Chapter 9
Tthan fell silent.||
This lip was bruised and swollen
That guy definitely knew bang to thryne a panch ||
He heard Lily calling Chase from upstairs||
Her voice was soft and swert||
“Are you butt?
He finally realized that Lily no longer cared about him!]
Once, after fighting with someone, be’d been afraid of his mothers nagging, an he’d gone to ly’s house instead
Back then, Lily Bad carefully tended to his wounds with cotton swabe||
0
He had always believed that if he looked bark, Lily would be there behind him||
He had been so confident in this certainty
But in the end, after leaving West High, Lily had completely inved on []
She had a new boyfriend.|||
He remembered Lily’s stubbom posture as she left We High, her ear bruised purple from the basketball
This friend had sighed
“Arent you afraid she won’t come back?“||
He had inwardly scoffed
Lilys
father worked at his fandly’s company
By lived near his]]
Her family
Everything in Lily’s life was connected to him.
It was just a school transfer. How could she not return to his side?
In the sunset that day, his friend had said:
“Ithan, your childhood sweetheart might become someone else’s destined love.”
He hadn’t listened.[
Looking back now, it was so ironic
When he proudly declared that childhood sweethearts could compete with love at first sight, his childhood sweetheart had become someone else’s destined
Jove
got engaged during the summer before our junior year of college
mat engagement day, Chase’s parents came
sace petting together with thase, this was my first time meeting his parents ||
rew up with his grandparents in their old home
for his parents, hei
and they diverged when he was seven, nothing more.
Chuse’s mother had returned from abroad, dressed ringandy.||
father hadn’t taken his eyes off her : ior she arrived
Until my mem approached her, surprised]
“Aren’t you. Sophia from the ap
apartment upstairs years ago?”
1 finally learned that Chase’s family had once lived in the apartment above our
After his parents divorced Chase moved away.
Then that apartment was put up for sale ||
Gradually, I forgot about the little boy:]
Until Ethan’s family moved in.]
Leften habitually went upstairs to find him ||
I recalled that there had been a lot boy–upstairs who would buy me candy with his allowance
“Eat my candy, and you’ll have to be my wife when you grow up-
The line boy’s childish voice echoed in my memory.]
I looked at Chase in surprise.
I remembered what he’d said when Eghong with Ethan
“When it comes to childhood connections, Lily and I were first.
“We knew each other before you even existed.“|||
so he’d been telling the truth.]
And I recalled the day I transferred, when he said to me: “Thanks, wifey
with that confident
After the reception ended. I received an anonymous gifta property transfer agreement.]]
At the bottom. Ethan had already signed his name ||
After I started at Harvard, than had tried to find me several tim
But with Chase standing guard, plus my refusal to see him, Ethan could only wait outside my dork night after night
Later, I beard he went abroad and was injured in a shooting incident, hurting his leg
Vanessa often asked about hi group chats. Her test scores hadn’t been great, and she’d ended up at a southern arts school on a dance scholarship |
She quickly cycled through several wealthy boyfriends
But each relationship ended in failure
she tried to contact than abroad through mutual friends, but he never responded
Chase emerged from the bathroom with just a towel around his waist
erment with the signature, he noted
“Never gives up, does her“]
This felt awkward to keep–what was
an Exam thinking?||
I tossed it in the trash and wrapped my arms around Chase’s waist ||
He looked down, his eyes darkening. []
