Chapter 15
When Claire twisted her ankle, Allen was too busy laughing and chatting with Evelyn. He left her at home with nothing.
but cold leftovers.
He had even taken the keys to Claire’s villa and handed them over to Evelyn.
He bought Evelyn a wardrobe full of new clothes, yet he couldn’t recall the last time he’d bought anything new for hist fiancée.
Just thinking about these memories. suffocated him. If Claire had treated him the way he treated her, he would’ve lost his mind long ago.
Allen’s face turned pale. His thin lips.
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pressed into a trembling line. Only now did he realize that Claire’s departure was entirely his fault, the result of his every careless action.
Leaning weakly against the doorframe, his voice was hoarse as he spoke, almost to himself.
“How dare you say you’d settle for just a bit of my love? Why should I give you any of my love when I owe all of it to my fiancée? If it weren’t for you whispering poison into my ears day after day, clouding my judgment, I would never have treated Claire this way! She would never break off our engagement and leave me!”
His voice grew colder with every word, and by the end, his entire being exuded a murderous intensity. He glared at Evelyn, his eyes so menacing that she instinctively
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trembled.
She had never expected Claire to actually leave.
Yet to her, this was a silver lining. In her panic, Evelyn’s mind quickly spun, formulating a new, seemingly perfect plan to finally get what she wanted. But her escape didn’t matter anymore.
The moment Evelyn fled, Allen threw himself into finding Claire.
He started at the hospital, knowing that Claire had a good relationship with her colleagues there.
“Do you know where Claire went?”
“Have you heard from her?”
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“Have you called her? Did she pick up?”
He asked the same questions over and over, not just to the staff in her department but to every doctor and nurse in the hospital who might have known her.
But in the end, no one knew where Claire
was.
The faint hope he clung to shattered, piece by piece, leaving Allen in crushing despair. His once–confident demeanor faded, and he looked visibly worn, his exhaustion written all over his face.
“Dr. Brown, you need to take care of yourself first. Maybe Claire just needs some time. Think carefully–besides the hospital, where else might she go?”
Dr. White, a colleague who had been close to
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Claire, sighed as she tried to console him.
Her words lit a spark in Allen’s mind.
In an instant, he bolted cut of the hospital and sped off in his car.
“The only places Claire has ever loved are the hospital and that little village. Those are the only places she’s ever spent any real time in her life. She must be there. She’s waiting for me. She has to be waiting for me to find her.”
His voice trembled with a desperate, almost delusional hope as he sped down the highway, driving for an entire day and night without rest. But when he finally arrived at the small village and asked everyone who knew Claire, their answers struck him like daggers.
“No, she hasn’t been back. It’s not a
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holiday–why would she return?”
“We haven’t seen her. Last month I called her, and she said she was busy. Maybe she’ll come back after her wedding”
No one had seen Claire.
Deep down, Allen had anticipated this outcome. But he refused to accept it, clinging to one last shred of hope
“Mr. Brown, when are you and Claire getting married? Why didn’t she come with you this time?”
At the small clinic where Claire had once worked, her former colleagues and friends asked him questions with warm smiles.
But Allen was left speechless. How could he tell them the truth?
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That he had trampled on the love Claire had given him? That he had driven away the woman who had once believed in him so deeply?
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