I Said Divorce When He Sent Me Red Roses Chapter 06

I Said Divorce When He Sent Me Red Roses Chapter 06

“Where did she go?”

Callum spoke out of the blue.

No one got the chance to answer before his temper snapped, his voice shooting upward sharply.

“Where the hell is Annelise?”

Silence crashed over the office. Several seconds ticked by before someone mumbled quietly, “Maybe… she went home.”

At that reply, Callum’s eyes slowly stung red.

He stumbled out of the building barely able to stay upright.

It was only in that moment that genuine panic finally twisted through his chest.

Yet I could not tell if that panic stemmed from me, or the ruin Rourke Biotech would face once I was gone.

…

The second the plane touched down, a weight lighter than any I had ever known settled over me.

I had finally escaped the place that had slowly eaten away at my soul.

Escaped that house.

Escaped that marriage cold enough to rival a mortuary.

Professor Whitaker waited for me at arrivals. The instant he laid eyes on me, his eyes flooded red.

He scanned me from head to toe, his voice thick with emotion. “You’ve lost weight.”

“If I’d pushed harder back then, dragged you straight into the research institute, you would never have wound up…”

I patted his back, a sharp ache pricking my own heart.

I had held an official offer from the research lab right after graduation.

But Callum had gotten down on one knee to propose that same year.

He’d sworn we would build an empire of our own, side by side.

Professor Whitaker had hated to let me slip away, yet he refused to stand in the way of what he thought was my happiness.

Life rarely ran smooth.

Every person eventually reaped the consequences of their choices.

Thankfully, I was finally back on the right path.

I forced a playful grin to lighten the heavy mood. “What’s wrong with being slimmer? I can skip a few meals and cut the institute’s expenses.”

Professor Whitaker shot me a mock glare.

“You’re impossible.”

I quickly steadied his arm and followed him toward the research facility.

The institute was swamped with work that day; none of my senior lab partners could spare a minute to greet me.

Professor Whitaker even apologized on their behalf, leaving me flustered.

“My old bones can’t march you through every corner of this institute,” he said.

“My son’s got the day off. He can show you around instead.”

I remembered Professor Whitaker’s son well.

He’d struggled terribly with physics back then, so I’d tutored him for months.

His grades shot up afterward, and Professor Whitaker had handed me a sizable bonus for my work.

I wondered if physics problems still left him stumped all these years later.

No sooner had we stepped onto the institute grounds than I spotted Elias Whitmore standing in the courtyard.

He bore no resemblance to the quiet, withdrawn boy I recalled. He’d shot up several inches and carried himself with quiet maturity now.

Professor Whitaker waved him over.

“Come help Annelise carry her luggage. Why don’t you greet her? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten her.”

A faint smile tugged at my lips.

Professor Whitaker rambled on beside me. “This stubborn boy never listens to a word I say. He walks around with that stone-cold face every single day. I doubt I’ll live long enough to see him settle down with someone—no one could stand that temperament of his.”

Elias grabbed my suitcase without a hint of expression, yet the tips of his ears flushed almost imperceptibly pink.

Professor Whitaker exchanged a few quick instructions with him before a colleague called him away.

Elias led me to the private dorm room assigned to me.

It was a spacious one-bedroom apartment, with a window overlooking a stretch of woodland behind the institute.

He moved about the room like he’d lived there for years, making my bed and carrying in bouquets my former lab partners had left by the door to welcome me.

Midway through sorting the flowers, he froze.

He plucked every single red rose from the arrangements, one stem at a time.

“I’ll dispose of these for you.”

I stared at him in shock.

“How did you know I hate red roses?”

Elias lifted his gaze to meet mine, his tone calm and even. “When I had tutoring sessions with you years ago, a family friend sent my mother a bouquet of red roses.”

“You frowned the second you laid eyes on them.”

“I put two and two together after that.”

I fell silent for a long stretch after hearing that.

He’d only caught a split-second frown from me once, yet he’d held onto that tiny detail all these years.

Callum had heard me voice my hatred of red roses dozens upon dozens of times with my own lips.

He knew exactly what those blooms represented to me.

Still, he’d lined the entire hallway with red roses, then stood there alongside Maris, expecting me to accept some hollow truce.

He could pour endless thought and care into every other person around him.

With me, he never bothered.

It hit me then: a man was never truly incapable of thoughtfulness.

His fondness had simply never belonged to me, not anymore.

“What are you zoning out over?”

Elias’s voice pulled me back to the present moment.

I shook my head with a soft laugh. “Nothing at all. Thank you for getting rid of those roses.”

He dropped all the red blooms into a separate trash bag and tied the top shut tight.

“They won’t turn up in your room again.”

It was such a plain, simple line, yet it sent a tight ache burning up my throat.

We chatted casually for a few minutes after that.

I learned Elias had just graduated from medical school that same year and also landed an offer at this institute.

He’d arrived a full month before me and was a registered member of Project 707.

To top it all off, we’d been placed on the exact same research team.

When our conversation drifted to my failed marriage, the perpetual blank calm on his face shifted for the very first time.

For a split second, I could have sworn he looked glad I planned to file for divorce.

I crushed that stray thought down the instant it surfaced.

I had barely escaped a ridiculous, suffocating marriage.

Right now, I had no desire to entangle myself in any romantic relationship whatsoever.