CEO Ex-Husband, Don't Bother Me-Chapter 32: Feeling Sorry for Him (2)

"Who is it?"

After a moment, a groggy voice that sounded like someone woken from sleep came from behind the door. He finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"It’s me! Just checking if you were back. Go back to sleep!"

Just as he turned to leave, the door opened from inside. Naomi stood leaning against the doorframe, one hand rubbing her forehead and the other supporting herself. Her white bathrobe had slipped halfway down her shoulders, exposing far too much skin, though she seemed completely unaware.

Julian frowned slightly at the sight of her, especially when he detected the faint smell of alcohol in her breath. His face immediately turned cold.

"Have you been drinking?"

"Mmm, I finished the rest of your red wine!"

She was honest about it, tilting her little face up with a giggle. Julian glared at her irritably.

"Was it good?"

She immediately pouted with a pitiful expression, rubbing her forehead and shaking her head.

"No, it wasn’t. Ugh, my head hurts so much..."

"Go to bed. We have to get up early tomorrow to catch the flight!"

Just as he turned to leave, she suddenly hugged him from behind.

"Julian!"

Naomi didn’t know where she found the courage to make such a gesture. Seeing the loneliness in his eyes, and remembering what she had witnessed earlier in the hallway, she suddenly felt such compassion for him.

After returning from the restaurant, she had felt dizzy and gone straight to sleep. When she woke up, she took a shower, but found the hair dryer was broken, so she called the front desk for a replacement. When the service staff brought her the hair dryer, she glanced at the tightly closed door across the hall, wondering if he had returned.

Shortly after, she heard the sound of a door opening. Peering out, she saw that man with his arm around Juliet, entering the room together. They hadn’t come out for a long time, and what they were doing inside was obvious. Her only reaction then was heartache—deep, painful heartache for Julian.

But he probably didn’t know what the woman he loved so deeply was doing, right? If she told him what she had just seen, he probably wouldn’t believe her, would he?

She didn’t know how to express the mixture of compassion and bitterness she felt. She just held him tightly and whispered from behind.

"Don’t go..."

She felt so sorry for him. She wanted to love him so badly.

Love is a contest of who softens first. She had softened first, felt compassion for him first, so she had lost—lost completely and utterly.

"Naomi, you’re drunk!"

He had promised himself not to get entangled with her again. That night of losing control had already left him unable to face her.

"Julian, please don’t be so unhappy. Let me be your woman, let me love you, okay?"

Naomi murmured, pressing against his back. Though she had been drinking, her mind was clear now. She was only borrowing courage from the alcohol to throw herself at him like this, to say such bold words about becoming his woman, to confess her sincere wish to love him properly.

Her gentle words struck Julian’s painful spot, reminding him of Juliet who had abandoned him. He abruptly turned around and pushed her away, his eyes blazing with anger.

"Naomi Shaw, don’t use that pitying, merciful tone with me! Who do you think you are? Some kind of savior?"

"I’m not. I’m nothing special. I just want to love you properly!"

"You want to love me properly? Fine, then prove you mean it!"

Originally, he hadn’t wanted to hold her back, but since she insisted on staying with him, he saw no reason to consider her feelings anymore.

"Prove it?"

Naomi looked at him with confusion. Her heart was already sincere—what more proof did he need?

"Julian, is this what you meant by proof?"

"Naomi Shaw, I’ll ask you one last time—are you sure you want to do this?"

She said nothing, just closed her eyes and nodded slightly. She had heard all about him, both good and bad, and she was willingly getting in too deep. There was no promised future, no one to give her their blessing, yet she wanted to embrace it bravely.

Love at first sight is often blind and stubborn. Perhaps one day, after she moves past this relationship and looks back, she’ll realize there wasn’t much about him worth loving after all.

"You’d better not regret this!"

He wanted to punish her for her presumptuous pity, to make her taste what pain felt like.

When Naomi woke up feeling sore all over, she found it was already high noon. Shocked, she sat up immediately. He had said yesterday that she had a morning flight back to Thailos—why hadn’t he woken her?

She had truly... stepped onto a path of no return. She sighed and buried her head in the snow-white blankets.

When Julian opened the door, he found her in that ostrich-like position with her head buried in the blankets. A cold smile tugged at his lips as he walked up to her, standing tall and looking down at her.

"Having regrets?"

Naomi lifted her head from the blankets and looked up at his impassive face. Despite the passionate intimacy they had shared the night before, there wasn’t a trace of warmth in his eyes as he looked at her. She concealed the bitterness in her own eyes and shook her head.

"No, I don’t..."

Being his woman stirred many complex emotions in her heart, but regret wasn’t one of them.

"Good!"

Julian snorted coldly and turned to sit in the chair by the window.

"Get up then. Get ready to visit your father at the hospital and then return to Thailos!"

Sean Donovan was away on an overseas business trip today, which was why he had agreed to let her visit Ian Shaw in the hospital. He would never allow Sean to find out about her. Whatever the Donovan family valued most, he was determined to take it away.

He had initially planned to wake her this morning and see her off at the airport, but remembering how he had kept her up until midnight, he’d abandoned the idea and let her sleep until she woke naturally.

Hearing this, Naomi quickly asked, "How did my father’s surgery go?"

Ian Shaw was supposed to have surgery this morning, and she had missed it by oversleeping instead of returning to Thailos.

Julian looked at her, remembering Ian Shaw’s repeated instructions, and finally said just two words: "Pretty well."

Actually, he didn’t approve of Ian hiding things from her. He believed that some pain, when experienced earlier, would make one’s heart tougher.

She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Watching her clutching the blanket with her shoulders slightly exposed, he smiled without any warmth.

"Would you prefer your father to know about our relationship? Or would you rather keep it from him?"

"No! Don’t let him know about us!"

She emotionally chose to refuse. His smile grew colder.

"I think it’s better not to let him know too. He would be so heartbroken—such a beautiful young woman, becoming a man’s mistress!"

Since she had made this decision, he wanted her to know how terribly wrong it was.

"What are you looking for?"

"I..."

Naomi, half-crouched, looked up at him, biting her lip hesitantly for a moment before saying softly, "I want to find something to cover myself..."

Julian pulled her up into his arms and bent down to bite her small earlobe, his voice already tinged with desire. "We’ll buy something at the mall downstairs later."

When he finished speaking, Naomi breathed heavily as she weakly pushed against him. "Julian, don’t we need to go see my father?"

"There’s no rush..."

When Naomi, fully dressed, appeared with Julian at the women’s clothing boutique on the hotel’s ground floor, it was more than an hour later. The female sales assistant glanced at the marks on her neck with a knowing smile, making her blush furiously as she grabbed a collared shirt similar to her usual style and headed to the checkout.

Julian stopped her and pointed to a very feminine dress hanging on the wall, gesturing for her to try it on. She glanced at the dress—a collared one-piece that would hide the marks on her body, but the style was too provocative for her taste. She frowned and said quietly, "The style is too—"