YOU LOVE ME LIKE A SECRET

EVEN IF THEY HURT

London had a way of making me feel almost whole again.

For two weeks, I threw myself into the rhythm of English legal life with the same precision I once used to win impossible cases. My old firm welcomed me back with open arms, assigning me to a high-profile panel series on BBC and Sky News about UK-China trade tensions and regulatory hurdles for foreign investment. As one of the few solicitors with deep, on-the-ground experience in both jurisdictions, I became a regular face on evening news programs and current-affairs shows.

I wore my armor well: crisp tailored suits, sleek chignons, the calm, authoritative tone that had earned me respect in London boardrooms long before Shanghai ever entered my life. Viewers praised my clarity. Colleagues texted congratulations. For the first time since Xu Shein disappeared, I felt seen — not as someone’s hidden indulgence, but as Lin Yue, Esq., the solicitor who commanded attention in her own right.

The latest appearance was on a popular evening current-affairs program. The topic was cross-border wealth structuring and the rising scrutiny on Chinese high-net-worth individuals. I sat on the panel beside two senior barristers and a guest I hadn’t expected: Magistrate Elon Harrington.

Rich. Handsome. Polished in that effortless English way — tailored Savile Row suit, sharp jawline, warm hazel eyes that crinkled when he smiled. He was a rising star in the judiciary, known for high-profile financial crime cases and, apparently, a very public social life. We had crossed paths years ago during a complex fraud trial in London, but I had never thought of him as anything more than a respected colleague.

Until the segment turned casual in the final minutes.

The host leaned forward with a mischievous grin. “Now, off the record for a moment — we’ve all been wondering. Magistrate Harrington, you and Solicitor Lin Yue seem very comfortable together tonight. Any truth to the rumors that you two are… more than just professional acquaintances?”

Elon smiled — easy, charming, camera-ready — and glanced at me with a look that was far too familiar for the public eye.

“Well,” he said smoothly, “I’ve been trying to convince Lin to make it official for months. She’s brilliant, beautiful, and far too independent for her own good. But yes… we’re engaged.”

The studio fell into delighted chaos. The host laughed. The other panelists clapped. Social media exploded in real time.

I froze behind my professional smile, heart hammering. Engaged? The word was a complete fabrication — a playful exaggeration at best, a deliberate headline-grabbing claim at worst. We had shared one dinner months ago, nothing more. Yet Elon’s hand brushed mine under the table in a gesture that looked supportive to the cameras and possessive to me.

I kept my expression neutral, the same mask I wore in difficult negotiations. Inside, my stomach twisted. This was the kind of public recognition I had craved in Shanghai — the kind Xu Shein had never given me.

But it felt wrong.

Hollow.

Because the only man whose ring I had ever imagined wearing had already placed one on someone else’s finger long before I existed in his life.

In Shanghai, the private hospital wing was quiet except for the soft beeping of monitors.

Elena was resting. Eden sat beside her bed, reading quietly, when Xu Shein’s phone lit up on the side table. He had stepped out for a call but left the device behind. The notification was from one of his security team — a clipped message with a link to the BBC clip that had just gone viral in London circles.

Xu Shein opened it.

The video played.

There I was — composed, elegant, speaking with the quiet authority he had once praised in the dark. And beside me, Elon Harrington, leaning in with that easy, public smile, claiming me as his fiancée on national television.

Xu Shein’s hand tightened around the phone until the edges bit into his palm.

His jaw locked. The same jaw that had once brushed against my inner thigh while he devoured me slowly in the back of his Maybach. The same hands that had pinned my wrists above my head and driven into me so deep I saw stars. The same man who had groaned my name like a prayer while he spilled hot and pulsing inside me — now watching another man publicly claim what he had only ever taken in secret.

He watched the clip twice.

Then he did something he had sworn he wouldn’t do.

He finally messaged me.

First, a single text to the number he had once deleted from my phone:
“Call me. Now.”

When it went unread, he tried again. And again. Different numbers. Secure lines. Even a message routed through Eden, who raised an eyebrow but forwarded it without comment.

“Lin Yue. Don’t do this. We need to talk.”

“That man is lying. You know he is.”

“Stop running. I’m not finished with you.”

He paced the private corridor outside Elena’s room, phone in hand, the powerful billionaire reduced to a man unraveling in real time. For the first time since Elena’s collapse, something other than grief and duty burned in his chest — raw, possessive, desperate.

He had erased me from his world to protect me.

Now another man was stepping into the space he had left empty, claiming me in the light where Xu Shein had only ever loved me in the dark.

And it was driving him to the edge of control.

In London, I stepped out of the studio into the cool evening drizzle, collar turned up against the rain. My phone was already flooding with notifications — congratulations, questions, speculation. Elon walked beside me, charming and unapologetic.

“I may have exaggerated for the cameras,” he said with a wry smile. “But I wasn’t entirely joking, Lin. Dinner soon? The real kind. No cameras.”

I offered a polite smile, the same one I used when declining impossible settlement offers. “I’ll think about it.”

But my mind was already elsewhere.

Across the world, in a hospital room I had tried to leave behind, Xu Shein was watching me on television — and for the first time since he disappeared, he was the one reaching desperately into the void I had stepped away from.

I slipped into a black cab, staring at the wet London streets, my body still humming with the low, traitorous ache that distance had only sharpened.

“This should have been enough,” I whispered to the rain-streaked window.

But it wasn’t.

Not when the man I couldn’t forget was finally starting to feel the same emptiness I had been living with since the day he didn’t show up.

And somewhere in Shanghai, his messages were still trying to find me.

Even if they hurt.