He Broke Me Quietly, So I Left Quietly Chapter 07

He Broke Me Quietly, So I Left Quietly Chapter 07

For two weeks straight, Liam lingered outside the medical camp.

He never dared step closer, terrified of annoying.

So he just watched me from a distance.

He watched me perform skilled surgeries on the injured, eat simple meals atop sandbags, and doze exhaustedly against the tent supports.

He had found out everything about me past five years.

I had never been on that plane.

After I left through the back door of the gala lounge, I went to the airport and checked my luggage. But I received last-minute orders and departed on a military transport aircraft with the International Medical Volunteer team.

For five years after that, I had moved through the most dangerous war zones.

From the charred wastelands of eastern Veria to the miles-long refugee camps in the south, I had traveled to every dangerous nook and cranny across the region.

I had performed over a thousand surgeries and saved countless lives. The locals called her a hero. The United Nations had given me a humanitarian medal.

But the files Liam read also showed another side.

Three years ago, armed fighters attacked my medical station.

For seventy-two hours, I led fifteen medical staff and over forty wounded patients, holding our ground inside an abandoned church.

When their supplies and ammunition were exhausted, I picked up a gun to fight.

There was a photo in the file.

In the picture, I crouched behind cover, my face streaked with blood and grime, my gaze icy and unyielding. Behind me were the children she had protected with my own body.

Liam thought about the past.

He’d cut my heart to shreds bit by bit. And in the shadows far from him, I’d forged myself into unbreakable steel.

That evening, after a long day of difficult surgeries, I stepped out of the tent to get some air.

Liam walked over, holding an insulated container.

“Elara… I made you some chicken soup. Please just have a little. You’re far too thin.”

I looked at him. I didn’t take it.

“Mr. Bennett, don’t you have better things to do?”

“If you’ve finished your charitable donations, you should head back home. This is an active war zone, not some playground for you.”

Liam’s face went pale.

“I… I just want to make things right.”

“I know I was an awful person. I was utterly blind to everything, hurting you for Mia’s sake.”

“I had Mia committed to a psychiatric facility. She will never be released for the rest of her life.”

“Just give me a chance. Let me take care of you. I’ll take you home. I’ll give you everything—”

“Stop.”

I cut him off coldly.

“Do you truly believe you can simply put on a remorseful act, and I will forgive you out of gratitude?”

“Who do you think you are?”

I looked him in the eyes and spoke slowly.

“In the past five years, I’ve saved thousands of lives out here amid the fighting. I earned a UN medal, and led a medical team to hold a besieged church.”

“Your apologies and so-called devotion are worthless to me.”

“You mean absolutely nothing at all.”

Liam was utterly shattered by her cutting words.

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

The container slipped from his hand. The soup spilled across the yellow sand, quickly absorbed by the parched earth.

I didn’t look at him again. I turned and walked back into the tent.

Liam stood there. The setting sun stretched his shadow long across the ground.

He finally understood: she didn’t need him anymore. Not then. Not now.

But he still couldn’t leave.

Even if all he could do was stay here and watch me from afar, just to know I was safe, he would do it.

But fate didn’t seem willing to give him that chance.