Free Web NovelChapter 15: THANK YOU FOR ALL OF THIS
Chapter 13
Lumi
The hotel room felt impossibly smaller when I got back. I closed the door behind me and just stood there in the room unable to take another step.
The click of the lock seemed to signal to my body that the performance was finally over, and the second the tension broke, a wave of suffocating heat rushed from my chest straight to my temples.
My head drummed with a sudden, blinding headache, a heavy pulsing right behind my eyes that made the dim light of the room sting.
I leaned my head back against the wood of the door, closed my eyes, and forced a deep, ragged breath into my lungs. The air felt thin and dry.
My mind immediately began to drift back to the afternoon.
Don’t, I told myself, my fingers tightening into fists inside my pockets. Don’t do this. It isn’t worth the energy. It’s over.
But the thoughts didn’t care about my warnings. They kept replaying every thing, forcing me to feel the sting of the pathetic act all over again.
Even though I had walked out with my spine straight, even though I had smiled and told myself their pathetic arrangement couldn’t hurt me, it actually did.
It cut deep, and the physical fire burning across my skin right now was the proof.
I pushed away from the door, my limbs feeling heavy and uncooperative.
I dropped my leather bag on the armchair by the window and stood there, my coat still trapped against my skin, adding to the feverish heat radiating through my body.
I stared at the London sky, trying to focus on the distant traffic instead of the noise inside my own head.
I couldn’t help it. That was someone I loved a few weeks ago, someone I wanted to spend my life with.
No words could describe the pain I was going through.
My throat felt raw and completely broken. When I finally sank onto the edge of the mattress, my stomach made a sharp, hollow sound.
I ignored it. The mere thought of swallowing food made my chest tighten with nausea, so I pushed the hunger away. I would deal with it later.
Before I could even reach for the buttons of my coat, I heard a firm, familiar knock.
I didn’t have to check the peephole, I already knew who it was.
When I swung the door open, Ren was standing in the corridor, balancing a brown paper bag in one hand and two steaming paper cups in the other.
His eyes immediately mapped my face, tracking the flush of the fever on my cheeks and the tension in my jaw before dropping down to the coat I was still tightly wrapped in.
"Hi Lumi. Figured you’ll be hungry." He raised the paper bag as proof.
I nodded and he stepped past me into the room, and set the drinks and food on the small table by the window with an easy, practiced familiarity.
I quietly closed the door behind him. He pulled out one of the chairs, the legs scraping softly against the carpet, and sat down.
He leaned his forearms against the table, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a steady, unhurried intensity.
"How did it go?" he asked, his voice low in the quiet room.
"You can eat before speaking if you prefer." I looked at him, the entire weight of the afternoon pressing down on my tongue.
He caught whatever was breaking in my expression immediately, then lifted both hands, palms open, in a silent, immediate gesture of surrender.
"Sorry," he murmured, his tone softening. "Forget I asked. You don’t have to talk about it."
I shook my head, a small, weary breath escaping my lips. "No, it’s fine."
He had left his country for me and followed me across an ocean without asking for a single thing in return.
The least I could do was to tell him how it went. I walked over, pulled out the chair directly across from him, and sat down, letting my knees brush against the edge of the low table.
"He wants to stay married," I said, flattening my voice to keep it from trembling.
Ren’s dark eyebrows pulled together, a sharp line forming between them.
"Both of them were there when I walked into the office," I continued, staring down.
"He looked me right in the eye and told me we could work through it.." My jaw tightened so hard the bone ached, the memory of his manipulation stinging like a fresh slap.
I forced myself to swallow the anger, moving past it before it could choke me. "And then I asked about his mistress."
A bitter, humorless laugh slipped past my lips, and I shook my head. "Apparently, they’d already discussed about my life in my absence and came to a conclusion.
She just stood there by the window with her hands folded. She looked at me and told me she had no problem sharing him." I raised my eyes to meet Ren’s. "Because according to her, that’s what you do for the people you love."
Ren didn’t just look surprised; his entire posture stiffened, his gaze turning incredibly sharp.
"The worst part was the performance," I whispered, leaning in slightly, the disgust vivid in my throat. "She kept looking at him every time she spoke. Every single time she said something noble or selfless, her eyes would dart straight to Callum. freewebnσvel.cѳm
She was making sure he was watching. Making sure he saw what a good, submissive woman she was being for him. She wasn’t talking to me at all, Ren. She was putting on a show for her audience of one."
Ren remained entirely silent, but I could see the dangerous, quiet anger rolling off him, his muscles locking under his dark shirt as he listened with undivided, unhurried attention.
"I told her I pitied her," I said, folding my hands tightly on the table to hide the subtle shaking in my fingers.
"I told her that women who don’t know their own worth will take whatever bloody scraps a man hands them and call it a romance. I told her if he could do this to his wife, she should get ready, because I wouldn’t be the last woman he ruined." I paused, remembering the venom in Sienna’s parting words.
"She told me the reason he left me in the first place was because I couldn’t give him peace."
The corner of Ren’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t anywhere near a smile, it was a dark, dangerous flex of his jaw caught between utter disbelief and cold disgust.
Then he reached out, his large, calloused hand hovering near mine on the table before he settled his fingers against his paper cup. His eyes never wavered from my face.
"And him? What did he do?"
"He just watched," I shrugged, the heavy coat sliding slightly off my shoulders.
"He said nothing useful, he just stood there. I just told them I’d be back in a few days with my own divorce papers, and I walked out."
Ren nodded slowly, a single, decisive nod that felt like a stamp of approval.
"What’s next?" he asked quietly.
"I need a lawyer. A damn good one," I said, tracing the plastic lid of my coffee cup. "Someone who knows how to bypass the usual bureaucratic bullshit and move fast. The legal procedure over here isn’t simple, and it might take me a few days to find the right firm." I looked across at him, my conscience twinging.
"You don’t have to stay here for that, Ren. You’ve already done so much..."
"We came together," he interrupted.
"Ren, listen to me..."
"We leave together." He said it without a single blink, his dark eyes pinning me to my seat.
I stared at him, completely disarmed by his absolute certainty. "What about your business back home?"
"My guys have it covered," he replied, his tone dismissive.
"This could take days, maybe weeks."
"I know." He leaned back in his chair, completely unbothered by the timeline.
"I’m not in a hurry, Lumi. Take whatever time you need." I honestly didn’t know what to do with that level of selflessness.
I sat there in the quiet space, staring at this steady, uncomplicated devotion he kept placing directly in front of me, and tried to remember the last time a man had made my life feel this safe and simple. I couldn’t.
"Rest first," he said, gesturing with a tilt of his chin toward the unmade bed. "When you wake up, we’ll make the next move."
"I’m not tired," I lied, my voice cracking slightly.
He just looked at me, his gaze seeing right through the fragile armor I was trying to wear.
I looked back, but I couldn’t hold his stare for long. We both knew the exhaustion was threatening to pull me under.
"When you wake up," he said, completely ignoring my protest, "message me the exact second you open your eyes. Before you do anything else. Before you even start overthinking things." He leaned forward, pointing a thick, tattooed finger at me. "Promise me that."
"Ren, I’m not a child..." I should be treating him this way because I was older, but somehow I’m the one being treated this way.
"Promise me, Lumi." His voice dropped, laced with a quiet, protective authority that made my heart do something strange.
I pressed my lips together, my resistance crumbling. "Fine. I promise."
He stood up, his massive frame instantly making the hotel room feel tiny again.
He snagged his leather jacket from the back of the chair, looking down at me one last time then he turned and walked toward the door.
"Ren," I called out softly. frёeωebɳovel.com
He stopped, his hand resting on the brass doorknob, and turned his head to look over his shoulder.
"Thank you." I held his dark eyes, putting everything I couldn’t articulate into those two words. "For coming here. For all of this."
