Chapter 3
1080 Words
"Mr. Rowan, Madam, hasn't suffered even the slightest hardship during her time here at our company."
The boss noticed Logan's dark expression, rubbed his hands together, and put on an obsequious smile.
Logan gave a small nod and gestured for everyone to leave the room first.
When we were the only two left in the conference room, he stood up and walked straight over to me.
Standing at six feet too, with broad, solid shoulders, he loomed over me like a brick wall, blocking out my entire field of vision.
My mind wandered uncontrollably to memories of the past.
The lust-darkened eyes under dim lamplight, the feel of my nails digging into his bare, taut back muscles...
Those racy memories made my cheeks heat up and my thoughts spiral into all kinds of inappropriate directions.
His deep, rumbling voice snapped me back to reality.
"What are you doing here?"
"Working, obviously."
He didn't seem to buy that. He narrowed his eyes and scanned me up and down.
"Keeping that college boy you're seeing run you dry? Need extra cash?"
"That's not it!" I shook my head so hard my hair flew everywhere, desperate to prove I was innocent. "I was just bored out of my mind cooped up at home, so I wanted to pick up some new skills."
Logan still didn't look convinced.
Fair enough, I'd pulled every dirty trick in the book to get him to agree to a divorce back then.
I'd even stooped so low as to threaten to leak his company's trade secrets to his competitors, a cheap, ridiculous lie even I couldn't believe I'd said out loud.
"About that divorce you mentioned last time—"
I saw he was about to bring up that whole can of worms again, so I cut him off mid-sentence.
"Do you have any open positions at your company? I want to work there."
I'd originally planned to grind for experience at this tiny little firm first, then move to Rowan Corporation later to level up my skills.
But everyone here was treating me like some untouchable royal, walking on eggshells around me and not letting me do any real work. There was zero room for me to actually grow.
Just when I was stuck wondering what the hell I was supposed to do, a perfect transfer opportunity landed right in my lap, like it was meant to be.
But wait, Logan's childhood sweetheart Cilia Charles worked there too... He'd definitely turn me down, right?
Sure enough, Logan went silent, just staring at me for what felt like an eternity.
It dragged on so long I started getting twitchy, my eyes darting all over the room to avoid his gaze.
Finally, he spoke in a flat, unreadable tone.
"Get in touch with assistant Clifford."
Wait, did that mean he said yes?
I hightailed it home immediately to brainstorm with Amelia.
When I burst through the door, she was gnawing on her nails, suffering through a higher math textbook she hadn't touched in ages.
She didn't even glance up as she spoke, trying to calm me down.
"That's a great thing, isn't it? Yeah, those two ended up together in our past life, but right now you're his legal wife. You might even catch him red-handed cheating, right?"
I smacked my forehead with a loud smack.
Duh! No matter how you sliced it, this was a total win for me.
Amelia got annoyed with all my noisy celebrating, so she tossed her textbook aside and sat down to watch TV with me.
The sports channel was airing the live final of a tennis open tournament.
Declan lifted the championship trophy, and a foreign reporter asked him if he had any regrets in his otherwise perfectly smooth, successful life.
He grinned, cocky and carefree, and answered in a crisp, polished standard British accent.
"No."
Amelia froze for a long moment, then said quietly, "In our past life, he didn't say that. He said the biggest regret of his life was marrying me."
I racked my brain trying to dig up memories of Declan winning this trophy, but I came up completely empty.
Oh right, I almost forgot. In our past life, he'd flown back to the US to finalize their divorce, then hopped on a red-eye flight back overseas immediately after.
He went straight to the tournament the second he landed, running on zero sleep with huge dark circles under his eyes, and played terribly. He didn't even come close to winning the title. He got knocked out in the round of 32.
When the reporter interviewed him back then, they asked the exact same question.
He'd given a bitter laugh and said he'd gotten married too young.
Staring at his bright, high-spirited self on the screen right now, Amelia looked a little down.
She mumbled under her breath, "I always thought he was the one who held me back. I never realized I dragged him down too."
The two of them had stood on completely different sides of the fence back then, locked into their own perspectives. There was no way they could see eye to eye.
I'd stuck by Amelia through all those years, so I knew better than anyone just how crushing that shift had been for her.
Declan's career had blown up way too fast.
One minute, they were that sickeningly sweet couple glued to each other 24/7. Right after they tied the knot, though, they barely saw each other for months on end.
They went from having a million shared hobbies and things to chat about, to sitting in awkward silence every time they were in the same room.
This rift seeped into every nook and cranny of their lives. Once, she'd jumped into Declan's arms to ask for a hug, only for his foreign coach to yell at her dramatically,
"Oh, watch it! You'll make him pull a muscle! Declan is a pro athlete worth millions of dollars!"
By the end, there was no love left between them at all.
I was just about to say something to comfort her, but she had already shaken off the sad mood and buried her face back in her textbooks to study.
I tiptoed toward my room, but she called out to stop me before I could get there.
"Oh right! The charity gala is this Saturday. Mother-in-law told both of us to come home for it."
'God damn it. Now it was my turn to mope.'
- Writer
