Before I could finish, Chu Ke Huan pulled me into his arms. “I won’t let you wake up,” he said firmly. “I’ll tell you some good news right now, and then I’ll take you away. Even if you don’t want to run, I’ll steal you away.”
What? Could he really mean…?
“Wait, you…” I tried to pull away, but he held me tighter, leaving me trembling against his chest. “What… what’s your decision?”
“Tonight, I’ll tell Zi Yuan everything,” he said calmly.
“But you’ve already taken your wedding photos, every detail of the wedding is planned, and everyone knows you’re getting married in three months. Now, suddenly…”
“Don’t think about it,” he whispered, stroking my hair gently by my ear. “That’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Zi Yuan relies on you so much, and her family trusts you completely…” I shook my head, recalling the sound of Gao Zi Yuan’s tearful voice when she called me that day. The more I thought about it, the worse it felt.
“Right now, just focus on this,” he said softly. “Think about the night we met again. When you left early, and I chased after you from the restaurant—think about how you felt when you turned around and saw me.” He kissed my forehead tenderly, still holding me close. “Does it feel any better?”
“No. At that moment, I hated you more than anything,” I choked out.
Chu Ke Huan laughed lightly and continued, “Then think about it some more. Think about every time you ran away and every time you looked back. Ask yourself—wasn’t I always there?”
I followed his words, letting my memories flow like scenes from a film. Chu Ke Huan, the man before me, was right—he had always been there.
“Do you feel a bit more grounded now?” he asked.
“Every time, I thought that if I managed to shake you off, you wouldn’t come after me again…” I sniffled, my vision blurring as I questioned him, “Why did you keep chasing me? Chu Ke Huan, if you hadn’t chased me, you could have had a perfect life...”
“Because I’m not perfect.” He gently cupped my face, forcing me to meet his gaze. In his eyes, I saw raw honesty. “I’m not perfect, and I don’t deserve a perfect life. But because I’m not perfect, I need you to make me whole. You give me the courage to make real choices. Zhou Weiwei, will you come with me?”
He says he’s not perfect. And how could I be? I’m cruel and selfish.
If one day, we truly belonged to each other, would we stop striving for perfection? Would we finally be free to unapologetically be our flawed, unvarnished selves?
“Was that last question a plea?”
“No.” His answer was immediate. Chu Ke Huan leaned down, kissing me with unyielding force. “It’s a command.”
The flashes of memory that had haunted me became a sedative, pulling me back into this dangerously sweet dream, surrendering and intoxicated.
“I will,” I answered firmly. “I’ll end things with Hao Yi. It’ll hurt, but I hope we both find peace.”
“I’ll delete the messages. Zi Yuan won’t connect our breakup to you. Once things settle, we can quietly start over. But during this time, it’ll be hard for you.”
“This is my choice. It’s not a hardship.” I smiled faintly. “Once we’ve both dealt with everything, I want to be with you without any distractions. I want to make love to you, fully and freely.”
“I feel the same,” Chu Ke Huan said with a smile.
For the first time, our conversation included the most romantic of tenses—the future.
Ironically, the blind spot lay within that very word. Our respective fiancés were about to be crushed by the weight of the word “unwed” (the Chinese character for “未,” meaning “not yet”), its denial of what once seemed inevitable. And yet, we hadn’t considered that the future we were so eager to embrace was marked by the same “not yet”—uncertain and unresolved.
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