He Timed Our Dates, But Gave Her All His Time—So I Stopped Time For Us Chapter 04

He Timed Our Dates, But Gave Her All His Time—So I Stopped Time For Us Chapter 04

I went to my best friend Lily Parker’s house.

When she opened the door and saw me soaked from head to toe, her eyes widened.

“Vera, did you have another fight with that control freak Julian?”

I shook my head and forced a smile.

“No. I broke up with him.”

She froze.

Then she pulled me into a fierce hug.

“Good riddance! What were you even thinking staying with him for that long?”

She found me clean clothes and made me a bowl of hot chicken soup.

I held it between my hands, letting the steam warm my face until the chill finally began to leave my body.

Then I took out my phone and opened Julian’s contact.

I had ignored countless other messages just to keep his conversation pinned at the top.

Looking at it now, it all felt like a joke.

I scrolled through five years of photos, one after another.

In every picture, Julian wore black, white, or gray.

He stood perfectly straight, his expression as serious as if he were in a board meeting.

In every picture, I was smiling.

Trying too hard to smile.

Trying to fill his black-and-white world with my colors.

Only now did I understand.

His world wasn’t colorless.

He had simply never been willing to show that color to me.

I deleted every photo.

Then I blocked every way he could contact me.

Calls.

Texts.

Emails.

All of it.

I handed my phone to Lily.

“Keep this for a few days.”

“I need to sleep.”

I slept for a long time.

There was no alarm.

No schedule chasing me from one minute to the next.

When I woke, warm sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtains.

Lily was sitting beside the bed, searching through job listings for me.

“There’s a gallery in Oakhaven hiring a curator. It sounds perfect for you.”

“It’s far away, and no one there knows you. You could start over.”

I looked at her and nodded.

“Okay.”

By the time Julian finished dealing with Sophia’s problem and returned to the car, it was after midnight.

Out of habit, he opened his mouth to call Vera’s name and ask her to hand him a mint.

Then he realized the car was empty.

The plain silver band and house key lay silently on the dashboard.

He picked up the ring.

It irritated him.

“Childish.”

He started the car.

The tires rolled through a puddle, sending water spraying high into the air.

Julian assumed Vera was throwing a tantrum.

She would come home on her own in a few days.

When he returned to the apartment, it was dark.

He didn’t turn on the lights.

He went into the bedroom and lay down on the side of the bed where she usually slept.

Her faint scent still lingered on the sheets.

Julian frowned and rolled away from it.

When she came back, he decided, he would add a ban on perfume to their house rules.

His internal clock woke him at the usual time the next morning.

The nightstand was empty.

There was no glass of water at the exact temperature he preferred.

In the closet, his shirt hung wrinkled and unironed.

His schedule started unraveling before the day had even begun.

He called Vera.

“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable.”

He paused, then hung up in irritation.

It had never occurred to him that she would turn off her phone..

Before this, she had always been available to him twenty-four hours a day.

Julian frowned.

Had she taken this tantrum too far?

Something felt wrong inside him.

It wasn’t because of the wrinkled shirt, but he couldn’t identify the real reason.

His schedule told him it was time to leave, so he stopped thinking and went to work.

Being around Sophia made him strangely uncomfortable.

Her perfume was too strong.

Her voice was too loud.

Everything about her was chaotic.

Nothing felt right.

That afternoon, Sophia called him again, sounding close to tears.

*Julian, the investors suddenly want to review the data model, but I can’t find my flash drive. Can you rebuild

the model for me?”

Another careless mistake that could easily have been prevented.

Suppressing his anger, Julian drove to her office.

Sophia pushed a disorganized stack of documents toward him, then sat beside him scrolling through her

phone.

Every few minutes, she urged him to hurry.

“Julian, hurry. They’re waiting.”

The sound of typing stopped.

Julian lifted his head and looked at her.

“I promised Mr. Bennett I would look after you. That doesn’t mean I’m going to clean up every mess you

make.”

Sophia froze in shock.

Her phone slipped from her hand and hit the floor.

Julian didn’t look at her again.

He closed his laptop and left with a cold expression.

He drove without any destination in mind.

When he finally stopped, he realized he had arrived at Maplewood Park, the place Vera visited most often

The park was noisy in the afternoon.

Children shouted, older people chatted, and dogs barked over one another.

Almost without thinking, Julian went inside and sat on Vera’s favorite bench.

He watched pigeons peck at the ground and children race across the grass.

To his surprise, the tension in his body slowly eased.

For five years, he had only dropped Vera off here and picked her up afterward.

He had never sat with her for even one minute.

He had always considered it a waste of time.

Now, sitting there alone, he felt a kind of peace he had never experienced before.

The plain silver band pressed against his leg from inside his pocket.

He pulled it out, stared at it, then shoved it back in with irritation.

He started to regret snapping at Sophia.

The international artist residency he wanted to secure for Vera still hadn’t been finalized.

The Bennett family’s connections were too important.

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and touched a velvet box.

Inside was a diamond pavé engagement ring, ornate and glamorous in the style Vera used to love.

Once he secured the residency through the Bennett family, he planned to propose.

He had never forgotten the important exam Vera missed because he refused to bring her admission ticket.

The guilt had stayed with him ever since.

He owed her, and he intended to make up for it with this opportunity.

Julian took a deep breath and pulled out his phone again.

He called Sophia.

The moment she answered, his voice became calm once more.

“Where are you? I’ll come find you.”