Chapter 2

The words had barely left her mouth when Charlotte held out a slip of paper to me.

It was a deposit receipt from a five-star hotel back home, for a wedding banquet.

She spoke softly. “Rosamund, I know I wronged you, but there's something you probably still don't know.”

“After we landed, we were supposed to go try on the wedding dress first.”

“I never wanted things to turn out like this, but the baby's innocent.”

I didn't bother with either of them. I turned and went back into the room to pack my equipment.

Raymond stayed outside the door. He wouldn't come in, and he wouldn't leave.

After a while, he dug an old work badge out of the equipment case and slid it through the gap in the door.

“Rosamund, take a look at this.”

It was my overseas assignment badge from four years ago.

The me in the photo was younger, and there was still light in my eyes.

Four years ago, I was the youngest field producer at the documentary center.

A set of key footage shot overseas had a corrupted timecode from an equipment failure, and the investors accused me of faking reshoots.

Everyone on the project urged me to give it up, to take the fall for a "management error" and protect my standing in the industry.

Only Raymond, who handled the cameras and the data back then, believed I was innocent.

He stayed with me in that unfamiliar city, and we went everywhere we could think of.

Hotels, transit stations, the local cloud storage companies.

In the end, he found an automatic cloud backup on the server of a company that was about to go under.

That backup was what proved the timecode error came from an equipment failure and had nothing to do with me.

To testify for me, he made enemies of his old company and the investors, lost his contract renewal, and watched his career hit rock bottom.

The documentary center offered to bring me on staff and keep me, but on the condition that I return home at once and stop involving myself in Raymond's affairs.

I refused without hesitation, because I had fallen in love with him.

I stayed overseas with him, and we went from making documentaries no one watched to shooting eye-catching commercial short videos.

Through the door, Raymond's voice dropped low. “Back then everyone gave up on me. Everyone but you.”

“So I won't let you go. I'll marry you, and I'll spend the rest of my life loving you.”

I pulled the door open and looked at him quietly. “I stayed back then because I wanted to.”

“Not because I was the Rosamund you keep describing, the one who couldn't survive without you.”

He flushed and took half a step back, and started explaining the banquet deposit.

“The deposit was just to keep her calm. She's pregnant, her emotions are all over the place.”

“Once we're home and everything's settled, of course I'll cancel it.”

I let out a scornful little laugh. “If I hadn't heard that voice message, when exactly were you planning to tell me?”

He hesitated a moment. “After the house was bought... or once you'd calmed down a bit.”

“Or maybe……after the baby was born.”

Every single "wait" was like a dull blade, cutting my heart apart piece by piece.

From the far end of the hallway came a sudden, violent retching.

Charlotte was braced against the wall, her face ghost-white, like morning sickness.

Raymond's face filled with panic, as if he'd forgotten the conversation we'd been having a second ago.

“Charlotte's got morning sickness. Hurry and help me find the folic acid.”

I looked at him with red eyes and didn't say a word.

He finally caught on and went to search himself, and soon found it in a hidden compartment in the nightstand.

Bitterness surged up in me all at once.

So in some unseen corner of this home, there were secrets I'd known nothing about.

A few minutes later, he lifted the weak Charlotte into his arms to take her downstairs.

Before he left, he still turned back to look at me, his eyes full of pleading.

“Rosamund, when I'm back from the hospital, I'll explain everything to you properly.”

“I love you.”

Watching that devoted look on his face, my stomach turned.

A man I'd loved for four years, holding another woman in his arms, and still telling you he loves you?

“Before, I waited because I wanted to.”

“Not because I couldn't leave. And now I don't want to wait anymore!”