SOLD to My Ex: A Forbidden Service Contract - Chapter 8

I still pressed the elevator button.

The doors slowly closed, and that madman who had just offered to “add money and kneel” stood outside, his eyes like embers submerged in black fog.

But he didn’t follow me after all. I subconsciously waited for a second, two seconds, three seconds.

He didn’t come, even when the elevator reached the bottom.

I leaned against the elevator wall, my knuckles white, my throat tight.

What was that all about? Didn’t he say he was going to kneel? Didn’t he say the relationship would come with an imprisonment clause?

But in the end, I was the one who left alone… just like three years ago.

I was silent the whole taxi ride, the city lights outside blurring the windows, but I was lost in thought.

Every neon light was like his eyes: bright, but not warm enough; close, but never truly near.

I suddenly felt like laughing, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from turning red. He was a madman, yes, but I just couldn’t help but have a soft spot for him.

But this time, I had to resist. I couldn’t be the one who cried and went back to him again.

I had to be the one who could save myself.

I returned to my rental apartment, kicked the door open to vent my emotions. The room was just as I had left it:

cracked walls, yellowed fluorescent lights, a window that never closed properly, and a half-finished cup of instant coffee on the corner of the table, like my half-baked life.

I threw my phone on the bed and turned it off, wanting to disappear completely.

I wasn’t playing missing; I was just tired.

I slept for a whole day. When I woke up, I was burning up, my throat so dry I couldn’t speak.

I turned on my phone. No messages.

I laughed at myself. Wasn’t he frantically looking for me? Didn’t he want a “relationship with an imprisonment clause”?

So why wasn’t there even a single phone call now? I sat on the edge of the bed and looked through old photos.

It was a picture of us from college. The sunlight was slanting across his face. The Zhou Yan back then… was even sillier than he is now.

He would rush back to the dorm when I had a cold, carrying a bag of hot soy milk, without even catching his breath on the stairs.

He would hold me in the middle of the night and say, “Don’t overthink it, I’m here.”

But now, where was he?

I turned off my phone and went off the grid again.