No Return Ticket for Our Lost Love Chapter 08

No Return Ticket for Our Lost Love Chapter 08

Two weeks after moving to Eastgrove, in the dead of night, my phone rang.

It was Matthew.

“Hannah, I’m at the Eastgrove train station.”

I froze for a second, my fingers tightening around the glass in my hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I delayed my Alpha ascension ceremony,” he said, his words running together with a kind of reckless, desperate fervor. “I applied to Eastgrove University. The faculty advisor just accepted me.”

“I’ve thought it through. Before, you were the one killing yourself to close the distance between us. Now, it’s my turn to walk toward you.”

“Even if you refuse to see me, I’m staying in Eastgrove. At least I’ll be close to you.”

Standing by the window, looking out at the unfamiliar city, I found the whole thing utterly absurd.

“Matthew, you don’t need to throw away your status as Alpha heir for me.”

“I didn’t throw it away for you—I did it for myself!” he interrupted frantically. “Once you left, Southerland didn’t have a single thing left keeping me there. Hannah, I don’t care about any of it anymore. I just want—”

“Stop,” I cut him off, completely dynamic-less to his grand declaration of love.

“Delaying your ceremony and applying to Eastgrove University was a personal choice you made after weighing your own pros and cons.”

“Don’t pin the ruin of your future on my head, and don’t expect me to soften just because you’ve decided to burn your bridges.”

“I don’t need your sacrifices, and I sure as hell am not going to carry any more of your emotional baggage.”

The other end of the line dropped into a deathly, suffocating silence. All I could hear was the heavy, ragged sound of his breathing.

“I have to get up early for work tomorrow. Don’t call me again.”

I prepared to end the call without a shred of hesitation.

“Hannah!”

Matthew’s voice suddenly took on a stubborn, unyielding edge. “You can ignore me all you want, but you can’t stop me from staying in this city!”

I didn’t bother listening to the rest. I hung up and immediately blocked the number.

The next second, however, the dark screen illuminated again.

Unknown: [This is my new number. I found an apartment. It’s on the exact same block as your office building.]

I blocked that one, too, and wiped my inbox clean.

For the next three months, Matthew somehow kept sourcing new numbers, treating my phone like a one-way confessional. Every single day, mundane, hollow messages would pop up on my screen right on schedule.

Unknown: [The banyan trees at Eastgrove University are really beautiful.]

Unknown: [The food at the dining hall here runs a bit sweet. I think you’d like it.]

Unknown: [I mapped out the bus route to your office. It’s four stops. Fifteen minutes.]

I never replied to a single one.

Until one evening.

The moment I stepped through the revolving doors of my office building, my footsteps ground to a halt.

Matthew was sitting on the concrete planter across the street. The late autumn wind in Eastgrove was biting, yet he wore nothing but a thin dress shirt, his eyes locked onto the main exit of the building like a vice.

The exact second he spotted me, he bolted upright, crossing the street in seconds until he was standing right in front of me.

“You’re off work?”

He held out a steaming paper bowl, his eyes swimming with a fragile, desperate desire to please. “Beef stew from the place on the corner. It just came out of the pot. It’s still hot.”

I looked at his knuckles, raw and reddened from the biting cold. I stood frozen in place, making no move to take the bowl.

“You don’t need to come here anymore,” I said.

His arm went rigid mid-air, the fragile smile on his lips stiffening before slowly draining away. After a long, agonizing beat, his hand slumped to his side.

“I know you don’t want to see me right now. But I just… I want to do something for you. I owed you too much in the past.”

“Do you honestly think what you’re doing right now is making amends?”

I looked him dead in the eye, mercilessly ripping away his facade.

“Matthew, standing here acting all small and pathetic doesn’t make you any different from the person who took my devotion for granted for four years.”

“Throwing away your pack inheritance and freezing in the cold for me is just a selfish way to drown out your own guilt.”

“You’re still the same arrogant Alpha. You only do what you want to do, putting on this masochistic performance just to move yourself to tears.”

“From the very beginning, did you ever once stop to ask me if this was what I wanted?”

The color drained from his face instantly, leaving him entirely speechless. He couldn’t find a single word to fire back.

I snatched the paper bowl from his hand, turned around, and hurled it straight into the trash can.

The hot broth splattered violently against the plastic.

“Stop putting on a show to comfort yourself. It’s pathetic.”

With that, I turned on my heel and walked away without looking back.

Behind me, a faint, breathless whisper of my name cut through the air, only to be instantly swallowed by the roaring rush hour traffic.

After that day, Matthew completely vanished from Eastgrove.

For seven consecutive days, no strange numbers texted my phone, and the concrete planter across from my office remained entirely vacant.

Then, on the afternoon of the eighth day, my silent phone suddenly buzzed with a text message.