I was about to turn and leave when Lily grabbed my wrist, holding on tight.
Her eyes rimmed red, her voice pitching into a tearful whimper：
“I'm so sorry, Isabel. I didn't mean to intrude on you two, I really didn't.”
“Chester is just so amazing, and you're never around. I only wanted to look after him for you.”
“We never crossed any lines. When I was feeling low, he just used his hands to help me relax, that's all.”
Her words made my stomach turn. I wrenched my hand free.
But she threw herself backward, dramatic as ever, and crumpled to the floor.
Chester's face went ice-cold. He pointed at me and tore into me：
“Isabel, enough! Do you have to blow everything out of proportion?”
“Lily already begged you to stop, and you still won't let it go. Do you have to destroy everything before you're satisfied?”
“If you hadn't insisted on playing career woman, would we even be here right now?”
His words nailed me to the floor. I never imagined Chester would say something like that.
When I was eighteen, my father was caught having an affair with a man. My mother and I walked in on it.
He felt no shame. He locked us both in a pitch-black basement.
“Keeping you locked up works just fine.”
“Neither of you can earn a dime. You'd die out there without me anyway.”
Ten days and ten nights.
My mother died in that basement. I shattered completely.
It was Chester who pulled me out of that hell.
“Izzy, I understand what you've been through. For the rest of my life, I won't let anyone hurt you again.”
What happened to my mother was the reason I never trusted anyone again, the reason I threw myself into building a career of my own.
The Chester from back then had supported every choice I made, no questions asked.
And now he was calling it an act.
His face blurred behind my tears until I could barely make out his shape.
It was the first time I had cried in years.
Something like panic flickered in Chester's eyes. He moved toward me on instinct, reaching out.
That was when Lily let out a shrill scream：
“Chester! My leg hurts so bad, I think I broke something!”
His gaze snapped to her instantly. He scooped her up and rushed out toward the hospital,
leaving me alone in the hotel room.
Mom, this is what happens when you put your life in someone else's hands.
I wiped my face dry and started packing.
Then my phone lit up with a string of texts.
【Isabel, with a man as wonderful as Chester, how could you stand being so far away?】
【He's so attentive with me. Always right by my side, never leaving for a second.】
【Really, thank you for training him to be so sweet and gentle. Too bad I'm the one who gets to keep him now.】
She attached a photo of Chester slumped over the edge of a hospital bed, asleep from exhaustion.
The image hit me somewhere deep, and a memory surfaced. Right after my mother died, when I lay in a hospital bed with nothing left inside me,
Chester had looked exactly like that. I remembered the steady beep of the monitors,
how I believed it would always be this way. It seemed Chester had never changed at all.
The only thing that changed was who he loved.
