With them out of the way, he lifted his shell-shocked wife onto the bed. Holding her in a gentle embrace while she remained stiff in his arms, like a broken doll. A simple spell cleaned up the mess from her hands and himself. Whatever she was experiencing now, he would see her through it and make sure she was well again before the day was over. He held her close, cradled in his lap like a terrified child, and rocked her back and forth in a soothing motion.
Li Meirong was caught in a painful past-life memory. She had walked in on her boyfriend cheating on her. Back then, she was the one barging in through the door to his apartment, and had been the one forced to witness another woman in the same position as she going down on her man.
The confusion, the shock, the disbelief, were all too present in her mind. Despite the different circumstances, the similarities shook her to the core and her mind was in complete chaos.
Was she that girl now? It wasn't the same…
No matter how she tried to convince herself this was different, her past humiliation overpowered her and though she fought hard to hold them in, tears of old anger and pain began to trickle down her face.
Slowly, Zhu Qingyue's repetitive soothing took effect. When Li Meirong finally looked up at him, she was surprised to find so much warmth and gentleness reflected back at her. Just as she did the first night they spent together, she felt strangely safe in his arms. But then, the next thing he did after that was leave her alone in the Thousand Beasts forest...
She was so afraid to trust again. Zhu Qingyue seemed to care for her, truly. But so had everyone else who ended up breaking her spirit in the past. How could she know for sure he would stay with her, be what she needed him to be? This whole relationship was already far exceeding any expectations she'd ever had from it. She had been wrong about him so many times, she didn't know what to think anymore.
She was so exhausted of trying to maintain her carefully constructed barriers whenever it came to the opposite sex, something inside her was urging her to believe in him, to let him in.
She rubbed away the tears aggressively with the back of her hand, frustrated with herself.