Our Anniversary, You Chose Her – I Chose Divorce

His exaggerated reaction was both funny and exasperating.

Chloe Reed looked at him in silence for a moment before she finally spoke, enunciating each word with agonizing slowness, ”Have—you—heard—any—news—about—him?”

It took her nearly a minute to get the single sentence out. Afterward, her delicate brows furrowed; she still wasn’t used to this. She would much rather type on her phone. At the very least, it was fluent and didn’t sound awful.

Walker Grant’s expression paused. He reached out to her. ”Chloe.”

Chloe didn’t understand why, but she placed her hand in his anyway. With a gentle tug, Walker pulled her directly into his arms. His warm palm gently stroked her back, and his deep, magnetic voice was exceptionally tender. ”You’re doing so well. Your voice will recover soon. You don’t have to force yourself to do things you don’t like just to spare my feelings. As much as I love it when you do things for me, I hate seeing you upset even more.”

She hadn’t expected him to say something like that so suddenly. Held tightly in his embrace, she froze for a moment. She lowered her gaze, a trace of bewilderment flashing through her clear, watery eyes.

She didn’t know why, but whenever she saw him looking sad and lonely, her heart would subconsciously soften. She wondered if it was because she was the reason he had ended up like this. That was why she felt so soft-hearted and guilty, and why she kept lowering her boundaries for him.

Chloe didn’t dare entertain any other possibilities. She nodded against his chest, then pulled away from his embrace and picked up her phone to type. The cold, mechanical female voice rang out. ”Still no news on Nathaniel Monroe?”

”Yeah,” Walker replied, his tone dropping a few fractions. ”He’s missing. I’ve had people out looking for him.”

Lucas Shaw would do his job properly once he took the money, while William Quinn was currently drowning in his own endless troubles. To avoid getting dragged into more messes, William wouldn’t make things difficult for Nathaniel. However, Walker still wasn’t entirely certain if Nathaniel was even in William’s hands.

Chloe stayed silent for a moment before typing again. ”I heard Claire mention Julian, too.”

Walker nodded. ”She said she saw someone who looked a lot like Julian. She must be going crazy from missing him so much.”

Hearing this, Chloe’s eyelids twitched. She smelled gossip and immediately typed out a question. ”What do you mean? Does Claire have feelings for Julian?”

Walker let out a low chuckle. ”Yeah. They’re the same age and grew up together. Before college, they saw each other almost every single day. But then she went abroad to study, and he met Sunny Reed.”

At the mention of Sunny, his brows knitted together, his face displaying unhidden disgust. He recalled Claire Monroe saying that Julian Grant had terrible taste in women. Looking at it now, that was absolutely true. His taste was completely abysmal.

Chloe didn’t press the matter further. Instead, she went to spend some time with the old woman. Her spirits had been poor lately; she looked completely listless, and several new wrinkles had etched themselves into her face. Encountering such a sudden tragedy, even if her relationship with her daughter had been strained, the pain of a parent burying their child was never something easily accepted.

The old woman needed time to process it all. Seeing Chloe arrive, she said, ”Chloe, I want to go back.”

Chloe’s expression stiffened at her words. She immediately walked over and sat down beside her. ”I—worry—about—you—being—a—lone.”

Seeing that she could speak again, the old woman smiled warmly in relief. ”There’s nothing to worry about. I’m already so old, and I’ve spent my entire life in our hometown. I don’t want to be away from it in my final days.”