Tian studied his set jaw of steely stubbornness, the dark cast to his normally almost black eyes, and how rigid and determined he seemed this morning. Tian had come over to pick him up for the gym and found him cleaning the house instead. In only two weeks, his best friend seemed to have gone through a major mental overhaul in his outlook on every part of his life.
“And you would drunk call her why?” Tian leaned back against the counter behind him, casually loping in sweats, and a small smirk crossed his mouth. He guessed the why but wondered if Kai had finally figured it out.
Since Kai had beaten San and removed himself from his parent’s control a couple of weeks back, it was obvious he had been going through some self-searching. His emotions concerning Meilei were not as clear-cut as he once thought, and his growing attention towards her told Tian he was still in love with her. He had never gotten over her. It was something Tian had always known, so it was not a major shock that when you took away the betrayal, the cheating, and the blame for Yuelin, all that was left was a guy who had been brokenhearted over losing the love of his life.
Kai didn’t respond. Couldn’t. He knew his feelings for her were messy and unclear, and she was always on his mind since he discovered the truth. The past had been coming back to him in an unrelenting flow of agony now that his memories were no longer jaded by betrayal. Allowing himself to remember the good times with her and the happy moments has only caused him more regret. For five years he had locked those images out of his head, and now they were freely haunting him.
“Because you have let that girl think Anna is your beloved since day one, and no one has told her or Ling anything different. I don’t think Meilei wants to get close and cozy with an ex who has another woman strung along.” Tian had thought about it when he saw Ling in the work elevator last night, but he was too distracted by the skin-tight cocktail dress she had put on to leave, and his mind had been walking out after her, demanding to know who she was dressing up for. He hadn’t slept much last night because he was restless, pissy, and agitated, and it was all because of that crazy wench. He had serious conflicted feelings over that one and did not know why. She was his walking nightmare.
Kai cursed quietly and straightened up to drop his head back and stretch his neck up.
“I am such an idiot.” He chastised himself internally, groaning that he pushed Anna that way in front of Meilei and had not thought since about it. “Why did I have to go all guns blazing and trample all over her for weeks on end and not stop and realize what an immature asshole I was being?”
“That’s what happens when all the bullshit is scraped away, and you’re left with a true picture of what someone always was to you, buddy. Meilei was never that villain or devious person, but the girl you adored. I can’t imagine what it feels like to have the blinkers removed and see she had never changed at all. That she had never given you a reason to leave her or no longer love her.”
“I still love her.” Kai, standing here, talking like this with Tian. It was like he could finally face some truths, and everything was unblurring to clear. “She’s why I couldn’t go there with Anna or any other woman. I never stopped pining for her, and that’s why I couldn’t let her leave OTS without torturing her. I couldn’t bear to let her out of my grasp and used hate as an excuse.” It was a sobering fact, slapping him full force in the face.
He couldn’t deny what had been there all along underneath all the bullshit. The day that scum had put his hand on her leg in his office, he had experienced the stir of jealousy and anger and ignored it. His desire to hurt her shrowded all the hints that his heart had stayed with her. It’s what had fuelled his loathing to another level. The sense she was a weakness for him, and he had despised it. He wanted her to feel his pain and share it. He tried to lash at her because he couldn’t forget it.
“I could have told you that a long time ago. You had all the markers of a man so scarred by his first love that no woman would ever get a chance.” Tian motioned for Kai to move over. If they were standing here like this he needed a coffee. He had left without his morning wake-up, thinking he would be doing ten rounds in the ring. He slid by him and opened the machine lid to see if it needed water while Kai moved back and leaned against the opposite counter.
“What do I do?” Kai was lost for the second time in his life concerning the same girl. Only this time, it was not desperation to forget her. It was grieving what he lost with her. She had been his only one.
It must have been hard to try and move on when staring at the miniature face of someone who hurt you that badly every day. He had no doubt Yue’s existence had probably hindered her from forgetting him. At work, seeing her only briefly these past two weeks, he could sense Meilei was still the same. Still suspicious of him and his motives. She was also fielding off all the office gossip that Kai had let run riot, further pushing her into herself. She was still living through the fallout of Kai’s war against her, so it was no wonder she didn’t have faith in him.
“Fuck.” Kai grimaced, knowing that was another detail he had spaced out over, given he was no longer going there. “Why am I such a fucking asshole?” he chastised, truly hating himself in that moment. Being away from OTS had disconnected him from what was happening there, and he had been putting all his energy into his investments and unlinking himself from Yanhue. Kai stared at Tian with complete regret, but it looked more like he was scowling at him.
“Can you make threats to stop the raging rumor that I am fucking Miss Huo at every opportunity? We are the next hot topic after you two.” Tian snorted in wry amusement and shook his head, dishing sugar into their mugs,
“Don’t ask because I still don’t know. She’s some kind of siren, I tell you. Drop your guard for even a second around her, and she will eat you.” Tian smirked to himself as she popped into his head, all the naked and sexy glory of her, and frowned as he pushed that imagery away. He needed to stop recalling her in that way because it had been seriously messing with his libido lately.
“So, no second time? You two have a lot of sexual frustration anytime I see you meet head-on.” Kai was teasing, but Tian stopped and stared at the cupboard door directly before him for a long pause before exhaling heavily. He was past the point of denial that he had certain attractions to her.
“I have never met a woman that made me want to both strangle her and fuck her simultaneously. She drives me crazy, and in no way is it a good thing. She’s exhausting and probably the most irritating woman I have ever met.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never felt that way about any woman I dated.”
Tian was being deadly serious. He had given up on women because he figured he was not built for love. His feelings for the women of his past had been easy to discard. They never ran deep because all the things that irritated him showed up early on, and he could not get past them. They suffocated him and made him feel restricted like they wanted him to change to fit into their ideal of what a man should be. Women were just not high on his priority list.
Kai wasn’t surprised because this was a conversation they had before. Tian just never fell all too deeply for anyone. He even phased off dates and hookups because he found most women tiring company.