Chapter 2

Zayn subconsciously gave me a glance.

I smiled and said, "Go ahead. I'll take a taxi home myself."

With that, I swiftly got out of the car.

Even though I knew his gaze lingered on me, I didn't turn my head back once.

As soon as I got home, I received a text from Zayn.

He said he would come home early tonight.

He told me to wait for him because he had something to say to me.

I didn’t know what he wanted to tell me.

But I knew he wouldn’t be home.

Sure enough, as I expected, Zayn didn't come home all night.

I was used to it.

Truth be told, before Candace returned to the country, Zayn and I had our moments of sweetness.

Back then, he hadn’t yet developed the "directionally-challenged syndrome".

Every weekend, he would take me to various popular spots for photos.

He would also take me around to try all the snacks I wanted to eat.

Knowing that I liked fairy tales, he specifically chose Disneyland as the place to propose to me.

In front of a crowd, he held up a diamond ring and declared loudly, "It doesn't matter how lively or glamorous this city is; without you, it just feels like an empty city to me. Without you, there is no home. Shirley Anderson, will you give me a home?"

I was so moved that I agreed to his proposal without any hesitation.

He happily hugged me and spun me around.

He vowed loudly, "I, Zayn Smith, will only love Shirley Anderson for the rest of my life. She's the only woman I will be good to. I hope she'll bother me for the rest of her life."

Never could I have imagined back then that "the rest of his life" only lasted a few short years.

I already knew he had a childhood friend before we got married.

But at the time, he told me that Candace had settled abroad and would probably never come back.

He said he saw her as just a little sister.

But to my surprise, Candace suddenly returned to the country not long after we got married and became my coworker with Zayn's help.

And he suddenly had difficulty finding his way home.

When I questioned him, he said, "Do you think I want to suddenly become directionally-challenged? I only developed this rare condition because you're always being so unreasonable, which causes me a lot of mental stress.

"Candace needed a job after returning to the country. Of course I would help her in any way I could.

"Shirley, you're a university lecturer. Can you not be so narrow-minded? There can be pure friendship between men and women, you know?

"Just because you don't have a childhood friend, I can't have one?

"Shirley, if I had known you were such a jealous woman, I wouldn't have married you."

If I had decisively left him when he said those things to me, perhaps I could have avoided many unhappy things that would later happen.

However, no one could turn back time.

But that's okay. After experiencing pain and heartache again and again, it wouldn't hurt so much when the time came to leave him.

I was just gradually detaching myself while waiting for an opportunity to sever the relationship.

To my surprise, that opportunity came really soon.

That day, I was teaching as usual.

Suddenly, a large group of reporters rushed into the lecture room with cameras, snapping photos of me.

"Are you Ms. Shirley Anderson?"

I nodded with a frown, then sternly yelled at the reporters, "Who are you? I'm teaching right now. Please leave!"

However, not only did the reporters not leave, they shoved their microphones in my face.

"Ms. Anderson, do you have anything to say about your academic fraud and plagiarism?"

"Did you refrain from participating in the recent professor selection because you felt guilty?"

"Do your students know that their lecturer committed academic fraud?"