The Day I Heard His Thoughts I Stopped Loving Him Chapter 02

The Day I Heard His Thoughts I Stopped Loving Him Chapter 02

By the time I got home, my mother’s face was etched with worry.

She toweled off my hair while fussing nonstop. “Oh my God, honey, look at you! You’re soaked. Completely soaked. Where was Julian? Doesn’t he walk you home every day?”

“Jesus, your lips are practically white. Your father’s still overseas wrapping up that deal. If he saw this, he’d be on the first flight back, no question.”

“Mom.” I cut her off, my gaze lowered and my voice hoarse. “I just want to go to my room and sleep for a bit.”

Her eyes lingered on my face for a moment before she turned toward the kitchen. “Mrs. Miller! Chicken noodle soup, please, right away. I’ll bring it up to her.”

My mother didn’t press me any further. She simply went into the kitchen to instruct the housekeeper.

I changed into dry clothes and headed upstairs. The moment I shut my bedroom door, all the noise from the outside world was sealed away.

But the images from the afternoon replayed in my mind with relentless clarity. I remembered the faint, almost tender smile that tugged at the corner of Julian’s lips when he looked at Olivia. Then I thought about the way he looked at me, full of impatience and barely veiled disdain.

At that moment, I knew for certain that the voices I’d heard in my head weren’t some kind of hallucination.

It turned out that aside from using me, the only thing Julian Vance felt for me was loathing.

After all these years, I had assumed he was simply cold by nature, that he treated everyone with that same icy detachment. I didn’t see the truth until today. He wasn’t incapable of expressing warmth. He just hated me.

In the quiet of my room, my phone suddenly rang. The screen lit up with Julian’s name.

The second I answered, his voice came through like an accusation. “Nora, did you go home and run your mouth? It was pouring. All I did was walk Olivia home. You seriously ran crying to my dad over that?”

I could hear his breathing on the other end, fast, ragged, and uneven. I rarely ever heard him lose his composure like this.

“Julian.” My voice stayed perfectly level. “Did you call just to interrogate me? Or do you seriously think your dad wouldn‘t have found out if my family just kept quiet?”

Julian fell silent for a beat. Whatever ability I had to read his thoughts seemed to cut out over the phone line, but I could still picture the annoyed look on his face with perfect clarity.

Finally, he spoke, his tone icy. “Couldn’t you just… I don’t know… help me out here? Explain things? This is just you being petty. Deliberately trying to…”

I drew a sharp breath and cut him off mid-sentence. “Julian, why the hell should I cover for you after what you did?”

The line went dead quiet.

I let out a cold laugh. “You think your dad heard it from me? Julian, you know exactly how many people he’s got planted around us. Watching everything.”

“And let’s be honest, nobody knows better than him exactly how many projects my family has thrown the Vance family over the years.”

A muffled thud sounded on the other end of the line.

Julian’s voice came through clenched teeth. “Are you done?!”

“What?” I pressed on. “If I don’t say it, does that mean it never happened?”

I had kept quiet about certain things for years, but that didn’t mean I was blind to them.

The Vance family was large and sprawling, with no shortage of heirs. Julian had started out as the most taciturn and unremarkable one among them.

Meanwhile, the Ashford family had been entrenched in Springfield for three generations. I was the only daughter, the sole heir to the entire conglomerate.

My parents doted on me, and that affection naturally extended to my childhood playmate, Julian. Because of that, Vance Enterprises, which had teetered on the edge of bankruptcy more than once, not only paid off its debts but also secured countless resources and lucrative contracts.

Riding on the coattails of the Ashford name, Julian gradually began to earn his family’s regard.

There was a long, weighted silence on the line, as if he was carefully weighing his options.

After a long pause, Julian finally spoke in a low, measured voice. “Nora, I’m not gonna call you for a while. You need to take a good, hard look at yourself.”

His tone carried that same maddening arrogance, like he knew he could get away with anything.

Before I could even get a word out, the call disconnected.