'Yes, of course, she will, ' Jean thought.
All she wanted was to nod in agreement but suddenly she remembered something. She looked at Moore and uttered seriously, "As long as you exhibit sincerity and apologize genuinely, she will forgive you."
Moore stared at Jean, not knowing if he wanted that to be true or not. Nevertheless, he answered, "You can rest assured. I promise to be true to her."
Jean smiled at him and said happily, "I've always had faith in you. I knew you'd figure things out sooner or later. Avery is the best for you, don't you think?"
"Yes," he replied, with absolutely no expression of affection in his voice. He nodded slightly, as his heart clenched inside his body.
He wondered if this situation would ever have come up if Jean hadn't listened to that conversation he'd had with Avery when she called him before coming to H City.
'If I had known that I would encounter Jean and be reluctant to leave again before I came back to H City from Chicago, and that I would pay my whole life's feelings, but never get paid back, would I still have chosen to return here?
If there was, in fact, a medicine to cure regret in the world, would I take it?'
The questions were unanswerable, all tinted with moral dilemmas.
Polar feelings intertwined in his heart. All he could do was bear them alone.
That was his only option. Alone. Solitary.
This was the point things had come down to. He knew all of it was because he'd been following his inclinations as he simultaneously ran from reality.
Still, he had no regrets. If he could turn back time, he would gladly fall in love with Jean and Jean alone, all over again.
And never let her know, even in another life.
He took one final look at Jean, trying to capture her face in his memory, waved goodbye and finally left the Qi Mansion.
Jean looked at Moore's silhouette receding with the car, smiling for a long time. It made her happy that Moore had decided to make things up with Avery even though they were at the verge of breaking up. They were going to get back together and she felt that was best for both of them.
Moore sat in the car and decided to call Avery. The phone rang for a long time but no one picked up.
Moore could only conclude Avery was still angry with him.
His only resort was to go on the WeChat app and send a voice message. "Avery... do you have some time to talk? There's something I want to talk to you about. I'll be waiting for you at the cafe in Wanda Plaza. I won't leave until you show up."
He started driving towards Wanda Plaza as soon as he sent the voice message.
He chose a remote corner by the window in the cafe, settled down and ordered a latte. By reflex, he checked his phone, seeing Avery had neither called back nor replied. He'd expected this.
But he wasn't actually worried about her not showing up.
Not picking up his phone itself was a rare thing for her.
Upon hearing he would not leave the cafe till she came, she'd definitely come
“Who does she think she is? I won’t marry her even if she is the last woman on earth,” said Hiram Rong.
“Marry into a family with tens of billions of assets? How lucky I am! I won’t be so foolish as to break off the engagement. At worst, I can receive money as part of the divorce settlement,” said Rachel Ruan.
Their great-grandfathers made a pact about their engagement a hundred years ago...
impossible for us to walk away. My first instinct was to protect Avery so I started pushing them away without thinking. But there were a lot of them. Perhaps, six or seven. I can't recall. But how could I possibly beat them alone? In no time, I was beaten to the ground. I had no strength to fight back. Just then, Avery saw that one of them was about to hit me with a beer bottle. She ran to me instantly and took the attack in my place.
I was saved but she collapsed right away... and... she started to bleed. I... I..."
Adolf couldn't go on any further. He sobbed like a child, reproaching himself.
This sounded like the plot of an old-fashioned movie. But well, sometimes it did happen in real life.
Jean sighed involuntarily listening to the account.
She remembered that Adolf had been in the underworld in the past and had excellent martial arts skills.
Now that even he couldn't fight them back, certainly it wouldn't have been a group of some ordinary thugs.
So, as per the story, Avery saved Adolf and bore the brunt of the attack herself. Jean kept revisiting the details in her mind.
'But... yesterday, after I assured Avery about Moore, wouldn't she have felt better than before?
In which case, why would she get in a bad mood again and call Adolf out when she got back to the hotel?
And if drinking was what they wanted to do, why couldn't they just drink in their own hotel?
Both of them are public figures. Obviously, It was unsafe for them to be seen by people whose intentions we can never judge.' She kept trying to make sense of the situation, thinking back to how it could've been avoided.
Now, Avery lay in the emergency room. No one knew if she'd survive or not. The only thing Jean found herself capable of, was praying for her.
Moore's blood boiled. He snapped at Adolf, almost screaming, "Who are they?" I need to find them! Even if I have to turn the city upside down for it!" he declared with a kind of wrath no one had seen on him before.