After His Betrayal, I Erase Our Past

Chapter 2

When I walked back into the living room, drying my hair, I saw two half-finished milk teas sitting on the coffee table.

James never drank milk tea.

The time printed on the receipt stuck to the cup read three o'clock that afternoon.

At that time, I was at the hospital for a follow-up check-up on my spine.

For the first time, James called to say he would pick me up.

I was surprised, but I waited for a very long time. I called him four times in between, and he never answered.

After I got into the car, he did not drive home. Instead, he turned the car onto the suburban road. When the car stopped by a desolate river embankment, and he leaned in to kiss me, I caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent on his body.

Thinking back on it, everything made sense.

He drove me out to the suburbs to be intimate with me just to buy that young woman time to leave our apartment. But he never expected that the intern would intentionally leave evidence here to let me know.

I threw the cups away and walked into the bedroom.

The bed was neatly made, but it wasn't made the way I made it. Caught on the pillow was a strand of hair, longer than mine, and darker than mine.

I stripped off the bedding set, threw it into the washing machine, and pulled out a clean set to put on.

Then I wiped down the entire house from top to bottom.

By two o'clock in the morning, the floor was polished so shiny that it reflected my figure clearly.

I sat down on the sofa and sniffed the air.

There was still a whiff of perfume that didn't belong here.

The next afternoon, a friend request popped up on my phone.

The verification message read: [Hi! I'm Iris Lynch, the intern at Mr. Brown's company. Mr. Brown told me to learn more from you whenever I have the chance.]

I stared at those words for half a minute, then tapped accept.

She immediately sent a message.

Iris: [Mrs. Brown, Mr. Brown said you used to work in design too, that's so amazing! I'm new to the industry, and I don't know anything. Please teach me in the future...]

Then she attached a selfie—round eyes, fair skin, lips curved in a smile.

I didn't reply to her, just flipped my phone screen down on the table.

James did not come home until the third night.

When he walked in, he glanced around and asked, "What's this? Did you do a deep clean?"

I sat at the dining table, and two place settings were laid out in front of me. "I saved you some food."

He glanced over. "I already ate out."

He walked over to the sofa, sat down, and picked up the remote control.

I said, "You told your intern to add me on WhatsApp."

He paused for a moment, then took off his jacket and draped it over the armrest.

"Oh, that's Iris. I mentioned it to her earlier, told her to come to you for advice if she has any questions."

I asked, "Do you actually believe she does that because she wants to learn from me?"

James looked at me and sighed.

He stood up, walked over to the dining table, picked up his fork, and took a bite of the dish.

"Olivia, she's just in her early twenties. Do you really have to be so hard on her?"

I said nothing more.

After only a couple of bites, he set down his fork and headed for the bedroom.

He paused when he passed me, looked at my face, and said, "You look pale. Go to bed early."

The door closed.

We'd been sleeping in separate rooms for a long time by this point.

I could hear him talking on the phone from the next room, but couldn't make out what he was saying.

It was the same laugh I'd heard from him in the car that day.

I pulled up that article again and read it over and over.

At the end of the article, there was a line of small text: [Department of Psychiatry—MECT treatment consultation hotline.]

I saved the number in my contacts.