Year After Year Infatuated

“Alright, stop making a fuss. Go put your luggage away. She’s staying tonight, and if you move out now, do you honestly expect me to live under the same roof with a single woman alone?”

Julian Vance pulled me into the study on the upper floor, shut the door, and adopted a coaxing tone, acting just like before when he deliberately put on a pitiful act.

“She’s only staying one night, she’ll leave tomorrow. Don’t make things uncomfortable for everyone; she used to be a friend after all.”

I glanced at the doorway, then back at the man hugging me with a face that suggested nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

The favored child of fortune is forever self-centered; in his eyes, as long as I endured a little, everything would be fine.

As if any disagreement on my part made me the unreasonable one.

“Once this blows over, I’ll take you on a trip abroad. Whatever you want to buy, I’ll buy it for you. Evelyn, please don’t move out, okay?”

Having lived with him for so many years, I knew his temperament inside out—he was inherently stubborn.

Tonight, he would definitely keep Vivienne here, and he would certainly not agree to let me leave.

My flight was next week, and I wanted to avoid unnecessary complications.

I suppressed my urge: “I’m giving a gift to a friend, and since there were no cardboard boxes at home, I just used the suitcase.”

“So you’re not running away from home?”

“Mhm.”

His expression relaxed considerably: “That’s good. I was genuinely afraid you’d get angry and leave me behind.”

He really didn’t wish to invest any mental effort into me; he believed such a clumsy excuse without a second thought.

Yet true to his word, he didn’t press further, pulling me in for a kiss. When his lips brushed my forehead, he finally noticed my injury:

“This wound… did I cause it? I’m sorry, let me go get the medicine kit.”

His tone was filled with worry and remorse, but why did he only notice it now?

Back in the private room tonight, didn’t he realize he was the one who pushed me?

After talking in the living room for so long just now, had he never once looked at my forehead?

Or was it because his mind was entirely consumed by Vivienne, rendering him utterly blind to anyone else?

Julian Vance arranged for Vivienne to stay in the guest room at the very end of the second-floor hallway, far away from our bedroom.

After showering, he sat on the bed and pulled me into his arms, intending to get intimate as usual, but I turned my face away.

His movements paused slightly: “Still angry?”

Compared to anger, I felt a deep sense of disgust.

Concealing my true feelings, I replied indifferently: “No, my period started.”

“Didn’t it just come half a month ago?”

“Probably too exhausted lately, so it’s irregular.”

He didn’t harbor much suspicion, pressing a kiss to my cheek before pulling me close again: “It’s fine, hugging is fine too.”

Seeing him reach for the buttons of my pajamas, I pressed my hand over his: “Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“What?”

Emerging briefly from his hazy drowsiness, he looked at me in confusion.

Like when he planned to tell me we were breaking up, when he planned to inform me that he and Vivienne had registered their marriage, or when he intended to announce that the child in Vivienne’s stomach was his.

Before any of these words could be prompted, a commotion echoed from outside the door.

It was coming from Vivienne.

The moment Julian Vance heard Vivienne’s startled gasp, his romantic enthusiasm vanished instantly.

“You go to sleep first, I’ll go check on her.”

And with that departure, he never came back.

At least, by the time I waited until the early hours of dawn, his figure was nowhere to be found.

At daybreak, feeling slightly thirsty, I got up to drink some water.

Passing by the hallway, I heard muffled cries of distress and pain coming from Vivienne’s room, accompanied by a soft murmur: “It hurts, be lighter…”

A wave of nausea washed over me.

They really weren’t trying to hide it at all.

Were they afraid I wouldn’t hear it clearly enough?

After drinking the water and returning to my room, I locked the door.

When I stepped out the next morning, Julian Vance looked slightly under the weather, casting a resentful look at me.

I didn’t fawn over him with attentive care for this minor, painless cold like I used to, simply acting oblivious.

I didn’t make breakfast either, heading straight out the door for work.

Julian Vance called out my name a few times from behind, but I ignored him, quickening my pace until he hurried after me.

“Why didn’t you wait for me to go to work together?”

“It looks awkward if company colleagues see us.”

Back then, citing this exact reason, he would initially drop me off near the office and make me walk the rest of the way, until one day I got caught in a heavy downpour and caught a severe cold, prompting him to finally buy me a car.

He would rather buy me a car than ever make our relationship public.

But today, perhaps out of guilt, or perhaps a stirring of conscience: “If they see, let them see. Get in my car.”

He pulled me over and pushed me into the passenger seat.

I watched silently as he fastened my seatbelt, while outside, Vivienne rushed out after us.

She glared at me with bitter resentment, but the instant Julian Vance turned his head to look at her, she instantly switched back to a gentle, pitiful posture.

“I’ve called Dorian over, he’ll be here shortly.”

“Alright, thanks Julian.”

Right before my eyes, the two of them staged a deeply affectionate, reluctance-to-part melodrama—and in this play, I was cast as the vicious second female lead who tore them apart.