He Made Me Fight His Champion Best Friend, Then Begged Me to Come Home Chapter 09

That was a price too heavy to bear.

But the flower shop let me survive on my own. And not just survive, live well.

Still, things didn’t turn out as simply as I thought they would.

That day, I was in the shop training with a floristry teacher. I looked up and saw Nathaniel standing outside the door. His expression was haggard, his eyes bloodshot.

I froze for a second, but then I glanced down at the unfinished bouquet in my hands and kept working.

When I looked up again, six hours had passed. Nathaniel was gone.

I told myself that encounter was just a coincidence. Until Lucas and I ran into Nathaniel again at my front door.

He had clearly been waiting for a long time. The ground was littered with cigarette butts. He looked visibly unsettled when he saw Lucas.

I could read the determination in Nathaniel’s expression. I said goodbye to Lucas with a sigh, then turned to Nathaniel. “Come in.”

Nathaniel hadn’t expected me to be so calm. Still, he looked nervous.

Inside, I poured him a glass of water and looked at him evenly.

He opened his mouth helplessly. His voice was hoarse.

“Emily, I was wrong. Come home with me.”

“You don’t understand. I thought you were dead back then.”

Those words seemed to open a floodgate.

He reached for my hand and gripped it tightly, trying to rub his thumb over my tattoo. But it was gone.

After I woke up, I had it removed. I wanted to erase the pain of the past.

His eyes reddened as he stared at my wrist. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

I pulled my hand away and didn’t look at him.

“Leave. This isn’t where you belong.”

Nathaniel’s face fell, but he still tried to take my hand again.

“Emily, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that night would cost your grandmother her life.”

“I really thought you had become greedy like my mother. This is my fault. I’ll give you ten million, twenty, fifty. Anything.”

Hearing about Grandma’s death, my heart trembled slightly.

I wiped away the tears that I couldn’t stop and looked up at him.

“But Nathaniel, did you ever believe me? Not once.”

“Not long after my miscarriage, Sierra beat me until I was hospitalized. You didn’t believe me.”

“I told you Grandma was sick and that’s why I needed money. You didn’t believe me.”

“That night, I told you she was dying. You still didn’t believe me.”

“Do you know that when I found out Grandma had died, I wanted to follow her?”

I couldn’t stop my voice from breaking.

“If you hadn’t enabled Sierra, we wouldn’t have lost our child in the first place.”

“Nathaniel, you are the one who caused all of this. You want me to go back with you? Go back where? We stopped having a home a long time ago.”

Nathaniel froze at my accusations, then covered his eyes with his hand to hide his tears.

I rarely saw him so broken. I also noticed the injuries his suit didn’t fully hide.

Bandages were still wrapped around his leg.

The old Nathaniel never looked this defeated.

He would just push me back step by step, using money to force me to submit and shut me up every time he crossed the line.

“Emily, don’t we get a second chance? I’ll change. I can change. I’ll give you every dollar I have. Just come back.”

He lowered his hand, his eyes swollen and red.

I gently brushed some grass off my skirt and spoke quietly.

“I don’t want your money anymore.”

“Before, I needed money to keep Grandma alive. But she’s gone. So what good is fifty million dollars to me now?”