Chapter 16
Elizabeth was mixing colors in the studio. She frowned and walked out, only to see Kaiden standing in the yard, a bandage wrapped around his forehead, but his eyes sparkling brightly.
A
“Eliza!” He saw her and grinned, like a child who had finally found his way home.
“I found you!”
Elizabeth froze where she stood.
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It was a smile she hadn’t seen in a long time–pure and passionate.
Kaiden wanted to run toward her, but staggered because of his injuries and nearly fell. Elizabeth instinctively took a step forward, but forced herself to stop
“Why… are you here? And in this state…” Her voice was dry.
But Kaiden seemed oblivious to her distance, his eyes curving like crescent moons. “I came to marry you!”
He pulled out a crumpled little notebook and offered it to her like a treasure. It was a handwritten wedding plan list.
It was densely filled with the dreams of eighteen–year–old Kaiden for the future:
To take Eliza to Iceland to see the aurora.
To hold a wedding in a seaside church.
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To raise a cat, because Eliza likes them.
Elizabeth’s fingertips trembled slightly. She looked up and met Kaiden’s expectant gaze, her throat feeling blocked by something.
This was the future she had once wanted most. But now, she no longer dared to believe in it.
な
At some point, Javion appeared behind her, looking coldly at Kaiden.
“Get out.”
Kaiden was stunned for a moment, then frowned. “Who are you?”
“Her fiancé now.”
Kaiden’s pupils contracted sharply as he looked at Elizabeth. “Eliza, is what he said true?”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Kaiden’s gaze gradually dimmed, but he still stubbornly stood his ground. “…It’s okay.”
He forced a smile, his voice as light as a feather. “I can win you back.”
Late at night, when all was quiet, Elizabeth stood by the window, looking at Kaiden, who refused to leave downstairs.
He sat on the bench wrapped in his coat, curling up from the pain, yet stubbornly looking up at her window, just like the boy who used to wait for her after class.
Javion walked up beside her. After a moment of silence, he suddenly spoke. “You can choose him.”
On Leag
Chapter 16
Elizabeth shook her head. “I won’t make the same mistake again.”
“But what if…” Javion’s voice was low, “he really is just the eighteen- year–old Kaiden now?”
Elizabeth was stunned.
Outside the window, snowflakes drifted down, covering Kaiden’s shoulders. Yet he only gazed in her direction, his eyes as pure as before.
Deep down, she couldn’t harden her heart.
Why do they say first love hurts? Because whether it’s salty or sweet, bitter or sour, first love is always the most unforgettable memory.
If the lover who once hurt you is replaced by the lover who still loves you. would you hate him or love him?
Elizabeth couldn’t make a choice, so she shut herself away.
She locked herself in the studio, drew the curtains, ignored calls and messages, as if this could keep that stubborn boy out of her world.
But Kaiden was like a fire that could never be extinguished, burning so fiercely that there was nowhere to escape.
In the morning, when she opened the window, she would find different flowers on the sill, with a careful little note on the petals: “Eliza, good morning.”
The doorbell would ring, and the deliveryman would bring her favorite desserts, with a card bearing a clumsy smiley face: “Remember you love this.”
Sometimes when she left the studio, she would see a soft blanket on the bench in the yard, next to a thermos bag of hot milk, with a note pressed
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Chapter 16
under the cup: “It’s cold, don’t catch a chill.”
288 Souchers
He seemed to have stopped pestering her, only quietly telling her in the clumsiest ways: I’m here.
Just like when he was eighteen, trying to cheer her up when she was sulking, he climbed over the wall into the Stenson’s residence backyard, got chased by security for three blocks, but still clung tightly to the box of strawberry cake she had once mentioned wanting to try.
Elizabeth stood by the window, looking at the figure wrapped in a coat downstairs.
Snow covered his shoulders, but he only looked up, breathing out white mist and rubbing his hands, occasionally jumping to keep warm, like a tireless boy.
Suddenly, she remembered so many things:
On her seventeenth birthday, he secretly took her to skip class and go to the beach. Both of them got sunburned, but still laughed foolishly as they wrote each other’s names in the sand.
On the night of the first snow after they got together, he secretly kissed her in a corner of the library, only to be caught by the librarian. The two of them ran hand in hand through the snow, ending up covered in it.
Those memories were so beautiful–so beautiful that… they scared her.
She was afraid it would all turn out to be an illusion again, afraid that one day she would wake up and he would become the cold, cruel Kaiden once
more.
But even more, she was afraid… that she would soften.
