Chapter 57 A Conversation Between Two Women
Anna offered a flawless, polite smile. "Yes, it's me. I've been actively wanting to see you again for years. Today, I finally got the chance."
"Oh, really? What brings you out here to see me?" Chloe shifted her weight, the aggressive energy she had brought to the confrontation suddenly feeling deeply awkward in the face of Anna's unnerving friendliness.
"Nothing important, really," Anna murmured softly, her sharp gaze completely analyzing Chloe. "I was just curious... did Nathan ever happen to mention that you genuinely couldn't stand me?"
"Did I say that? I don't think I ever said that!" Chloe let out a loud, painfully awkward laugh. She had absolutely said that, repeatedly and aggressively, but it was entirely humiliating to be confronted face-to-face by the subject of her college gossip.
What the hell kind of things had Nathan been telling her?!
Anna smiled. She didn't press the interrogation. She just stood there, quietly watching the vibrant young woman in front of her.
Nurses and patients bustled violently through the hospital corridor around them. Anna lowered her gaze, letting out a soft, elegant sigh. "You just had a comprehensive blood panel drawn. You probably haven't had breakfast yet, have you?"
"Yeah," Chloe nodded warily.
"Come on. I'll take you downstairs to the cafeteria to get something hot," Anna said, her voice dropping to a gentle, maternal register that exuded a profound, entirely genuine care. It made it incredibly difficult for Chloe to maintain her hatred. "Nathan and Professor Torres are running complex math. We will probably be waiting for a while."
Chloe hesitated for a fraction of a second before her empty stomach won out. She nodded. "Alright."
They rode the elevator down to a high-end, casual cafe attached to the hospital lobby.
"What would you like?" Anna asked smoothly as they approached the counter.
"I'll just have the beef pasta and a coffee," Chloe replied.
Anna nodded. She stepped up to the cashier, ordered both their meals, and immediately tapped her iPhone against the terminal, paying with Apple Pay before Chloe could even blink.
Chloe scrambled forward. "Hey! Let me pay for that!"
"Absolutely no need. It's already taken care of," Anna smiled, gently but firmly waving away the phone Chloe was holding out. "Honestly, just being able to sit down and talk with you face-to-face has finally helped me resolve a massive, agonizing knot in my mind. Please, let me treat you to this meal."
"Talking to me actually resolves things for you? You are entirely too polite," Chloe said, genuinely disarmed. Being around this older woman felt completely relaxing. So this was what people meant by terrifyingly high emotional intelligence.
They claimed a quiet booth by the floor-to-ceiling windows, waiting for their food and chatting casually about the weather.
Anna stirred her black coffee, looking at Chloe with a complex, heavy mix of relief and absolute nostalgia. "Actually, Chloe... I was deeply in love with Nathan back in college."
"I know," Chloe nodded, dropping her guard completely. "Honestly, how could you not be? But you kept texting him past midnight, constantly using basic chemistry questions as an excuse to get his attention."
"Did you explicitly tell Nathan that I annoyed you?" Anna asked, a wistful smile touching her lips.
"I am not exactly friendly or accommodating to women who aggressively try to pursue my boyfriend," Chloe said frankly, meeting Anna's honesty with absolute candor.
"You know what?" Anna murmured softly, staring into her coffee cup. "Because of what you said to him back then... he brutally rejected me three separate times over the years."
Anna’s voice dropped to a barely audible whisper. "Over the past twenty-three years, I cornered him and confessed my feelings three times. The very last time... I truly, genuinely believed I had finally worn him down. I thought it was finally going to work."
She looked up, meeting Chloe's eyes. "But he still rejected me. He told me he couldn't cross the boundary, entirely because of the promise he made to you in that dorm room."
Chloe unconsciously licked her dry lips, completely unsure what to say.
Should she apologize?
It felt entirely hypocritical. Her territorial disgust had been completely genuine back then. She hadn't wanted this woman near him.
"Truthfully, I spent the last two decades utterly convinced that I hated your guts," Anna admitted, leaning back against the booth. "But when I heard the news that you had miraculously returned... I actually found myself wanting to thank you."
"Why?" Chloe asked softly.
"Because with you finally back, I can completely let it go," Anna smiled, though her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I can stop fighting a ghost. I can stop competing with him over who could hold out longer, or who possessed the deeper devotion. It's pathetic, I know. But I admit absolute, wholehearted defeat to you."
"Honestly, Anna... Nathan is an incredible man, but I really don't think you should have sacrificed your best years waiting on him," Chloe offered gently.
"You only say that because you have absolutely no concept of how terrifyingly deep his obsession with you goes," Anna replied, lowering her eyes, completely lost in a painful memory. "Sometimes I couldn't even tell myself the truth—was I actually in love with Nathan the person, or was I just hopelessly addicted to witnessing the absolute, feral depth of his devotion to you?"
Anna remembered it flawlessly.
In the immediate, chaotic years right after Chloe had vanished, Anna had deliberately inserted herself into Nathan's life by pretending to help him aggressively hunt for clues. She had even convinced him to let her accompany him on a cross-country trip.
They had driven to Detroit because Nathan had intercepted a police report suggesting the car involved in Chloe's accident had been spotted at a chop shop there. Detroit was Anna’s hometown. She had played the perfect, accommodating host, driving him through every single dangerous alley and industrial block in her own car, desperately searching for the vehicle.
Late that night, exhausted and empty-handed, Nathan had stood alone by the freezing Detroit River, his hands gripping the iron railing as he stared blankly at the distant city lights of Windsor, Canada, across the water. He had stood there in absolute silence for two hours.
Anna had bought a cheap hamburger from a street vendor and walked up beside him. He hadn't eaten a single calorie all day.
"You need to eat something," she had pleaded softly, holding it out.
Nathan, who had been a devastatingly handsome twenty-eight-year-old at the time, had lowered his dark eyes. He took the burger, but he didn't take a bite. He just kept staring dead ahead at the foreign lights reflecting on the black water.
The freezing river breeze had violently ruffled his dark hair, and the city lights had cast a deep, agonizingly melancholy shadow across his sharp profile. Leaning slightly against the railing in his dark overcoat, he had looked entirely untouchable, entirely broken, and dangerously beautiful.
Anna hadn't dared to even look at him, terrified the deafening sound of her own heartbeat would betray her desperate feelings.
She had eaten her own food in silence.
After what felt like an eternity, Nathan had finally broken the quiet, his deep, gravelly voice carrying over the wind. "Have you ever actually been across the river?"
"Of course I have," Anna had eagerly replied, desperate to keep him talking. "Do you want to go see it? I have my car. We can just drive right across the Ambassador Bridge. You just flash your passport at the border crossing. We could be in Canada in ten minutes."
Nathan had lowered his eyes to the dark water. "Maybe."
"So... do you want me to drive you?" Anna had asked again, her heart leaping with hope.
Nathan had slowly, firmly shaken his head. "No."
"Oh," Anna had swallowed her disappointment, taking another bite.
"But she wants to," Nathan had murmured to the empty air.
Hearing that single sentence, Anna had slowly turned to look at his profile.
He didn't say another word. He hadn't bothered to explain who "she" was. He didn't have to. Anna knew exactly who he was talking to.
The hot food in Anna's mouth had suddenly turned to absolute ash.
In that freezing moment by the river, a crystal-clear, horrifying realization had struck her. For the rest of his natural life, this man would never belong to anyone else. Not even a fraction of his soul was available for rent. He was entirely, permanently occupied by a ghost.
It was the absolute first time she had genuinely accepted that she could never conquer him.
It was also the first time she had forced herself to let him go. She had packed her bags and fled to Europe immediately after graduation, desperate to escape his gravity.
Yet, in the elite corporate years that followed, she had dated dozens of brilliant, wealthy men, and not a single one of them had ever possessed the power to make her pulse skip. None of them carried that lethal, unyielding devotion.
Late at night, in expensive hotel rooms across the world, she would still close her eyes and vividly recall Nathan standing by that freezing river—so utterly captivating, so deeply ruined, so entirely unforgettable.
That was the only reason she had finally flown back to Chicago.
Her return to the city had violently coincided with Nathan's catastrophic brain surgery following the landslide. His condition had been critical. He had nearly died on the table.
When she had finally seen him in the recovery ward, he was horrifyingly thin. His complexion was translucent, and his demeanor had shifted from aggressive desperation into a terrifying, serene acceptance—like a completely still, lifeless pool of water just waiting to evaporate.
She had visited his bedside constantly. When he finally recovered enough to work, she had ruthlessly maneuvered her way into his pharmaceutical lab just to ensure he didn't starve to death at his desk.
For years, he had remained in that hollow, untouchable state.
Then, one rainy afternoon, he had walked into the lab carrying a screaming infant, absolutely shocking the entire staff by announcing it was his son.
At first, Anna had assumed he had finally broken down and adopted.
Later, she had cornered Samantha Archer and learned the truth—it was Chloe's infant brother.
Anna had attended Mason's first birthday party at the mansion.
Throughout the entire chaotic evening, Nathan had held the squirming baby with an extraordinary, almost terrifying tenderness.
When the caterers had urged him to put the child in a highchair so he could actually eat his dinner, Nathan had simply adjusted his grip. "He panics and cries if I put him down. It's completely fine. I can eat with one hand."
Nathan had held the tiny infant against his chest for six solid hours, perfectly balancing a plate and occasionally eating a single bite. He was completely hyper-attuned to the baby; he instantly knew by the pitch of Mason's cry whether the boy was hungry, tired, or needed a change.
After the lavish party had finally ended and the guests cleared out, Anna had deliberately stayed behind to help Nathan clean up the wreckage.
Glancing at Nathan's soft, exhausted profile as he washed bottles in the sink, she thought he looked fundamentally different from the melancholy, entirely broken man she remembered by the Detroit River. The baby had anchored him to the earth.
She had gripped the edge of the granite counter, her heart pounding, and asked softly, "Nathan... are you genuinely planning to raise this infant entirely by yourself?"
Nathan had shut the water off, nodding without hesitation. "Of course."
"I... I can help you take care of him," Anna had blurted out, her hands shaking. "Wouldn't it be better for the child to have a mother figure around?"