Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
The black Maybach sped out of the estate, heading toward the riverside villa.
The car was filled with a faint smell of smoke. Lu Huaiyan lowered the window, let the lingering smoke disperse, and then raised it again.
Neither of them spoke the entire way.
Jiang Se turned her head to look at the scenery outside the car, while Lu Huaiyan kept his eyes on the road ahead.
When the car arrived at the villa, Lu Huaiyan drove directly into the garage. The roller door slowly descended.
Jiang Se unbuckled her seat belt and was just about to open the passenger door when—“click”—the car locked.
Her half-raised hand had no choice but to lower again.
She turned her head to look at Lu Huaiyan. “Unlock it. I want to get out.”
Lu Huaiyan turned his head to meet her gaze and said lightly, “You’re finally willing to look at me?”
Jiang Se turned away without speaking. After waiting a while and seeing he still hadn’t unlocked the car, she looked over again and called, “Lu Huaiyan.”
The garage lights were off, and only a sliver of light came through beneath the roller door, keeping the enclosed space from being pitch-black.
In the half-light, half-darkness, Lu Huaiyan suddenly asked, “Have you used the agarwood I gave you recently?”
Jiang Se was taken aback.
The Lu family’s agarwood was domineering, once it clung to you, it lingered for a long time.
After the smoke dissipated from the car, the scent on her body was distracting, he could smell it even from the driver’s seat.
In such a small enclosed space, the agarwood scent became even harder to ignore.
Jiang Se bit her lip and didn’t speak. Suddenly she moved, bracing her left hand against the center console, intending to unlock the car herself.
Half her body leaned across in front of Lu Huaiyan. When her hair slid off her shoulder, the wind of her movement brushed his neck a few times.
Lu Huaiyan watched her profile, so close, his Adam’s apple sinking slowly. Then he abruptly grabbed her by the waist and lifted her onto his lap like pulling up a radish.
Jiang Se’s back slammed into the steering wheel, and the car let out a sharp “beep.”
She shot him a look and reached for the lock again, intending to get out from the driver’s side.
Lu Huaiyan’s eyes darkened. He caught her hand directly, intertwining their fingers tightly, holding her trapped in his lap.
Jiang Se finally got angry. “Lu Huaiyan!”
Lu Huaiyan remained unmoving, his gaze heavy on her. “Why aren’t you answering? Did you or did you not use the agarwood I gave you? Didn’t you quit a long time ago?”
He had given her that incense long ago, and she had never used it.
He had seen the official leather box in her bedroom. The incense cakes inside were perfectly intact, never opened.
Their eyes locked for a moment.
Jiang Se turned her head to the side, refusing to look at him.
Lu Huaiyan’s gaze fell on that soft spot beneath her ear, the place he had kissed and bitten countless times. Fire surged up in his chest, and he forced it back down.
“I waited downstairs for you for two hours. You didn’t take even one step to come after me. You really are ruthless, cutting things off just like that. Meanwhile, I can’t even bring myself to force you to chase me.”
A deal isn’t a deal if you’re the one chasing.
And he was the one chasing now.
Cheap and worthless.
In the reflection of the window glass, Jiang Se’s eyes flickered, though her lashes never moved.
“Lu Huaiyan, we’re already over.”
“Over what?” Lu Huaiyan let out a quiet laugh, his brows and eyes cold. “I never agreed to end anything. You think you can send one message and break up, and I’d accept it?”
He released one hand and turned her head over, saying word by word: “Jiang Se, we can’t break up.”
Good break or bad break, used on them it was originally a joke, they couldn’t break up.
Jiang Se finally raised her eyes to look at him: “Were you the one who had someone investigate Zheng Huan?”
“Yes.” Lu Huaiyan’s tone was very light. “I had to find out the reason you insisted on breaking up. Zheng Huan is the one investigating the case for you. After you sent the message, you went to Tongcheng to pick up Zhang Yue and brought her to meet Zheng Huan. Why? Because of the case seven years ago?”
When he said this, he thought of something and added: “Has Zhu Mingli caused you any trouble lately?”
Hearing him bring up Zhu Mingli, Jiang Se suddenly remembered the question Zhu Mingli asked her last night: “Is Lu Huaiyan your backup plan?”
Jiang Se’s gaze shifted slightly: “Zhu Mingli went looking for you? What did she say to you?”
Lu Huaiyan didn’t hide it from her: “Ran into her by chance at Mayfair, she came over to ‘remind’ me to be careful of being used.”
As he spoke, he let out a half-smile, half-not: “I didn’t have dinner with her at the revolving restaurant watching the sunset.”
Knowing he was bringing up the day she had dinner with Fu Yun, Jiang Se was going to turn her face away, but his hand was still holding her cheek, and as soon as she turned, he turned it back.
“What are you avoiding for? It’s not like I’m here to confront you.” Lu Huaiyan said, “Can’t you tell that Fu Yun likes you?”
Jiang Se’s expression paused, she looked at him once.
Lu Huaiyan laughed: “You know he likes you?”
Jiang Se didn’t want to continue talking with him, she lowered her lashes, her voice indifferent: “Are we done talking? If we’re done I want to get out.”
As soon as her brows and eyes went cold, the sharp edges in her bones emerged one by one, pricking painfully.
Lu Huaiyan felt so stifled he wanted to smoke again.
He raised a hand and lifted her chin upward, forcing her to look at him, and at the same time leaned his neck forward, staring into her eyes, asking her: “If you don’t want to talk about the matter of the incense then don’t, but tell me why you want to break up? You know you can’t fob me off.”
Originally, even if she didn’t say it, he would investigate to the end; he never expected to dig anything out of her mouth again anyway, he knew this girl couldn’t be forced.
But he couldn’t hold back. Seeing her walk out from inside, with a scent on her that he had once left on her.
All his rationality and patience completely ran out in that instant.
The two of them were very close, his breath invading from all directions.
That kind of bare, naked sense of intrusion seeped in little by little through his gaze, his breathing, the temperature of his skin.
His lips clearly weren’t touching her, yet the entangling wet softness of lips and teeth already had a physical presence.
Him asking her whether she had used the agarwood was the same as asking whether she had thought of him.
It meant the same thing.
Of course she had.
Her entire body, inside and out, was thinking of him, so much that as soon as he got close, as soon as he entered her space, her body reacted on its own.
Her heartbeat was very fast, her breathing gradually growing hurried.
“I already said it,” Jiang Se pressed down her heartbeat, looking at Lu Huaiyan calmly, “we’re just sharing one section of the road.”
Lu Huaiyan looked at her quietly, then suddenly leaned back, picked up his phone from the center console, and said lazily: “Still because of the rumor that the Lu family and the Guan family will have a marriage alliance? Fine, I’ll resolve it right now.”
He lowered his head to unlock his phone, opened an app, the phone screen glowing coldly in the dim car.
After a moment he exited the app and dialed a call: “Boost the popularity of the Weibo post I just sent, and by the way release the photo of Guan Jiayi with Grandfather from last night.”
After speaking he hung up and placed the phone on the center console, staring at her.
“It’s already announced to the entire world that the Lu family and the Guan family won’t have any marriage alliance. I used the official Lu Group account; no one will question the authenticity. Grandfather has already decided to acknowledge Guan Jiayi as his god-granddaughter, that news will be released soon. The Lu and Guan families will indeed become closer, but not because of marriage. What else is making you misunderstand? The piano piece I played in the UK? Or the rumor that I played a four-hand piece with Guan Jiayi?”
He chuckled: “Then I just won’t play piano anymore, how about that?”
As he said this, he lowered his eyes to pry open Jiang Se’s left hand, looking for the scar on her left little finger.
“You severed the tendon here back then, right?”
Lu Huaiyan took a letter opener out of the storage box under the center console, and without blinking stabbed it toward his own left little finger tendon.
“I’ll cut the exact same thing as you. You can’t play violin, I can’t play piano, perfect pair.”
His voice was calm and steady, but his movement was vicious and swift.
Jiang Se hurriedly grabbed his wrist, the sharp blade cut across his palm, slicing open a thin long wound, beads of blood welling out.
“Are you insane?”
Jiang Se looked at his eyes as if they were burning with fire, her chest rising and falling, her delicate fingers pressing so hard against his wrist that they left a pale imprint.
“Has your anger gone down yet? I don’t love playing piano that much anyway. If it can appease you, what’s a severed tendon?”
Lu Huaiyan stared at her eyes, reversed his grip to hold her wrist, pulled her toward him, and said slowly: “A lifetime is also one section of the road, Jiang Se. My section of the road with you is a lifetime. As long as I’m alive, this section can’t end.”
The scent lingering on her was his.
The fire in her eyes was burning for him.
When the two of them tangled to the point of life and death, their flesh and blood was full of desire for each other, drawing and binding, wishing it would only end in death.
“I’ve had you, so I can’t look at other women. You’ve had me, so you can’t look at other men. Neither of us should think of abandoning the other.”
That one sentence, “neither of us should think of abandoning the other”, made Jiang Se’s heart clench suddenly.
She again remembered the question he had asked Han Yin.
No one knew better than her how much it hurt him to ask that question.
They were both people who had been abandoned by those closest to them.
Jiang Se lowered her eyelids, covering the emotions in her eyes.
Just then, the phone on the passenger seat buzzed, she glanced at it from the corner of her eye.
It was Guo Qian.
She didn’t need to think to know it was because of the Weibo post Lu Huaiyan had made.
Jiang Se blinked quickly, and when she looked up again, her gaze had already returned to normal.
“You delete the Weibo.”
“Delete what? Didn’t you say that even if I didn’t marry into the Guan family, I’d marry into some other family? It’s perfect to let the whole world know that I’m yours. If I ever marry another woman someday, that would just be slapping my own face. Since the matter is resolved, can we properly date now?”
Lu Huaiyan’s blood-stained left palm was at the back of her head, his breath gradually pressing closer to her, his low, slightly hoarse voice entering her ear gently.
“When you lit the incense, did you think of me?”
The man’s clean-cut, cold-edged face was right in front of her, their noses touching, breaths mingling.
Jiang Se didn’t speak, her gaze locked unwaveringly with his.
After a long while, she asked softly, “You should know from my older brother’s mouth that I’ve been seeing a doctor all this time. The medicine I keep on my nightstand, you’ve seen it more than once. Lu Huaiyan, aren’t you afraid?”
Lu Huaiyan asked her back, “Afraid of what?”
Jiang Se slowly breathed, saying word by word, “I’m a mental patient. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, maybe even split personality; are you afraid?”
Her best outcome was to be a mental patient.
From the day she came back to Beicheng, she’d already prepared herself.
Sooner or later, the whole city of Beicheng would know she was a mental patient, including everyone around them.
Jiang Se wasn’t afraid this label would follow her for life. If sacrificing some reputation could give her release, she didn’t consider that a loss at all.
She also didn’t care if it made the Cen family a joke.
Back then, they were afraid of becoming a joke that’s why they made her wait hopelessly for so long.
Everything was nothing but late-arriving cause and effect.
But Lu Huaiyan had no need to wade into this muddy water.
He owed her nothing, and he hated troublesome things.
He should live a good life as the young master of the Lu family, marrying a normal wife, rather than having people poke his spine behind his back wherever he went, saying he married a mental patient.
Lu Huaiyan stared at her without blinking, his gaze deep and calm: “How would a mental patient love someone?”
Jiang Se said she didn’t know. “Who can predict what someone with mental problems will do? Maybe she’ll tie a metal chain on you every day. If you dare betray her, dare leave her, dare make her feel pain, she won’t let you go. She’ll destroy you without hesitation.”
A smile slowly surfaced in the man’s pitch-black eyes. With a soft “click,” he unfastened his belt buckle, held her hand over the piece of cold metal, and with a sudden pull, drew the belt from his waist.
“There’s no chain in the car, so let’s make do with the belt first, will that work?”
He placed the belt into her hand, pressed his palm down against her lower back, and at the same time released the latch on the seat. With one long stretch of his legs, he pushed the driver’s seat all the way back.
Jiang Se’s body slid forward with the momentum, pressed tightly against his broad chest.
Lu Huaiyan tilted his face slightly, his low voice murmuring by her ear: “How do you want to use it? Tie the hands, or tie where?”
Jiang Se: “…”
Seeing her still unmoving, Lu Huaiyan again let out a quiet laugh, tipped his head back, and looked at her: “Is that the reason? Afraid of dragging me down, afraid people will laugh at me, afraid Grandfather and Mother won’t agree, so you thought of breaking up? Jiang Se, listen clearly. Even if you’re a mental patient, I still want you.”
Every word Cen Li said, he remembered. The medicine on her vanity, and her clinic records after returning to Beicheng, he knew all of it.
But in this world, who doesn’t live half-sane and half-mad?
He just used a letter opener to stab himself, if someone saw, wouldn’t they call him a lunatic?
“Don’t you know what people say about me behind my back? They all say I’m a heartless, ruthless madman. One madman and one mental patient, aren’t we just the perfect match?”
His breath was scorching. Not only his breath, his body was burning hot too. Even through their thin clothes, Jiang Se could feel his reaction.
Their bodies’ memories of each other were carved into their bones.
The moment she sat on his lap, the air around them started heating up.
Lu Huaiyan’s Adam’s apple lowered, then lifted, lifted then lowered, desire growing wild like weeds.
“I want you, Jiang Se.”
He had said those words before.
Last year’s Christmas Eve, in the courtyard of No. 48 Liyuan Street, he had said to her calmly and with certainty: “I want you.”
But now, there was nothing left of that former calm.
His voice was strained, the tide of desire in his blood surging, every breath filled with uncontrollable longing.
“I want you now.” Lu Huaiyan locked his eyes on hers, saying slowly, “The first time right here. You know I can’t wait. The second time inside the house, pick wherever you like, the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room, anywhere. After it’s over, if you still have strength, we’ll go to the bathroom, like before, doing it while showering.”
Jiang Se clenched the belt in her hand tightly, her chest rising and falling slightly: “Lu Huaiyan, you b*stard.”
In response to her curse was a muffled laugh from deep in Lu Huaiyan’s chest.
She called him a b*stard, yet when his lips came down, she didn’t dodge.
The belt slipped from her hand onto the car mat beneath the driver’s seat, landing with a heavy, dull thud.
Outside the garage’s rolling shutter, faint dog barks and voices drifted in.
Someone walking a dog, someone talking, the soft rustling of wind brushing past the shutter.
But they heard none of it.
In the dim, enclosed space, the wet, sticky sounds of their kissing filled each other’s ears.
There was nothing gentle about this kiss, it was even rough.
Carrying his usual dominance.
Jiang Se closed her eyes.
The base of her tongue ached from his sucking, her chest swelling with a suffocating fullness.
When her body was pressed into the seatback, she couldn’t help opening her eyes, looking at Lu Huaiyan and saying, “You’re the one who insisted on provoking me.”
From the very beginning, she planned to walk this road alone to the end.
She wouldn’t change for anyone, for anything. She wouldn’t place hope on anyone else.
She hadn’t wanted anyone to walk with her, be her accomplice, much less ask someone to make any sacrifice in the name of love.
The better someone treated her, the less she would ever use them.
They should have ended right there, parted ways, each going their separate path.
Jiang Se’s dark eyes gradually misted. She looked at Lu Huaiyan, tracing his brows and eyes with her gaze, and said it again, very seriously.
“Lu Huaiyan, you were the one who insisted on provoking me.”
“Yeah, I was the one who provoked you.” Lu Huaiyan leaned down, lowered his head, and kissed her eyes. “Don’t you dare let me go. Like a mental patient, never let me go.”
