Chapter 196 196
He continued studying her beneath the weight of his dark gaze, and the intensity of it forced her eyes to flicker away. Suddenly, the simplest words abandoned her. Her tongue seemed to forget how to form even the most basic sentences, and it took every ounce of effort she had to appear calm and composed.
Drawing in a slow breath, she forced a polite smile onto her face.
“What would you like to have, sir?”
The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them. She should have asked what he was doing here of all places. Instead, she had made the situation unbearably formal… awkward… tense.
Silence followed.
He didn’t answer.
With his piercing stare fixed on her, it became harder with each passing second to maintain the illusion of normalcy.
“What would you like to have, sir?” she repeated, silently grateful that her voice didn’t betray her with a stutter after the way her tongue had failed her moments ago.
“You.”
The single word left his lips in that deep, unmistakable voice.
Her eyes snapped up instantly, colliding with the dark olive depths of his gaze. A thick swallow followed as confusion clouded her expression. For a brief moment she wondered if her ears were deceiving her.
“P… pardon?” she murmured softly, genuinely uncertain.
She hated this pretense between them. She wanted things to be normal easy, light, and carefree, just as they had been when he first entered her life.
Closing her eyes for a second, Jacqueline gathered the courage she needed to face him properly. When she opened them again, she tried to begin a real conversation.
“Damien”
“Meatloaf.”
His voice cut across hers, cold and firm.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. Quietly swallowing the knot that had formed in her throat, she wrote down his order on her notepad. Technically, she should have asked whether he wanted something to drink, but instead she simply turned on her heel and walked away from the table.
Jacqueline later asked another waitress to take care of Table Two. She couldn’t bring herself to return and stand there pretending they were strangers.
The rest of her shift passed with her nerves tightly strung. She continued taking orders and delivering food, yet all the while she felt the scorching weight of his gaze burning into the back of her head.
From the corner of her eye, she eventually saw him rise from his seat and walk out of the restaurant.
Her shoulders sagged slightly as she looked down at the small notepad in her hand.
Of all the places in the city… why here?
This restaurant was several miles away from where he lived. The thought that he might have followed her here briefly crossed her mind, but she dismissed it almost immediately.
That couldn’t be it.
He had looked far too cold, far too indifferent. Most likely he had simply come here without realizing she had started working at the restaurant.
Shaking off the thought, Jacqueline buried herself in her work. By the time her shift ended, it was already quite late.
She headed straight to Gilles’s place to pick up Mathieu.
Gilles, however, clearly disapproved of her working such late hours. The way he and the others looked after her so protective, so caring sometimes made her feel like a princess.
A role she had never believed belonged to her.
Gilles eventually drove both her and Mathieu back to their apartment.
The siblings thanked him before stepping out of the car and heading inside the building, climbing up to their apartment.
Jacqueline was about to prepare dinner when Mathieu stopped her.
He had already eaten at Gilles’s place.
Relief washed over her. She was so exhausted from the long day that the thought of cooking anything for herself felt impossible.
After settling Mathieu into bed, Jacqueline retreated to her own room. The moment her body sank onto the mattress, she expected sleep to claim her immediately.
But luck was not on her side.
She lay there wide awake, staring into the darkness as Damien’s cold behavior replayed endlessly in her mind.
Still… she couldn’t truly blame him.
After all, she had been the one who left him without warning, leaving nothing but a simple letter behind as her goodbye. He had helped her through so much, and yet she had walked away like that.
She shouldn’t have done it.
But at the time, she simply hadn’t been strong enough to face the truth to endure the pain that would have come with it.
She hadn’t wanted her heart to shatter.
Because if she had stayed… if she had faced Damien back then, he might have told her that their night together meant nothing to him that she should forget it ever happened.
He had said something similar the first time he kissed her. And the way he had acted afterward…
She didn’t have the strength to relive that kind of heartbreak.
She couldn’t bear to see regret in his eyes.
The memory she cherished most the one moment she held closest to her heart would have turned bitter.
So the only solution she had found was to run.
Later that night, Jacqueline stepped into a long, quiet shower. When she finally stood in front of the bathroom mirror, she wiped the fog away with her palm and stared at her reflection.
A pair of lifeless brown eyes stared back.
Dark circles shadowed the skin beneath them.
Sleep had never come.
The entire night had been spent reliving memories of Damien every beautiful moment they had shared.
The next morning followed much the same routine as the day before.
At the university, she walked slowly through the corridors. It was still early, and only a few students had arrived.
Lost deep in thought, she wandered forward without paying attention until suddenly she collided with something solid.
A wall.
Pain shot through her nose as it struck the surface, and she stumbled backward from the impact. She was about to lose her balance and fall when a large hand shot out, gripping her elbow firmly and pulling her back against the wall.
Her eyes had squeezed shut from the pain, but when she felt warm breath brush across her forehead, they flew open in surprise.
Instinctively, she tried to step away from the man holding her but the moment she heard his voice, her heart seemed to stop.
“Watch it,” Damien muttered gruffly.
Jacqueline stared at him, her mouth slightly open like a fish pulled out of water.
The moment felt eerily familiar.
This had happened before… in this very hallway. And back then, he had spoken those exact same words to her the moment that had made her realize he wasn’t mute after all.
But now, as she looked at him, the expression on his face was far from the same.
A deep scowl darkened his features. His jaw was clenched tight with anger, and his eyes were as cold as ice.
For the first time, he genuinely frightened her.
Awkwardly, she slipped her elbow from his grasp and lowered her gaze. Without saying a word, she turned and began to walk away.
“Fck it!”
His furious growl echoed behind her.
Before she could even turn around to see what he meant
everything happened in a blur…