Tian watched them go and gazed around, appraising the broken table and messy articles dotted around the floor. Given the price tag of a room here, he knew San would have a hefty bill. It was the least he deserved.
He glared down at the pathetic figure and shook his head. Despite having known him as long as Kai had, he felt nothing but disgust for a man who could do that to any woman. Let alone his best friend’s girlfriend.
“Here.” Tian lifted a box of tissues from the mess on the floor from the table being shunted mid-fight, and threw it at San. It bounced off his knee and rolled to his side.
Kai was disheveled, his suit wrinkled, and his hair messy. His eyes were red and swollen from breaking down in the car and doing something he hadn’t done since childhood. He had cried with everything in him. Sobbed and let it all out as though he had five years’ worth of misery to offload and couldn’t stop. It had felt bigger than him, and he didn’t know how else to offload it other than that. An entire journey home of silent weeping for a life he lost.
Tian had teared up consoling him, and the three men returned to OTS in silence. All were lost in their heads, thinking things through and sad with the reality of the situation. Kai’s life would have been much different with one tiny detail change back then.
Kai wasn’t embarrassed about it, given Tian and Qian were not the type to judge him for something like that, but he was wiped out and oddly numb. Like this was a walking dream he could not wake from. He was emotionally stripped to the bone.
He didn’t know what he would say or why this was his first response to seeing San. All he knew was Meilei was where he needed to head. His heart was hurting, his head was messy, and he yearned to see her. All the hatred and hurt, the need to make her suffer, was gone just like that, and a devastating emptiness remained. He didn’t know how to feel anymore.
Her face was stuck on replay in his mind. The tearful, broken-hearted devastation of begging him to believe her. He couldn’t shift it like his brain had decided to wipe out the last five years and return to the last moment he saw her. Torturing him. Regret twisting his guts and choking him.
Tian pressed for another floor and kept a grip on him as he pulled him back. They had only just come up from the car park, and Kai was being irrational. Tian knew him better than most and that this was a reaction he shouldn’t act upon. Meilei would not be open to any heart-to-heart with Kai like this. She, too, had a rough lunch and was probably holed up at her desk brooding over San’s reappearance. That’s if she hadn’t taken leave and gone home already. She was a girl who ran when her life hurt her. That’s the gift they had given her.
Even though he already knew the answer and because he knew her character back then. She was delicate but golden, shielding him from what she thought would hurt him, hoping to rectify it on her own. Maybe some part of her was afraid he would suspect she encouraged it, given the intensity of San’s attention. Meilei was na? ve back then, and he could understand her reasoning. She had been in over her head.
Meilei would already be on the defensive.
“I want to see her.” Kai sunk back against the wall of the elevator and slumped a little. Knowing he was being impulsive and couldn’t understand his own emotions or why he was so overwhelmed and desperate to see her face. It’s like he was on autopilot. The craving he had once felt as her boyfriend to run to her at every opportunity had returned with a vengeance.
Meilei was not spinning wildly with her despair and regrets as Kai was. She had been traumatized and abandoned, and no matter how Kai approached her, it wouldn’t change the story in any way for her. She always held onto the truth, and it was Kai who never embraced it. She wasn’t the one living a lie fuelled by his pain, betrayal, and unwillingness to forgive her.
The elevator stopped and began to open slowly before Tian reached out to hit the close button because they didn’t need anyone else in there while Kai was like this.
Before they did, though, leaving a gap of mere inches, a woman’s hand slotted in and pushed them apart. Opening to reveal Tian’s idea of torture on a daily and had him sighing and sagging because this was all he needed. Ling eyed him with a note of irritation and walked in, respectfully nodding to Kai, given he was her boss, ignoring Tian entirely and turning her back on them before crossing her arms. Instantly uptight with having to share a ride with these two idiots. She didn’t pay enough attention to notice their disheveled appearances or grim expressions.
Ling tensed, blew out air, and tried to ignore Mr. All too sexy in a three-piece suit who was annoyingly handsome wherever he was or whatever he was doing. She wished every sighting of him didn’t rekindle the weird, twisty gut feeling. Just once, she wanted to run into him looking like hot trash.
“We just came back,” Kai interjected, unsure when he started answering to employees, but he guessed Ling was different. He had spent time in her presence thanks to Yue and knew she had zero fear of his position. She saw Kai as the enemy Tian as his conspirator, and threatening her with her job made no difference. She didn’t even care that Tian was the future CEO and dissed him at every opportunity. The woman was impossible, but she was a lifeline to Meilei.
In a way, Kai felt relieved that Meilei had been shielded by a rabid wolf hound like her who had no qualms about biting people on her behalf all these years. She did what he should have. Shielded her, cared for her and their daughter, and stood up for her. Kai was ashamed that despite being the one who loved her more than anyone, he hadn’t been the one to stand by her side and be there for his own child and exhaled with heavy desperation.
He suddenly had a new affection for Ling and all the hostile ways she had protected her since he came here. He was glad Ling had been the one.
If he could turn back time, he would. He would do anything to fix his mistakes.
Tian eyed her tight cream pencil skirt over her shapely ass and the loose powder blue blouse tucked in at her narrow waist that accentuated her curves. She was in tan stilettos again, and he couldn’t help how his eyes ran the length of her body and landed on the back of her long dark wavy hair. She was annoyingly sexy today, which didn’t help his mood. She truly was a demon designed to torture lesser men.
Kai knew there was something with these two and the eternal to and fro. Still, it was entertaining how she was probably the only person in this company besides Kai and Qian who was not intimidated by Tian. Mr. Cool and commanding had no control over her.
Tian shrugged. How else could he explain their constant battle without telling Kai he had bent her over his hotel couch and done things that still haunted him?
“It’s about San.” Tian was straight to the point, and Ling spun her head in alarm, eyes widening in surprise, glancing from him, then Kai in silent astonishment. She had spent the last hour consoling Meilei back to calm and convincing her no one knew he was here, yet they were now asking.
“He came to see you too?” She squeaked in shock and almost slapped herself in the mouth for letting that out. She pressed her lips together to silence herself.