로그인He swore I was his forever, but he stood at that altar, put a ring on another woman’s finger, and left me pregnant like I was nothing, and our baby meant nothing. I was twenty. Young, stupid, and poor enough to think love could win against his family. It couldn’t. They crushed me, and Sebastian let them. So I ran and buried the crying, broken girl who loved him and turned myself into someone colder, harder, someone who doesn’t break so easily anymore. Now I’m back after five years. Successful, untouchable, and ready to hurt him the way he hurt me. He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost, eyes full of regret, telling me he never stopped loving me, that he wants me back… and that he wants his daughter. Too bad because sorry doesn’t fix the nights I cried alone. The only thing I want from Sebastian Hale now is revenge.
더 보기NAOMI POV:
I should’ve turned around the second those elevator doors opened.“HALE INDUSTRIES.” The name hit me like a punch to the gut, carved big and arrogant into that white marble. Sixteen years of trying to forget him, and there it was, staring me right in the face like it still owned me. My stomach twisted. For a second I couldn’t breathe. I almost hit the button to go back down, but I didn’t. I stepped out instead, heels clicking on the cold floor, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. “You’re here for the contract,” I kept telling myself. “Just the contract. You’re not that scared, pregnant girl anymore.” The receptionist gave me a polite smile. “Ms. Reed? They’re ready for you.” I followed the coordinator down the hallway, palms sweaty, mouth dry. Every step felt heavier. He was in there, I could already feel it in the air. The door opened, he was standing at the window, back to me, shoulders tense like the whole city pissed him off. The second the door shut behind me, he turned around. Grey eyes. The same ones I see every morning when my daughter looks at me. Everything inside me just… stopped. My chest squeezed so tight I forgot how to breathe. He looked older, sharper, with silver starting at his temples now. His gaze locked on mine and didn’t let go. For a long, painful second, neither of us said anything. I forced myself to move. I walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down like my legs weren’t shaking. I opened my folder, looked straight at the events coordinator instead of him. “Let’s start with the budget,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. The whole meeting felt like walking on broken glass. I talked about vendors, timelines, and venue capacity while my skin buzzed and my stomach kept flipping. Sebastian barely spoke. He just sat there watching me, quiet in a way he never used to be. His eyes kept coming back to my hands every time I folded the corner of the page without thinking. That stupid old habit. I felt his stare like a touch. Memories tried to push their way in, the little café on Renner Street, his laugh, the way he used to lean across the table and say, “You’re doing it again,” in that warm voice that always made me melt. I shoved it all down.When I finally glanced at him, his grey eyes were right there, searching my face like he was looking for the girl he left behind. My heart slammed against my ribs. “The florist portfolio,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ll need it by Thursday.” “Done,” he answered quietly. Just one word. But the way he said it… it felt like so much more. Like something I didn’t want him to promise. --- The coordinator left first. I took my time packing up my stuff, trying to act normal, Calm. In control. I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. “Naomi.” His voice stopped me cold, low, and rough. Like it hurt him to say my name. I stood there with my back to him, hand on the door handle, pulse racing. The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. Part of me wanted to turn around. The smarter part of me walked out. --- Inside the elevator, I stared at my reflection and whispered, “You’re okay. You did fine.” My hands were still steady. My face looked put together.Then my phone buzzed, unknown number. I opened the message and froze. Text: “He didn’t just find you today. He’s been watching you and your daughter for over a year. Ask him why he really brought you back.” The elevator doors opened into the busy lobby, but I couldn’t move. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. That quiet “done.” Those grey eyes, the way he said my name like he’d been carrying it around for years. What the hell had I just walked into?Sebastian’s ex-wife told me he was already somewhere else on their wedding day. I sat with that for a long time. Not because it reopened the wound, I’d carried that one long enough, but for the strange, complicated grace of finally seeing the full picture. The edges fit in a way that hurt and soothes them at the same time.For years I had turned Claire into a symbol. The woman at the altar. The ring on her finger. The society photographs I’d closed on my phone and never reopened. She had been the face I pasted over the thing that broke me, because the thing itself—Victor, the machinery, the forged signature, the sixteen years, was too vast and faceless to hate with any precision.But she knew, on her own wedding day, that her husband was already somewhere else. That was not the life of a woman who had won. I called Sebastian that evening. My thumb hovered over his name longer than it should have.He answered on the second ring. “Hey.”“Claire sent me a message,” I said, voice steadi
I kissed him, and the world did not end. It kept turning with this strange, almost mocking calm, and I needed a minute, just one, to sit with the fact that something so enormous could feel so... quiet.Wednesday morning I lay in bed for four full minutes and did nothing but exist inside what had happened.No analysis or contingency plans. No calculating how this might blow up in my face later. Just the warmth of my sheets and the low hum in my chest that said irreversible and, for once, made irreversible feel like relief instead of ruin.Then I got up, made coffee, and went to work.I didn’t spiral, I didn’t pull back. The questions I’d been asking for six months had finally run out of road. I kissed him. He kissed me back. We greeted each other in that corridor like two people stunned by what they’d found. I decided it was good and went to work. I told Jade at lunch.I’d called about something work-related, but she’d been reading me for twenty-four years. She caught it in the first
He said he was proud of me, and something inside my chest cracked open. I cried in the bathroom for two straight minutes—silent, shoulders shaking, the kind of tears that come from a place you’ve kept locked for years. Then I splashed water on my face, stared at the stranger in the mirror with red-rimmed eyes, and walked back out like nothing had happened. He didn’t need to know. He already did.He had made tea while I was gone. Moved through my kitchen with that quiet confidence, like the space had quietly become his too.He found the cups without asking, and knew exactly where the tea bags lived. When I stepped back in, he looked up and read my face the way he always did, seeing everything I tried to hide. He handed me the cup without a word about the redness around my eyes. That was the right thing. We both knew it.We talked for another hour about smaller things. A supplier issue I’d been juggling. The board meeting he’d chaired where three grown men had wasted forty-five minute
Sixteen years of everything, and it came down to a sixteen-year-old girl deciding who she was in two words. I had never been more proud of her.Saturday's dinner was exactly what he said it would be.A restaurant I had never been to — his choice.It was good. Warm and unhurried, somewhere that felt chosen rather than convenient. He wore a jacket. He stood when I arrived.He always did that.I had stopped pretending I didn't notice.We talked for three hours straight, and for the first time in longer than I could track, none of it was about the year. Not Victor, not Diana, not legal proceedings or the accumulated wreckage of everything that had come before. We talked about his plans for the company now that it was genuinely his. About a book I had read and what I thought of the ending. About a film argument Isla had apparently been conducting with him by text for four days and showed no intention of dropping."She's winning," I said."Not yet." He said it with particular confidence. "
A stranger handed me the truth I’d spent sixteen years pretending I didn’t need.I didn’t call Ethan that day. I drove home with his words sitting right there beside me, pressing against my ribs like something alive and restless. My hands stayed steady on the wheel, but my heart was pounding in my
Sebastian Hale hadn’t just found me. He’d been watching my company grow for over a year, making sure I would come back, and I walked right into his trap like it was the best business decision I’d ever made.I checked it the next morning.It took forty minutes, one old contact at a corporate filing
Sebastian’s wife knew my name. That single fact hit me like a bucket of ice water straight down my back. She didn’t just know my name, she knew exactly what her husband had done to me all those years ago. My legs kept walking anyway, carrying me down the sidewalk while my stomach twisted into a ti
I’d spent sixteen years making damn sure Sebastian Hale would never find me, and now someone was helping him look.That thought ate at me all night. I sat at the kitchen table until after midnight, eyes stinging from the laptop screen. The blurry photo of that guy in the dark jacket stared back at
Welcome to GoodNovel world of fiction. If you like this novel, or you are an idealist hoping to explore a perfect world, and also want to become an original novel author online to increase income, you can join our family to read or create various types of books, such as romance novel, epic reading, werewolf novel, fantasy novel, history novel and so on. If you are a reader, high quality novels can be selected here. If you are an author, you can obtain more inspiration from others to create more brilliant works, what's more, your works on our platform will catch more attention and win more admiration from readers.
리뷰