He Came Back Ten Years Too Late Chapter 06

He Came Back Ten Years Too Late Chapter 06

For one second, the air went silent.

Then the phone slipped from Ethan’s hand.

Only then did he seem to understand what he’d heard.

His eyes burned as they dropped to my body, facedown on the ground.

“Jasmine, that’s absurd!”

“You can throw a fit, but you don’t get to joke about our child.”

“Do you have any sense of responsibility as a mother?”

Then something occurred to him, and he let out a cold laugh.

“You think you can hide our child from me?”

“Get up right now, or you’ll never see him again.”

Ethan expected the mention of our child to make me struggle to my feet.

Just as I had ten years ago, when he threatened to send me and the baby to that remote island,

I’d drop my pride and clutch at his clothes, begging him./

Or maybe I’d become the old Jasmine Carter, sharp around the edges.

The one who would answer his mockery with a cutting smile.

Yet no matter how high his anger rose,

I stayed facedown on the ground, perfectly still.

Seeing that I didn’t react, Ethan strode toward me.

His hand was almost on me, my body growing cold.

Then Cassidy cried out,

“Ethan, I can’t take this. My stomach hurts so bad…”

Hearing that, hesitation flickered in Ethan’s eyes.

In the end, he turned to Cassidy.

“Jasmine, I’m giving you one last chance.”

“Bring the baby to the hospital later, and I’ll pretend none of this happened.

“Otherwise, stay here forever.”

But he didn’t know

that I really was going to stay here forever.

My spirit floated above the ground.

I didn’t spare a glance at Ethan carrying Cassidy away.

Instead, I watched my own body for a moment as it went completely rigid.

Its pale face was still flecked with blood.

I reached out to smooth my own disheveled hair one last time.

But my hand was no more than a gust of wind.

It slipped straight through the body that no longer held any warmth.

For a moment, I stared at myself, and a quiet grief rose inside me.

Ethan only had to take one more step to realize

I was already dead.

But he hadn’t.

Just as he had ten years ago,

he had chosen Cassidy again.

Once, though, Ethan had chosen me without hesitation.

When I couldn’t find my place among the other kids,

when my classmates mocked me as a freak who only ever wanted to run off to the ocean,

he’d taken my hand without a second thought.

He’d told me with complete seriousness

that I could always be myself, the one and only Jasmine Carter in the world.

He’d gone along with anything I wanted to do.

From the time we were children until I walked down the aisle, he stayed with me for twenty years.

So when exactly had he changed?

Was it when he had me locked away on that island?

I turned the question over and over in my mind.

In the end, I found my answer.

It might have begun when I was searching an ocean trench for prehistoric fossils

and Cassidy handed him a cup of warm water while he waited for me.

Or maybe it was when I stood on an international conference stage explaining my latest discovery,

while Cassidy looked at him with nothing but admiration.

Then our son died.

I didn’t have time to revisit every little thing I’d ignored.

I began living mechanically, saving for a single expensive boat ticket.

I thought my end would come in the ocean one day

or with me finally collapsing at my son’s grave.

I never imagined this would be my ending.

Still, at least I no longer had to wait for a boat ticket I could never afford.

Just as my mother had said,

I was free at last.

But when I tried to float toward my son’s grave,

something I couldn’t resist pulled me away.

It dragged me back to Ethan’s side.

He was sitting outside a hospital room.

His fingers moved absently over a corner of something bright yellow in his palm.

I focused on it.

It was Aiden’s little protective charm.

Ten years ago, on the day I’d hemorrhaged during labor,

the hospital had issued several critical-condition notices.

As he signed consent form after consent form,

I had no idea what was going through his mind.

I only knew that the day after I gave birth, Ethan walked into my hospital room

and tied the little charm around our baby’s neck himself.

Later, his assistant told me Ethan had knelt his way up a seemingly endless flight of chapel steps

to ask for my safety and the baby’s.

Maybe, as he lit candles and bowed his head on those steps,

Ethan really had felt guilty for destroying my life and my family.

But feelings could change in an instant.

The man who’d knelt until his knees were raw for me and our baby one moment

could turn around and send us to a remote island the next.

At that thought, I gave a silent, bitter smile.

After sitting in silence for a long time, Ethan took out his phone and called his assistant.

“Have you found Aiden?”

The assistant’s frightened voice came through the speaker.

“Mr. Hayes, just as you instructed, we searched the entire psychiatric hospital.”

“Your son definitely isn’t there.”

“But we found his grave marker…”