Chapter 25 Letting Him Go
He slowly lifted his head.
He stared at her in absolute, terrifying silence. Those dark eyes, the ones she had adored for half her life, were fixed on her with a suppressed agony so violent it tore her chest open just to look at him.
Unable to bear the sheer weight of his gaze, she turned and practically ran for the door. “I’ll stay here until the end of the month. Then I’m gone.”
“The house is yours,” Nathan’s voice rasped from the dining table, sounding like crushed glass.
“I don’t want it.” Chloe grabbed the doorknob, tears streaming freely down her face. She took a ragged breath. “My parents only put down fifty thousand for the deposit twenty years ago. There is no reason for you to give me a million-dollar property.”
“The deed is in your name,” Nathan insisted, his voice rising, carrying a desperate, jagged edge.
“Yes, because you put my name on it! But that was then, Nathan! Now, your assets belong to your son! You can’t just hand them over to an outsider like me!”
With that final, brutal word—outsider—Chloe couldn’t take it a second longer. She ripped the door open and fled into the freezing night.
She couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. It hurt too much. If she had stayed one second longer, she would have broken down. She would have thrown herself onto his chest, clung to his shirt, and begged him to abandon his family and come back to her.
And she was terrified that he would actually agree.
She knew him. Nathan would absolutely burn his entire life to the ground for her. He would bear the guilt, the public scandal, and the hatred of his child just to keep her. He would return to her completely covered in scars.
She loved him too much to inflict that kind of pain on him.
He had survived her death. He had built a peaceful, successful life. She would not be the bomb that shattered it all over again. Letting him go was the only choice.
Back in the apartment, Nathan sat entirely alone.
The steaming food on the table slowly grew cold, mirroring the sudden, catastrophic plunge of his heart back into the icy abyss he had lived in for twenty-three years.
He blinked slowly. He stood up, methodically wrapped the leftover food in plastic, and placed it in the refrigerator. He gathered the plates and carried them to the sink.
He turned the faucet on full blast, forgetting to switch it to hot. The freezing winter water lashed against his skin.
He washed the dishes with mechanical precision, his long, elegant fingers turning stark white, then crimson from the cold.
A hot drop of water fell from his face, splashing into the icy basin. It mingled with the tap water, indistinguishable and quickly washed down the drain.
The roar of the rushing water drowned out every other sound in the empty house.
When Chloe finally returned hours later, her eyes swollen and raw, she found the apartment entirely empty.
The kitchen was spotless. The lights were dimmed. The air was perfectly still and freezing cold.
There was no one bustling by the stove. No one waiting for her on the sofa.
After standing in the dark hallway for a long time, Chloe slid down the wall until she hit the floor.
“It’s gone,” she whispered to the empty room. “It’s really all gone.”
She pulled her knees to her chest. “I wish I were dead. If I had just died in that crash, I wouldn’t have to feel this.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, digging her nails into her arms. “No. I can’t cry. I can do this alone. I have to live well, so when I finally die, I can tell my parents I survived.”
She dragged herself off the floor, crawled into bed, and wrapped the heavy blankets tightly around herself, lying completely motionless in the dark.
Across the city, Nathan sat in the back of the Bentley, his face an absolute mask of terrifying, murderous calm.
The driver glanced nervously in the rearview mirror. “Where to, Professor Archer?”
“Home,” Nathan replied, his voice devoid of all human warmth.
As the car rolled onto the highway, Nathan pulled out his phone and dialed Anna’s number.
She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“You went to the old house today.” It wasn’t a question. It was a flat, lethal declaration.
“She told you?” Anna scoffed lightly. “That woman has absolutely no pride—”
“That is none of your goddamn business,” Nathan snarled, his voice vibrating with a sudden, explosive fury that made the driver flinch. “What gave you the right to approach her? Was it the delusional fantasy you’ve been chasing for twenty years? Or your self-proclaimed status as my backup plan?”
“Nathan, I think you need to calm down,” Anna said, her tone tightening defensively. “Don’t say things you’ll regret.”
“Am I speaking harshly, or are you severely overstepping your place?” Nathan’s voice dropped into an icy, venomous register. “Anna, I have told you this countless times, and I will say it to you one final time: There is absolutely no possibility between us.”
“Nathan—”
“For years, I let you chase away the women who approached me in the department, not because I have ever felt a shred of affection for you, but because I couldn’t be bothered to deal with them myself! Do not ever go near my wife again.”
He ended the call before she could reply.
He threw the phone onto the leather seat and glared out the window, his chest heaving violently.
It had been decades since he had been this furious. For twenty-three years, he had convinced himself that his temper had died in the snow. He had believed nothing in the world could ever make him lose control again.
He had never imagined that hearing Chloe try to break up with him to "save his family" would completely shatter him.
Nathan closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands, letting out a ragged, exhausted breath.
She said she was the one who chased me back then.
He gave a harsh, bitter laugh in the dark of the car.
What an absolute fool she was. Even now, she still hadn’t realized the truth. She never could have caught him if he hadn’t been desperately waiting for her to try.
As the streetlights flashed across his closed eyelids, Nathan’s mind was violently pulled back to the past.
1997.
Nathan had started university at sixteen. Back then, he was only 5’8", barely matching Chloe’s height. Though he was quiet and awkward, his freakish IQ had easily landed him a full ride to a prestigious pre-med program.
Chloe, on the other hand, had barely scraped her way into the neighbouring, much less prestigious state university to study communications.
Throughout high school, Nathan had practically bled himself dry tutoring her, but she simply lacked any academic instinct. She survived entirely on his meticulously color-coded notes.
And yet, during her senior year, she had developed a massive crush on a basketball player in her class and spent half her time daydreaming about him.
When Nathan started his freshman year of college, the mere thought of her mooning over some idiot athlete made him so irrationally, violently annoyed that he entirely stopped returning her calls.
Chloe, completely oblivious to why he was icing her out, simply started showing up at his medical school campus uninvited.
At first, a tiny, hopeful part of his brain thought she missed him.
But whenever he asked why she kept taking the bus across town to see him, she would just shrug brightly. “Because the food in your cafeteria is amazing! For five dollars you get a massive double cheeseburger and fries! My school’s food is garbage!”
She had sighed tragically. “I really should have studied harder. I could be eating these burgers every day.”
Nathan had pulled out his student meal card, staring at her in absolute disbelief. “It’s too late for that now.”
Still, she was here. And that alone meant she was getting a free lunch.
“Nathan, you’re the best!” Chloe had cheered as he swiped his card to pay for her.
They had sat in the crowded dining hall, their plastic trays between them. As Chloe demolished her fries, she leaned across the table, her eyes sparkling mischievously. “You know, this is a medical school. If I could snag a hot med student as a boyfriend while I’m visiting you, that would be perfect!”
Nathan had stopped chewing.
He stared at her, his jaw tightening as a dark, obsessive possessiveness flared to life in his chest.
So, he thought coldly. She wants to date.