Chapter 58 She Was a Good Woman, but I Was the Better One
Nathan paused entirely, wiping his hands on a towel. He stared blankly at Anna for a moment before replying, his voice devoid of any hesitation. "He already has a mother. My wife is his mother."
"But... wasn't Chloe supposed to be his sister?" Anna had asked, completely thrown off balance by his fractured logic.
Nathan had considered it seriously, his expression entirely deadpan. "Then we'll simply wait until Chloe finally comes back, and she can decide what he should call her."
Anna had lowered her head, physically unable to insist any further.
She knew she had failed completely. The man was living in a terrifying, delusional reality where his dead wife was just temporarily delayed.
After that night, Anna noticed that Nathan seemed to aggressively pour every single ounce of his agonizing longing and completely wasted love for his wife directly into Mason. He cared for the child with a terrifying, meticulous obsession.
Sometimes, as the years dragged on, Anna really wanted to scream at him, "He is just someone else's kid! Haven't you ever wanted to have a biological child of your own?!"
But she never dared to actually voice it. She was terrified that if she shattered his fragile illusion, he would permanently sever their friendship.
The decades dragged on, bleeding into one another, until she finally reached her current age. She grew incredibly weary. She actively wanted to give up, yet she always found herself completely incapable of letting go of the leash. She couldn't bear to leave him to rot alone in that massive, silent mansion with absolutely no one to care for him.
But now... Chloe was actually back. The ghost he had wasted his entire existence waiting for had miraculously materialized in the flesh.
Anna could finally drop the rope.
Sitting in the hospital cafe, Anna pulled herself out of the memory, offering Chloe a soft, incredibly genuine smile. "I have absolutely no regrets, Chloe. But I am truly, fundamentally exhausted. You must treat him well."
Her eyes suddenly hardened, glistening with unshed tears, her corporate ruthlessness flashing for a fraction of a second. "Because if you hurt him... I might truly become a wicked woman. A very, very wicked woman."
Chloe didn't flinch. She lifted her chin, meeting the older woman's threatening gaze with absolute, unyielding iron. "You don't need to threaten me, Anna. As long as there is breath in my lungs, I will fiercely protect him better than anyone else on this earth."
Anna stared at her for a long moment before slowly standing up, nodding with a final, completely satisfied smile. "Good. Then I won't waste time with any more blessings. Goodbye, Chloe."
"Goodbye, Anna," Chloe nodded respectfully.
The two women shook hands firmly over the table, bidding each other a proper, absolute farewell.
Anna picked up her Birkin bag, turned on her designer heels, and walked out of the cafe, completely closing the door on twenty-three years of unrequited obsession.
Chloe sat alone at the table, aggressively twirling a massive bite of the expensive beef pasta Anna had bought her onto her fork.
She is an incredibly good woman, Chloe thought to herself, chewing methodically. It's just too bad I am the absolute best one.
After polishing off the entire plate of pasta, Chloe walked briskly back up to the neurology department.
Nathan and Professor Torres hadn't finished their high-level discussion yet.
Chloe quietly pushed the heavy mahogany office door open just a crack and peered inside. Nathan was sitting beside the older professor, completely engrossed in their intense debate, pointing at complex chemical structures glowing on the computer monitor.
That deeply absorbed, fiercely intelligent look on his face was incredibly, dangerously charming.
She stood in the hallway, watching him through the crack for quite a while. Finally, Nathan seemed to subconsciously sense the heavy weight of her gaze.
He stopped mid-sentence, turning his head sharply toward the door. The absolute second he saw her peeking through the gap, a slow, helpless smile broke across his face.
It was an incredibly gentle, completely unguarded smile—like warm winter sunlight instantly illuminating a freezing room.
Chloe’s heart violently skipped a beat, completely captivated by the sight.
Suddenly, a vivid memory flashed in her mind—her wild university days, when she used to skip her own boring lectures to sneak across campus and aggressively hunt him down in the advanced chemistry lab.
While he was hyper-focused on conducting highly volatile experiments, she had never dared to actually interrupt his work. Instead, she would just stand outside in the corridor, pressing her face against the reinforced observation window, shamelessly staring at him for hours.
Yet, without fail, he always seemed to physically sense her presence. He would suddenly pause his pipetting, lift his head, instantly lock eyes with her through the glass, and offer her a faint, devastating smile that could sustain her for an entire week.
Inside the office, Nathan quickly wrapped up his final point with Professor Torres. He stood up, grabbed his jacket, and stepped out into the hallway. "Have you been waiting out here long?"
"It’s totally fine. Take your time," Chloe beamed.
"We're finished with the primary math. We'll cover the remaining clinical details in the professor's lab tomorrow afternoon," Nathan said. He naturally reached out, securely lacing his fingers through hers, and waved a polite goodbye to Professor Torres through the open door before leading her down the hall.
Professor Torres nodded in return. As he watched the couple walk away, his sharp eyes finally focused on the young woman completely glued to Nathan's side.
Suddenly, a massive realization hit the old doctor like a ton of bricks.
Good God! It's Chloe!
She was the exact same menace who used to effortlessly lure his most prized, heavily disciplined graduate student out of his advanced seminars countless times!
Professor Torres couldn't help but burst into a booming laugh. Vibrant, chaotic scenes of their youth flashed before his aging eyes like frames from an old movie.
Growing old really did make a man nostalgic for the chaos of the past. What a completely terrifying, perfect couple they were.
"So, I just had a lovely chat with your wife," Chloe remarked casually as they walked toward the hospital elevators, raising an accusatory eyebrow.
"What do you mean?" Nathan blinked, completely failing to catch her drift.
"The woman who brazenly pretended to be your wife at the mansion," Chloe clarified, her tone dripping with deliberate danger.
"Oh. Anna." Nathan nodded slowly, finally understanding. He had seen her talking to Torres earlier. "What about her?"
"I actually thought she seemed quite wonderful—incredibly elegant, fiercely intelligent, deeply gracious, and extremely well-spoken," Chloe noted, stopping to lean back against the large window overlooking the Chicago skyline. She crossed her arms, her curiosity completely piqued. "Honestly, Professor... in all these agonizingly lonely years, you seriously never once thought about accepting her?"
Nathan froze. He looked down at her, clearly hesitating, his jaw tightening as he weighed the absolute danger of answering truthfully.
Chloe reached out, playfully nudging his chest. "Oh, come on! Just tell me. I swear on my life I won't get mad."
Nathan let out a heavy, defeated sigh. He paused for a long, agonizing second, deciding to choose absolute honesty. "I did think about it."
Chloe’s eyes blew wide open. Her previously relaxed, teasing posture instantly turned rigid.
She pushed off the glass, staring up at him. Her playful smile completely vanished, and she struggled violently to maintain a calm, unaffected expression. "Then why... why didn't you accept her in the end?" she asked, her voice dropping to a fragile whisper.
"I just fundamentally knew the two of us weren't right for each other," Nathan said, turning his gaze out the window, his brow slightly furrowed with heavy guilt. "But mostly... I didn't think I was a man she should ever be tethered to. I didn't want to completely drag her down."
He swallowed hard. "Like you just said, she is an incredible woman. During my absolute darkest, most vulnerable years, when the isolation was literally suffocating me... yes, I did selfishly want to run to her for comfort. I wanted an anchor. But whenever my mind finally cleared, I realized it would be completely unfair and fundamentally cruel of me to use her as a replacement."
Nathan let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "Maybe... if another ten or twenty years had passed, and I had completely lost the will to fight... I might have finally caved and accepted her. Who knows?"
Chloe’s expression turned absolutely glacial. "Are you deliberately saying this just to drive me completely insane?"
"You literally just explicitly asked me to be honest!" Nathan immediately threw his hands up in defense, genuinely confused by her sudden rage.
"How the hell was I supposed to know your 'honesty' was going to sound like that?!" Chloe aggressively stamped her foot, glaring at him with unfiltered fury. "You were supposed to instantly say, 'No! I never even looked at her! I have been entirely devoted to waiting for you all along!' What the hell was all that sickening admiration you just poured out for her?!"
Nathan looked entirely innocent, his eyes wide. "But I really have been waiting for you!"
"You call fantasizing about marrying another woman 'waiting'?!" Chloe violently raised her hand and smacked his chest hard. "Do you realize that is basically emotional betrayal?! And you boldly admit you thought about it! Exactly how many times did you think about it?!"
Nathan completely panicked, absolutely terrified to speak the truth anymore. "Just... just once!"
It was a lie. He had only truly entertained the dark thought of surrendering during the brutal, agonizing year his mother had passed away, when the grief had nearly broken his mind entirely.
Chloe aggressively grabbed two fistfuls of Nathan's expensive dress shirt, yanking him down. She stood on her tiptoes, glaring fiercely directly into his dark eyes. "So... you are openly admitting you emotionally betrayed me once?"
"I strongly feel like you are deliberately leading the witness right now," Nathan protested weakly, completely trapped in her grip.
"So what if I'm leading the witness?!" Chloe didn't back down an inch, her breath hot against his jaw. "If I hadn’t aggressively phrased it this way, would you have ever confessed the truth?! Nathan Archer, you dirty old man. You've got quite the wandering imagination, don't you?"
"Literally three days ago, you told me I was devastatingly charming. Today, you're calling me a dirty old man," Nathan grumbled, lifting his hand to pinch her soft cheek, not entirely pleased with the sudden demotion.
"Because you are very different now," Chloe purred. She immediately hooked her arms around his neck, pulling his head down until her lips were hovering a millimeter from his ear.
Her voice dropped to a dark, incredibly suggestive whisper. "Do that again, and I absolutely will not forgive you so easily."
She deliberately blew a hot, agonizingly slow breath directly into his ear. "Just wait until tonight, Professor."
With that, she let out a soft, wicked hum, completely released him, and turned on her heel to confidently strut toward the elevators.
Nathan stood frozen by the window. He slowly raised a hand to aggressively rub his ear, which was still violently tingling from the blistering heat of her breath. He watched the sway of her hips as she walked away, letting out a heavy, completely resigned sigh.
This goddamn girl is exactly the same, he thought, his heart pounding against his ribs. She still completely believes she calls all the shots.
Chloe walked ahead, her chin held high, perfectly feigning a deeply offended indignation.
But truthfully? She understood Nathan perfectly well. Who wouldn't want their agonizing life to be just a little bit easier?
Nathan wasn't a god. He was just a deeply traumatized, ordinary man—vulnerable, exhausted, and completely prone to wavering under the crushing weight of two decades of isolation.
Honestly, any other sane human being on the planet would have given up and moved on years ago. Who the hell actually waits twenty-three years for a ghost to return?
She wasn't actually mad at him at all.
But if she didn't pretend to be furiously jealous... how else was she supposed to invent a completely justified excuse to viciously punish him in bed later tonight?