Chapter 25
On the way back with Jason, Grace suddenly said, “Jay, do you know Sean?”
“The president of the Stevens Group?” he asked.
“You know him too then. Yes, he’s the guy who’s been in the news recently. Well, I suppose it’s more Page Six gossip than anything really newsworthy. He’s the groom in the marriage. between the Stevens family and Atkinson family, and… he’s also…” she paused and hesitated for a moment before saying, “my ex-boyfriend.”
Jason also stopped walking and stood quietly by Grace’s side, looking at her.
Perhaps some words or some emotions had been bottled up in her heart for too long, so she could not help but want to spit
them out.
“Don’t you think it is incredible that someone like me was once that person’s girlfriend?” She laughed bitterly. “At that time, I was still a new lawyer who had just graduated, and I thought that he and I would get married. But then there was the accident. I swear to God, I wasn’t drinking. I rarely drink and when I do, I never drive! Then they charged me with vehicular manslaughter. Sean broke up with me. I got sentenced to three years, I supposed I was fortunate to get out in three years for good behavior…”
“What was it like being in jail?”
She paused for a while and did not continue to talk about the nightmare-like situation in the prison. She shook her head. “I … can’t.”
Jason regretted asking. He watched her flex and curl her
fingers, and knowing what had happened all those years ago, he could see the scars. The bones that broke that hadn’t been set correctly. Her joints were swollen.
“Forget it. It’s nothing. It’s all in the past.” She tried to smile for him and failed miserably
Jason pursed his lips. She hadn’t told him what transpired while she’d been incarcerated, but the information on her that Terrence unearthed had made everything clear.
When he was looking at those documents, he had not felt anything. He’d read and processed the accounts as if he were looking at data on a quarterly accounting statement.
But to hear her talk about it-or more appropriately, be incapable of talking about it, of dredging up those memories… it had something tightening in his chest.
Did he feel sorry about what she had experienced? When had he, Jason, ever been sad about a woman?
She took a deep breath and continued, “From then on, I told myself not to trust the so-called love between a man and a
woman. A person can love you one day, but tomorrow, you can be thrown away like garbage.”
She punctuated the sentence by kicking a pebble into the street.
“I wouldn’t throw you away,” he suddenly said.
She unexpectedly smiled. “I know, Jay.”
She paused and continued more cheerfully. “So now I don’t think about dating, and I don’t think about who I’m going to marry or have children with. For me, these are unattainable things. So why waste time dwelling on them?”
He frowned as if he did not like her words.
“It’s just like looking at that advertisement.” She pointed to a big projection ad not far away. “This ad was put up by Sean for Lily. It’s great PR, right? The charming couple, the perfect quote about foregoing ninety-nine lives to wait for one lifetime together. It’s very romantic, isn’t it?”
Jason made a noncommittal sound.
“But it’s nonsense. No one really means those things.” She laughed. “I wonder how Lily would feel if she knew that Sean had said those same words to me. So you see, whether to love someone or change a lover, that’s also very easy.”
Jason studied the ad. It was a striking picture and a total publicity campaign by both families to drive up their stock values.
Jason looked at the slender woman in front of him. On her face, there was a kind of calm resignation that came from a withered heart. It was as if she had already seen through everything, and there was nothing else that could stir her heart now.
His chest tightened. What about him?
He raised his hand and covered her eyes, which were fixed on the billboard. “Sister, if you don’t like this ad, how about getting it removed tomorrow?”
