You Want Me Back? Sorry, Request Rejected Chapter 21

You Want Me Back? Sorry, Request Rejected Chapter 21

Calvin even sent a photo. It showed Rowan lying on the bed, his face abnormally flushed from his fever. His brows were tightly furrowed, and he looked like he was having an awful time.

Elise’s heart tightened. She stared at the photo for a long time. In the end, however, she forced down the worry and heartache, long-pressing on the photo to delete it.

Then, after replying to Calvin, she quit the app.

At the hospital, Calvin’s eyes darkened with anger upon receiving Elise’s first message in three days. She’d vanished for three whole days, and when she finally replied, it was with something as detached as, “I’m not a doctor. He likes chicken soup when he’s sick, so get a chef to prepare it ahead of time.”

That was it? She was heartless!

He called her, his voice tight with fury. “Elise, where are you?”

“At home.”

He ground his teeth. The maids at the marital home had been on standby for three days straight. Not once had Elise shown up.

Lies. Nothing but lies!

His anger burned hotter. “Do you even remember where your home is? Do you remember that you’re Rowan’s mother? He’s been running a high fever for three days, yet you haven’t come by once. I’ve never seen a mother as cold-blooded as you!”

“Mr. Fulton, I’m not a doctor,” Elise said calmly. “Why don’t you ask your son whether he said that he hated me and never wanted to see me again?”

Calvin frowned. “You can’t take everything a kid says at face value. Do you have any idea that his condition got worse because of you?”

Rowan’s fever had come on hard and fast. During these three days at the hospital, the doctors had tried every treatment they could think of. Every time his fever went down a little, it would spike even higher afterward.

It wasn’t until one day, when Evan came by to drop off some documents, that the truth came out—he accidentally walked in on Rowan sneaking into the bathroom to take a cold shower while everyone was asleep.

That was why the fever kept getting worse.

Calvin had wanted to demand why Rowan would pull something like that, but he’d looked so pitiful lying there on the hospital bed, his face flushed from the fever. Calvin couldn’t bring himself to be harsh with him. And even in his delirium, he kept mumbling about wanting Elise.

Sabrina had stopped Calvin and tried to calm him down. “Rowan just misses his mom. No matter what, Elise is still their mother. Even if she’s busy, she shouldn’t be ignoring the kids like this…”

Yes, this was all because of Elise. If she hadn’t gone off the rails, Rowan wouldn’t be this insecure, and he never would’ve come up with something as extreme as taking cold showers to make himself sicker on purpose.

Back at her apartment, Elise cleared the trash off her desk and forced herself to settle her emotions. “You’re right. I’m the one to blame for all of this. That’s exactly why I need to stay away from him. I don’t want him to go through more misfortune because of me.”

Calvin ran out of patience. His voice turned icy as he gave his final order. “You have one hour. Get to the hospital immediately. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to oblige if you no longer want to be Mrs. Fulton.”

Elise had schemed and clawed her way up all these years for one thing only—the title of Mrs. Fulton. He was sure she understood what he was threatening.

But all he heard was a lighthearted laugh on the other end of the line. “Sounds good. Don’t keep your precious little Sabrina waiting too long.”

Calvin’s gaze darkened. “Are you seriously picking this exact moment to get jealous over something so ridiculous?”

Work had been hectic lately, and he knew he’d been neglecting her. Back when they were in Ravenport, Sabrina had taken the initiative to look after the kids and had grown closer to them.

But he felt there were reasons for everything, and none of it justified Elise making such a scene.

“Elise, stop being unreasonable. Be smarter about this, and remember your place,” Calvin said, his eyes turning cold.

At his words, the faint flicker of guilt and worry in Elise’s chest was quickly smothered by anger. On instinct as a mother, she was genuinely worried about Rowan and wanted to rush to the hospital to see him.

But when she thought about how he and Regina had treated her, and about Calvin’s attitude toward her as well, she slowly closed her eyes.

To Rowan, she’d always been an optional presence. Whether she went to the hospital or not didn’t make any real difference. There, he had Sabrina, Calvin, and all those doctors. Any one of them taking care of him would mean more to him than she ever could.

A moment later, Elise gathered herself and steadied her voice. “Rowan doesn’t need someone as irrelevant as me looking after him. I’m not going to the hospital.”

Calvin’s roar came through the phone. “Don’t you dare!”

She ignored his outburst and ended the call without another word. With that, the suffocating weight in her chest suddenly eased.

She continued looking through the long list of unread messages, finally noticing an unfamiliar name.

S: “I want soup.”