Bella was silent for a long time before she spoke, “Dad, please give me some time to think about it.”
Patrick nodded and patted her shoulder, “Good, child, it’s really aggravating for you.”
Bella wanted to cry. She was inconsolable, but she held back from crying out. Tears were not her weapon. Even if she shed tears, it would not make the gray life bright and shining.
After separating from her father-in-law from the tea house, she went home glumly, after which she locked herself in the house and didn’t come out again until sunset.
At the evening meal, in order to prevent her family from seeing her abnormalities, she forced a smile down the stairs. Kevin thoughtfully stretched out his hand to touch her forehead, “Are you uncomfortable? Why do you look so bad?”
“No.”
She tried to force a smile, picked up her chopsticks and ate.
“Munch on the chicken leg.”
Kevin tore off a large chicken leg from the whole chicken stewed in the middle of the table and handed it to Bella, “You’re too skinny. You must eat more meat.”
Bella put the chicken leg into his bowl, “You eat it. You work so hard every day. You also need to tonify your body more.”
“I’m a man. Even if I starve for three days, I won’t crack up. So you eat it.”
He put the chicken leg back into Bella’s bowl.
“It’s better if you eat, and I’ll just eat the wings.”
“What’s the matter with you? I told you to eat it.”
They put a chicken leg to each other’s bowl for several times, making others dizzy. Others looked from left to right again.
Finally, Lena couldn’t watch anymore. Her chopsticks stretched out and put the chicken leg that they pushed back and forth into her bowl, “You don’t eat it, and then leave it to me. I’m growing up, and I also need nutrition.”
Kevin and Bella had a stunning look at her, then, looked at each other.
“I really can’t stand you guys. You have to stand on ceremony for a chicken leg, making it seem as if our family is so poor that it’s rare to eat chicken stew once.”
Lena chided her brother and sister-in-law as she nibbled on the chicken leg.
Kevin glared at her, pulled off the other chicken leg and handed it to Bella, “Eat quickly, before the bandits take it away again.”
Lena snorted, “Who would want to rob with you? I can’t bear you showing love.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Come on, if you’re so in love, why don’t you have a child? I’ve been looking forward to being an aunt for a long time.”
Lena’s unintentional words were undoubtedly like a bomb that made the atmosphere in the house freeze.
The expressions on everyone’s faces were different. Bella was embarrassed and sad. Kevin was stiff and angry, and Patrick and his wife were surprised and disturbed.
“What’s wrong guys? Why are you all looking at me? Have I got something on my face?”
Lena hadn’t realized she’d gotten into a big trouble, and blankly reached up to wipe her cheeks.
“Are you going to die if you don’t talk?”
Kevin gloomily gnashed and questioned, and Lena was shocked by her brother’s cold attitude, “I didn’t say anything too harsh. I just want you guys to have a child.”
“Shut up.”
Blanche also reprimanded with a gloomy face, and Lena was completely confused, “What the hell is wrong with me? Why are you so fierce to me?”
She pursed her lips in aggravation and held her hands together in a helpless manner.
Seeing her sister-in-law’s innocent expression, Bella took a deep breath and said frankly, “Lena, actually I can’t have children. You’re the only one in this family who doesn’t know.”
As soon as Bella finished, the air was getting very heavy. Lena was shocked and her eyes popped out. She looked at her mother and then at her father and then at her sister-in-law. Suddenly, she was so panic that she could not say a word.
Bella slowly got up and politely nodded to her in-laws, “Mom and Dad, you guys eat. I’m not feeling well. I’m going upstairs to rest.”
Looking at her lonely back, Blanche sighed deeply. Kevin stood up, gave her sister a fierce glance, and rushed to catch up.
Bella entered the bedroom and was just about to close the door when Kevin gasped and stood in front of her. She was startled and looked at him, relatively speechless for a while.
“Bella, I’m sorry. Lena doesn’t know anything, and she didn’t mean to cut you to the quick.”
She smiled lightly, “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to blame her.”
Bella saw that Kevin was worried about her. She took the initiative to take steps forward and stretched out her arms to hug him. There was no need to say too many words at the moment. Just a hug would be enough.
With what her father-in-law said during the day and her sister-in-law’s unintentional words at night, Bella thought deeply about it the night. The next day, she took the initiative to ask her father-in-law out, and told him: directly, “Dad, I’ve thought about it. I agree to your proposal. However, I have a request.”
Patrick was stunned and surprisingly didn’t expect his daughter-in-law to agree so quickly. He was nodding, “What’s your request? You just say it.”
“No matter who you ask to have a child with Kevin, that person can’t be Freya.”
This was the only and the last dignity she had.
Patrick completely understood her feelings and now promised, “You can be assured. Even if you are willing, I will never let Freya to carry on our Jones-Sharps family’s line. I have already found a surrogate mother. Now as long as you persuade Kevin, everything will be solved.”
Bella’s nails dug into the flesh as she was trembling, “Dad, don’t you think this is cruel to me? Making me accept my husband having a child with another woman is already breaking my heart, and now you’re asking me to tell him myself. How do you expect me to say it?”
Patrick closed his eyes in deep sorrow, and opened them again, helplessly, “Bella, I’m really sorry. I know you feel bad, but no one but you can persuade him. In other words, he listens to you.”
Bella was really despaired. The world had always been so cruel. She had always felt it, not just today.
She came home listlessly. In the living room, her mother-in-law put one hand to her forehead, as if she was thinking about something.
“Mom.”
She called softly, and Blanche looked up suddenly, “Bella, you’re back.”
“Yes.”
She sat next to her mother-in-law and said with a wooden expression, “I’ve agreed to my father-in-law’s proposal.”
Blanche stiffened and her eyes were wet with tears for a moment, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry to put you through such a great grievance.”
The tears that Bella had endured in front of her father-in-law finally fell freely in front of her mother-in-law. Perhaps because her mother-in-law was also a woman, and she felt that her mother-in-law better understood the pain in her heart.
“It’s okay. It’s my own bad fate.”
She sobbed quietly, tears dripping onto the back of her hand. Blanche hugged her heartily, “Bella, thank you for your contribution to our family. Your kindness is unforgettable to me and your father-in-law …”
At night, Bella lay in Kevin’s arms but didn’t talk about having a baby. She needed time to accept and get used to it. If she couldn’t even accept it herself, how could she convince Kevin to accept it?
If this was her fate, she surrendered to it, just like she read in a book which said giving up trying to fight your fate, because you couldn’t win it.
Alice’s wedding leave was only one day, and when she went to work the next day, she looked as usual. She didn’t look as happy as she should be after a new marriage.
As soon as she arrived at the office, she was met with a pair of hostile gazes, and it dawned on her that her and Louis’s wedding was so sudden that almost no one in the school knew about it.
“Me Lee, I really can’t see that you have more means than Ms Burne-Brown, but you married Mr. Hunter quietly. Yesterday we got the news, and we were simply shocked. We didn’t expect that Mr. Hunter suddenly married you.”
“Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how the hell you did it?”
Alice had a look at the two female teachers in front of her who hated her so much and replied casually, “I didn’t do anything. Mr. Hunter proposed to me, and I said yes. That’s all.”
“Mr. Hunter proposed to you? Well, what kind of hyperbolic joke is this?”
A female teacher sneered sarcastically, “Who doesn’t know that Mr. Hunter is in love with Bella? You’re taking yourself too seriously, aren’t you?”
“So you’re saying I played some kind of trick to force Mr. Hunter to marry me, right?”
“That must be it. Otherwise how could such an excellent person like Mr. Hunter suddenly married?”
“If you guys are so curious, then go ask Mr. Hunter yourselves and don’t bother me anymore.”
Alice didn’t want to talk nonsense to them anymore and got up to prepare to walk out.
As soon as she took two steps, she heard whispering behind her, “So what. We know who she is.”
“When a man suddenly decides to marry a woman, there is only one possibility that that woman used some means to sleep with him …”
It was tolerable, but not tolerable.
Alice couldn’t stand it any longer, so she turned back sharply, strode up to the gossiping woman, and raised her hand to slap on her face.
“I’m not Bella, allowing you to attack me verbally all day long.”
“How dare you hit me?”
The woman teacher was angry and grabbed Alice’s hair. They fought in the office.
The other teachers saw a fight, hurried forward to try to stop the fight. But they were in a fit of anger, so the onlookers couldn’t pull away them. When their fight came to a head, Louis came and shouted, “You stop!”
Louis spoke. Even if they were angry, they didn’t dare not to stop. They were as tall as each other and therefore as injured as each other.
“What are you guys doing? As a teacher, it’s unruly to fight openly in the office!”
“Mr. Hunter, she made the first move …”
The female teacher was tearfully confessing.
Another female teacher immediately chimed in, “Yes, we can testify that it was Mr. Lee who hit her first.”