was like a sharp knife, cutting through her silence word by word, "I'm not stupid."
Xia Zhiyao subconsciously looked away, but was still a beat too slow.
Zhou Yue looked at her and scoffed, his laughter as cold as snow in the night: "You, a workaholic, can stay at home with peace of mind, eating, sleeping, and shopping with me? Do you think that's like you?"
He took another step closer, his breath hot, his voice low as if he were using all his strength to control himself: "You don't answer the phone, you don't handle official business, you don't mention any projects... Xia Zhiyao, what exactly are you hiding from?"
To him, her silence was almost an admission.
Xia Zhiyao subconsciously wanted to look away, but Zhou Yue was looking at her with eyes that were too close and too real, as if he wanted to see right through her. His gaze was sharp, heavy, and carried an inescapable obsession.
The room was so quiet it was almost suffocating, with only his unsteady breathing, which sounded jarringly clear in the silence. She lowered her eyes, her eyelashes trembling slightly, like a pair of wings trying to escape, their fluttering revealing panic and stubbornness.
“My mom told me,” Zhou Yue’s voice suddenly lowered, “Your parents had no idea you resigned; they only found out from my mom. They also didn’t know you came to New York.”
"I'm fine." Xia Zhiyao finally spoke, pausing for a moment before adding, "I just resigned... I wanted a change of environment to adjust."
She deliberately kept her tone calm, as if she were talking about a trivial matter, but the more casually she spoke, the closer Zhou Yue's tightly stretched string was to snapping.
"Adjust?" he repeated in a low voice, as if chewing on the word, with a faint clenching of teeth. "Once it's adjusted, we'll go back, right?"
His gaze tightened, suspicion and pain churning in his chest, but he suppressed them fiercely. Finally, he forced out a sentence from his throat, almost a suppressed outburst: "Do you really think that hiding things from me, lying to me... will solve the problem?"
That wasn't a question; it was more like an instinctive fear.
He feared that she would shoulder everything alone again, feared that she would quietly and decisively withdraw from his life once more, just like she had done years ago, leaving him trapped in the same place, suffering day and night.
"Xia Zhiyao." He finally spoke, his voice hoarse and strained, as if he had used all his strength to say it, "We've finally made it this far."
His breath was close to mine, warm and trembling with suppressed emotion. "Don't..." He paused for a moment, almost pleadingly lowering his voice, "Don't leave alone again."
Xia Zhiyao didn't answer or explain further; she didn't know how to answer or explain.
Zhou Yue didn't say anything more, just stared at her quietly, his gaze so intense it seemed he wanted to nail her to the spot. That silence was heavier than any interrogation.
She looked up and finally met his gaze. His eyes held an emotion suppressed to the extreme, eerily still, yet capable of devouring everything in an instant.
Just as she was about to say something, Zhou Yue suddenly took a step forward, his hand covering the back of her neck. His fingertips were icy cold, yet they carried an unyielding force. Before she could react, he pulled her close.
“If you want to stay…” Zhou Yue’s lips twitched, as if he wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t bring out his usual ease. All that was left was a taut, pale lip and a faint redness in his eyes. “Then marry me.”
“Get the H4 visa first, then find a job later. My salary… can support you.” He spoke quickly, as if desperately trying to get these words out, afraid she would turn and leave before he finished listening. “You don’t need to worry about anything.”
His tone sounded calm, but behind that calmness was the strength he was holding onto the edge of anxiety. The calmer he seemed, the more it showed that the storm in his heart was about to get out of control.
Zhou Yue's gaze was fixed on her, not allowing her to escape, as if he would collapse if she said "no." It was a naked will to survive, as if he had no other way to hold her back.
At that moment, he was no longer the boy next door who had always silently followed her and slowly grown up, but a man who had been pushed to the edge of a cliff, reaching out to her with all his might and without reservation.
A pang of sadness welled up in Xia Zhiyao's eyes. Fragments of her time in New York flashed through her mind: his companionship, his waiting, his figure sitting on the sofa working until dawn—gentle and resolute, yet all sustained by anxiety and insomnia.
She hadn't had a dream like this in a long time. In the dream, she didn't have to scheme or force herself to stay afloat. She didn't have to be the one always walking ahead. She could just stop and be held tightly in someone's arms. Even if no one said anything, she wouldn't be let go.
But a dream is just a dream.
It had only been less than a month between them. Although they had known each other for many years and had an unspeakable bond, they had only been truly close for a few days.
She knew all too well that those days they spent together were beautiful yet fragile, and that there was a full four-year gap between them, which was the most turbulent and heaviest time of their lives spent alone.
There were too many things left unsaid between them, too many things left unresolved. She didn't even know what his real life was like now; what she saw was just the best side he was trying to present.
And what about her? Four years older than Zhou, her mind was filled with KPIs, resource matching, industry policies, and a bunch of unfinished messes.
She didn't come to start a new life; she came to escape, to escape a storm, but she never truly left the battlefield.
Domestic positions, teams, clients, connections, as well as interrupted projects and crises that couldn't be hidden... none of them were properly dealt with.
She had only temporarily withdrawn from the vortex, but the chaos wouldn't disappear just because she was in New York. It was still churning in the same place, like an undercurrent that could pull her back at any moment, waiting for her to return and clean up the mess, waiting for her to pay the price.
Zhou Yue is still young, has time, room to try and fail, and the confidence to start over. But she doesn't. She can't forget who she is just because of the tenderness of a snowy night.
She couldn't tear down the walls she had painstakingly built just because of an extremely tender promise, and she couldn't let him be dragged into the quagmire from which he still hadn't escaped.
He deserves a clearer life, not the storms she brought.
It wasn't that she didn't want to stay; she just knew the harsh reality: staying meant giving up too much, and she was never the kind of person who would disregard everything for love.
She was too calm and too clear-headed. Zhou Yue was right; she always moved closer while simultaneously retreating.
But she had no choice. She got to where she is today because she made every choice without emotion. Otherwise, she would have lost on the battlefield long ago.
She lowered her head, suppressing the sting in her eyes, and tried her best to keep her tone steady: "Zhou Yue, all my connections, resources, and work are in China."
She looked at him, her voice rational, even deliberately cold: "What can I do here? Be a housewife?"
As soon as she said it, she looked away, afraid that if she looked at him again, she would waver, and if she looked at him again, she might really not be able to leave.
Zhou Yue's voice suddenly broke in, lower but with a deeper certainty and sincerity: "If you don't want to stay, then I'll go back with you."
He looked at her, as if afraid she wouldn't believe him, and added, "I didn't plan to stay in New York for too long anyway. I've learned what I needed to learn, and returning to China is just a matter of time."
He spoke so calmly, as if it were just an ordinary decision, but Xia Zhiyao knew that he wasn't the kind of person who would change course so easily.
Over the years, he has come this far step by step, calculating every single step clearly. But now, he casually says he's going back, simply because she said she didn't want to stay.
In that instant, her heart ached terribly. She wanted to tell him, "You're still young, and you have endless possibilities. Don't give up the future you've worked so hard for just because of me."
But she was thirty-two years old, and she didn't have the courage to take another gamble, nor could she afford even one failure.
She remained silent for a long time, her throat tightening, but she couldn't say anything.
The night outside the window grew deeper, and the snow continued to fall silently on the glass, layer upon layer, like a silent farewell, quietly covering the path it had come from.
Zhou Yue stood before her, enveloped in the snow's light and tranquility. He was no longer the boy who used to bring her water in the afternoons and follow her around calling her "Sister Yaoyao." That boy had now grown into an adult who could shield her from the wind and rain.
“So, Xia Zhiyao,” his voice was gentle, yet carried an undeniable firmness, “you don’t need to rush into a decision, but I want you to know that no matter what you choose, I will be with you.”
He paused, something flashing deep in his eyes, and added in a low voice, "Everything I said is true, you have to believe me."
He spoke softly, his tone as gentle as if he were discussing a plan that the top leader could easily change. But only he knew that his seemingly relaxed calm was a result of suppressing his anxiety and trying his best to keep himself steady. This was the only way to keep her.
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Author's Note: This is the latest revision from August 8th. Those who want to continue reading can wait until tomorrow for further revisions. [Let me see...]
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