As the hours ticked by, Grace worried that something had happened to Jay. He didn’t have a mobile phone so she couldn’t even make a phone call to contact him.
Maybe he’d already moved on, and her whole vision of a sibling and having some semblance of a family was just a pipe dream.
Grace went outside and walked to the entrance of the residential community. She kept looking around, hoping to see some sign go him.
After God-knows how long, she finally saw a familiar figure walking towards her.
“Jay!” Seeing him approach, she finally heaved a sigh of relief.
Jay eyed the figure that was rushing towards him and could not help but be slightly startled.
He looked at her as she ran over to him. She was panting slightly, her face completely red from the cold, and yet her pretty eyes were bright.
“Great, you’re finally back,” she said.
“Sister, are you… waiting for me?” He gently touched her cheek, and the coldness seeped into his fingertips. It seemed that she had been waiting outside for a long time.
“Yes, I was so worried because you hadn’t come back yet and it’s late. Fortunately, you’ve come back safely,” she said with a smile.
He rolled his eyes slightly. She was worried about Jay-the-homeless-man instead of Jason from the Reed Conglomeration. However, if she found out that he was that Jason in the future, would she still worry about him so much?
Not likely.
Raising the corner of his mouth, he said, “I was working.” He made up some job about handing out flyers.
She nodded.
“Your hands are cold. I’ll help you warm them up.” As he said this, he held her cold hands in his palms. Taking the same action as she did last time, he rubbed the backs of her hands with his palms.
Grace felt her hands gradually warm up. It was such a cold day, but… it felt so warm.
“Jay, it’s so good to have you home,” she muttered in a low voice.
His lips curved into a smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. I hope you won’t regret saying that in the future.”
“I won’t regret it,” she said. “Well, my hands are warm now. Let’s go back to the house and I’ll heat up the food.” She pulled him into the complex and did not notice a black car parking at the corner of the street just outside.
Meanwhile, in the car, Terrence couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Mr. Reed must have just been… warming the hands of a woman…
He had never seen Mr. Reed do this to any woman. Even Jennifer Atkinson, who had once been Mr. Reed’s fiancee, had never been treated this way.
But now, Mr. Reed was doing this to Grace. The same woman who was the cause of Jennifer Atkinson’s car accident!
It made no sense.
Recalling the scene of Mr. Reed going to the club and picking up the drunk Grace at the door, Terrence felt that his brain was not working properly.
What was going on in Mr. Reed’s mind? Had Grace taken up space in his heart?
Surely not.
But as he stared at the couple across the parking lot, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes, he couldn’t help but wonder if this unlikely situation was real or if he’d imagined it.
The next day, at Reed headquarters, when Terrence reported on Jason’s schedule and work, his gaze could not help but turn to Jason’s hands.
Jason’s fingers were long and slender. Terrence would even go so far as to say his boss’s hands were beautiful and that was saying something because he didn’t think of hands or men in that way. Terrence had seen this pair of hands choking someone without mercy, almost taking that person’s life. Mr. Reed didn’t care about getting his hands bloody, and the thought of it could make people shiver and give them goosebumps.
However, he had never seen this pair of hands being used to keep another person’s hands warm, let alone those of a woman who had been locked up in prison.
“What’s wrong with my hands?” Jason’s voice suddenly sounded in Terrence’s ears.
“Ah, nothing.” Terrence came to his senses and quickly turned his eyes away. He handed an invitation card to Jason. “This is the invitation. In two weeks, Lily and Sean Stevens will get officially engaged. Chairman Stevens hopes that you can join.”
“Engagement?” Jason glanced at the card.
Of course, he understood the intentions of the families in sending this invitation. After all, Jennifer Atkinson, the eldest daughter of the Atkinson family, had once been his fiancee. They wanted to see his attitude. “Then let’s go and have a look.”
In the afternoon, Terrence accompanied Jason to a private hospital in the city. Terrence stood outside the ward. Jason pushed open the door and walked in slowly.
The old man in the ward had once dominated the world. He’d built the Reed empire and it was his efforts that grew his family’s fortunes. But his only son had run away from home for a woman.
Many years later, the only two things that would come back to the Reed family were a handful of ashes and a child.
Jason looked at the old man in the hospital bed. This man, who deserved to be called his grandfather, was dressed in a hospital gown with a needle in the back of his hand. His body was getting weaker and weaker day by day, and he looked thin. Frail.
Mr. Reed looked at his only grandson and said, “You’re here.”
“Yes, I’m here,” Jason said.
The grandfather and grandson quietly faced each other. The two of them seemed to be extremely familiar with this kind of silence.
After a long while, Mr. Reed spoke. “I heard from my secretary that the Stevens family and the Atkinson family are going to join forces through marriage?” Even during the old man’s hospitalization, his secretary would still report to him every day.
“They’re getting engaged in two weeks, and they’ve already sent us the invitation,” Jason said.
“You’re going?”
“Why shouldn’t I go?” he asked back.
Mr. Reed stared at the grandson in front of him. After a long time, he suddenly laughed and said, “Good, good, you’re not like your father.”
Since the death of Jennifer Atkinson, his grandson had not been in contact with any woman for years. Mr. Reed had once worried that his grandson would turn out to be like his son, who had been deeply trapped in his love for a woman.
He thought perhaps Jason would avoid any reminders of his pain. Or he might resent the Stevens Family since Sean’s girlfriend had been the one to crash into the car and kill Jason’s fiancee, but Jason seemed calm and collected about everything.
Jason naturally understood what Mr. Reed meant by saying ‘You’re not like your father’. He replied, “No, I am not him, and neither will I be like him.”
Mr. Reed grabbed hold of Jason’s wrist. His wrinkled old fingers seemed to have used up all of their strength. “Remember what you have said today. Do not act like him. If he was willing to listen to me back then, he would not have…”
Mr. Reed gritted his teeth. His fingernails sank into Jason’s wrist, producing deep red marks.
Jason acted as if he could not feel the pain at all and a mocking smile slowly rose from the corners of his lips. He would never give up everything for a woman. He was not his father. He would never do something like groveling at her feet until there was nothing left of him.
