Chapter 18
But Elizabeth turned off the livestream.
She turned to look at Javion behind her, her voice soft. “Let’s go.”
Javion frowned slightly, a hint of worry in his eyes. “Aren’t you going to see him?”
She shook her head, her eyes calm. “He won’t die. He just wants to force me to compromise like before, but this time I won’t.”
Javion gazed at her deeply, then finally nodded. “Alright.”
On the way back in the car, Elizabeth suddenly asked, “When did you start liking me?”
Javion’s hand tightened slightly on the steering wheel.
That year, he was the illegitimate child of the Renard family, hidden away from the world and shunned by everyone. On his birthday, he sat alone in an abandoned art studio, but received a painting sent anonymously–the first gift he had ever received. Attached was a note: You shine brighter than all of them.
He recognized the brushwork. It was Ms. Elizabeth, who was always by Kaiden’s side.
He had wanted to thank her, but instead stumbled upon her kissing Kaiden in the garden,
The light in the young man’s eyes was dazzling, his smile impossibly
sweet.
Chapter 18
So he chose silence, chose to leave for a foreign country, chose… to let
them be.
But this life was different; his moon had come to find him on her own.
Kaiden, in the end, did not jump.
A
He stood on the rooftop the entire night, only staggering away when the first light of dawn broke.
Three months later, Elizabeth received word that Kaiden had left. Before his departure, he transferred all his shares of the Renard Group to Javion.
He went to Skeleton Coast, where the waves never cease.
He bought a house on the edge of a cliff, and every morning he would take his surfboard to the sea, only returning at dusk with skin wrinkled from the water.
He was punishing himself in a way that bordered on self–destruction.
The locals all knew this silent man. He would sail out alone during storms, and though countless lives had been lost on Skeleton Coast, he would drink glass after glass in the bars at night, yet never seemed to get drunk.
Strangest of all, he would repeatedly sketch the same woman’s profile in his sketchbook, only to tear it up immediately, letting the sea wind carry the scraps into the waves.
Later, some said they saw him in Iceland, watching the aurora alone. Others claimed he died during a deep–sea dive, his body forever resting on the ocean floor.
But the only thing certain was that he never returned to his homeland.
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