Instead of pondering, she was all business, motioning for them to go into the room next to them, and Meilei avoided Kai’s gaze, landing on them from his further back position. There was tension among them all, but everyone played it nice and cool. Even Ling had been warned to control her beast around the men. No arguments, no chatter, just be done and leave. The lawyers had told them not to engage in keeping this civil, and Meilei didn’t want Yue to witness anything uncomfortable.
She was terrified Kai would kick off and be nasty to her, so she was keeping as far from him as she could. She took Yue’s hand to guide her and was tugged back with an unexpected little yank.
There was no way.
She couldn’t compute that sentence and ‘mmm’d’ in answer to her child, unsure what else to say. Her brain crackled as she thought about how, when, and why.
Kai waved back with a small weird gesture, softening his blank glare to a smile at seeing Yue engaging with him. A warmth in his stomach and heart crept across him, and that sweet little face momentarily captured him. Through all this shit, her little grin made him smile back, softening his grim mood. Guilt washed over him when he realized this kid had just seen the nice man from the store and the mall. She probably had no idea what this was all about. No clue why he was here and making her do this.
Suying picked up Yue inside the room and deposited her on the bed at the side, allowing Meilei close to hold her hand. Everyone was being civil and quiet, and Ling and Tian were left outside. Probably fist fighting by now, Suying mused.
“Be a good girl for me, Princess. I know how good you are.” Suying rubbed her silky hair and leaned in to bop their noses together before standing back to get out of the way.
“Go ahead. We’ll watch from here.” The lawyer was a buffer, and Meilei could feel Kai appraising her sundress and loose hair, then straying to look at Yue to compare them. His presence was unnerving her, and her mouth was parched with stress. Yue was dressed similarly on purpose to highlight their resemblance and detract from her father’s features, but she was sweating, knowing how often she could see Kai’s face in Yue’s. Not that it mattered anymore.
The senior doctor made small talk with Yue, cutely distracting her from her obsession with staring at Kai as he stood back, watching. It was an easy one-second procedure of sticking a cotton stick in her mouth, scraping her cheek inside, depositing it in a sample jar and a sealed bag, and handing it to the lawyer. They were having an independent lab do the testing because of Suying’s connection to this hospital.
Meilei had no control over anything. Only the place and time of this, and now she would have to wait.
Kai was tense. He couldn’t take his eyes off Yue and Meilei, but he was holding it in and keeping himself in check. He didn’t want to approach the kid and upset her, and he didn’t want to try and create any bond when it hung over him that she could be Sans. This could all be for nothing. He could just be a stranger with a past connection to her parents.
He pensively waited, watching Meilei, obviously uneasy and glued to her daughter like Kai was an evil presence here to inflict pain on her, yet he was nervous. This was a big deal to find out you were a father. Also amused with the irony that Meilei saw him as the threat here and didn’t think about the fact she was the only one in this room capable of harming another human in so many ways.
His hands were clammy, and his heart was palpating. It was a nothing swab, but watching the little girl sit perfectly still and follow commands from the doctor without fuss made him oddly proud. She was an angel little girl who seemed braver than she looked. Delicate yet not. And despite who her mother was, he couldn’t deny he liked the little kid from the first moment they met. He would still like her even if she were San’s. He would just make sure he never crossed paths with her again.
Meilei, on the other hand, was paler and thinner than he last saw her. She seemed fidgety and deliberately avoided his eye; he couldn’t read what that meant. If it was nerves in general, fear he would be the father, and she knew he wouldn’t let this go, or was it fear that this test would prove her affair with San once and for all? Something she had denied back then.
He didn’t know what to think anymore.
All he knew was that Tian and Chang had warned him fifty times not to talk to her today, as if he had any intentions of cozy chats with someone like her. To keep his cool, stay back and let Chang handle it. Tian came for moral support and to keep that Manager Huo in check should it be needed.
“All done.” The doctor broke his focus and brought him back to the fact he was conversing with his Lawyer, Chang.
“The results are in your hands. Good luck. I shall leave you to it. I’ll see you later, Doctor Jiang.” The doctor excused himself, giving Suying a warm pat on the shoulder as he left.
Five left here as the lawyer turned to Meilei to tell her what to expect. He had found it odd that she had not opted for her own legal to be here as most in cases like this. But then she had a doctor friend here and a fierce-looking leggy one outside, giving Tian a hard time. She maybe had enough support. It’s not like they were here to discuss anything at this time.
“We will deliver this to the test facility today. They will take forty-eight hours for a result; depending on that, you will hear from my office.” That meant either a call to inform her the parentage was not a match or that she would receive the documents to start with an access hearing. “My client, if he is the father, will pursue weekly access to bond with his child via the court unless a mutual agreement can be made. This is something you should discuss with your lawyer while we await results. Until then, I bid you goodbye, Miss Liu.”
He was trying to play neutral and stay professional while about a foot away from a tiny face that, to him, had his friend all over it. He was almost one hundred percent certain he didn’t need the DNA to know they would be pursuing shared custody soon. He couldn’t deny what he saw and wondered why Kai needed a test. If this San didn’t look like his twin, he wondered why he saw anyone else but his own features. It wasn’t his place, though; a definite answer was better from a legal standpoint.
“Thank you. We’ll see ourselves out.” Suying intervened, waiting for Meilei to lift Yue into her arms to follow her, and held the door wide as Meilei skirted past both men quickly, avoiding eye contact and ignoring Kai completely. She just needed to get out of there to breathe and calm down.
“Bye-bye, Mister.” Yue was the one to wave and throw a charming smile at him in passing, silencing them all with the sweetness of her parting ways. Meilei’s heart dropped, and she pressed Yue closer, rushing to find Ling. Her heart raced to suffocating levels as one thought passed through her mind.
She slid off her shoes and picked up the spare slippers by the door, dropping her bag and pushing them on before padding into the more open-plan area and spotting him immediately. Sprawled on the long, sectional black leather couch, he leaned forward to look down at the floor.
“Why didn’t you answer?” She asked in more concern than irritation and walked closer, seeing the low table in front of him holding a variety of crushed beer cans, unopened bottles of beer, and a half-drunk bottle of scotch. He cradled a glass between his spread legs and looked down past it as though lost in thought. “Kai?” She asked again, unnerved by his silent stillness, and it seemed to snap him out of where his head had been.
“Why are you here?” he slurred subtly back at her with a slight attempt at sitting up, but he didn’t get far before slumping back to rest his elbows on his legs. Kai drank sometimes, but she rarely saw him down a half bottle and beers alone. He seemed like he was on his way to being excessively wasted.
“Go home, Annnnaaaa.” Kai sighed in frustration, a slight drunken slur, and downed the rest of his tea-colored liquid before struggling to sit forward, but she wasn’t leaving.
“You need to stop drinking. Here, give this to me. You have work tomorrow and important meetings.” She tried to take the cup from him, but he tugged it away and held it out of reach, blocking her with his other arm and using his elbow to push her back. Clumsy in his mannerisms, like a toddler with poor coordination.
“I don’t need a minder, nor do I need your permission.”
Kai was drowning his sorrows and escaping the mess of his head. He needed a blackout drunk session just this once to get his thoughts in order because he felt like he was going crazy. The results for the DNA test were due anytime now, maybe in the morning, and the closer it got, the more uptight and sick with nerves he was. He had felt like he couldn’t breathe in his office after lunch and had come so close to experiencing the first-ever panic attack of his life. This was messing him up almost as much as five years ago did.
He didn’t know why.
Yue was a cute little kid, and if it turned out she was his, fatherhood was scary but not beyond his capabilities. Maybe it was knowing that despite their past and how much he hated Meilei, Yue would tie them together again for life, and he wasn’t sure he could handle it. He had visited Yuelin’s grave when he first left work and asked her to forgive him should he be forever involved with the woman who caused her death. Guilt was destroying him. Confusion and fear were consuming him.
Anna stood watching him, frustrated with how drunk he was and unwilling to leave him alone like this.