Filed To Story: Cheating with My Boyfriend's Best Friend Novel Read Online (Olive & Aaron)
Chris looked at me with guilt and sadness in his eyes.”He said that we have been ab-sent for so many years, and both he and you don’t know what we feel about you. If we love you, then why have we never met you in all these years, only exchanging Christmas postcards every year?”
See, I was right. Aaron accurately voiced my confusion.
“So? What is your answer?” I raised an eye-brow and looked at them, still feeling unaf-fected.
The painful and angry emotions I once had strangely disappeared. I looked at their faces and even felt a sense of unfamiliari-ty.
They no longer looked like the people in the family photos. They had aged a lot.
Loose skin, deepening wrinkles, and crow’s feet, along with the tanned complexion from working in Antarctica year-round, made it difficult for them to match the im-age of my parents in my mind. So much so that when I looked at them, I often felt like I was looking at strangers.
Well, in a sense, we were indeed strangers.
“We love you, of course!” Kristy’s tone roseslightly.
She got emotional, leaning forward slightly, her eyes filled with deep affection. “Sweet-ie, your dad and I were too young back then. We were focused on pursuing our ca-reers, longing for freedom and true love, so we behaved immaturely in many aspects. Suddenly, we had you, and our plans were all disrupted. We overestimated our ability to take responsibility and selfishly chose to escape.
It was all our fault.”
“Yes, during those three years in New York,we were forced to face our incompetence. But we were too proud to admit it at the time, and we directed all our grievances to-wards you,” Chris said, lowering his head and crossing his hands in front of him, his fi**gers continuously circling.
The way he looked while apologizing was almost identical to the children who had made mistakes and were being scolded in a daycare center.
This association made me unable to help but chuckle softly. Chris and Kristy noticed my reaction and simultaneously looked at me, their faces filled with unease.
“We know it sounds very childish and emp-ty now. But that’s the fact. We have long re-alized that we made a wrong decision back then, and we deeply hurt you. For that, we are very, very sorry!”
Kristy tried several times to reach out and hold my hand, but upon seeing my expres-sion, she hesitated and withdrew her hand.
Tears welled up in her red eyes once again.
Although I knew that this display of emo-tion was probably genuine, as I looked at this scene, I couldn’t help but feel that her tears were a performance to some extent.
“When?” I couldn’t help but let a word sl*pfrom my l*ps.
“What?” Kristy didn’t understand my ques-tion.
“When did you realize that this decisionwas wrong? Was it at my high school grad-uation, college graduation, or when I told you that I received a job offer from a phar-maceutical company in Germany and was preparing to move to Ulm?” I couldn’t help but sneer. “Please don’t tell me it was after my elementary school graduation.”
Perhaps my tone was too cold, Chris in-stinctively frowned, and he was about to say something, but Kristy reached out and stopped him, preventing him from saying what he wanted to say.
“Missing your elementary school gradua-tion ceremony is our biggest guilt.” Kristy looked incredibly sad, r*bbing her hands together and placed in the middle of her knees. “I know that our absence caused ir-reparable psychological damage to you. Sweetheart, we’ve been carrying this guilt around for so long and we deeply regret our choice.”
She suddenly stood up, kneeling on one knee, looking at me. “We won’t make that mistake again.
Can you forgive us?”
“Are you trying to emotionally blackmailme?” The more I looked at her, the more I felt that she was indulging in a perfor-mance. A fit of unnamed anger gradually surged within me.
So they knew how their absence at my ele-mentary school graduation hurt me! They knew! But what did they do? They paid a hefty sum to my guardians at the time and arranged for a summer camp that I had no interest in, while I watched so many peers being accompanied, hugged, and k**sed by their parents!
And they knew all of this, yet until now, they had not made any attempt to make amends!
“No… I mean it…” Kristy was thrown offguard and at a loss for words by my sud-den anger.
She hurriedly tried to explain, and Chris quickly stepped forward to embrace her, his gaze towards me showing a hint of re-proach. “You can hate us, but distorting your mother’s apology and venting your anger toward us won’t solve any prob-lems!”
“Solve problems?” I felt like I had heard thebiggest joke. “Are you now accusing me, Father?”
“No…that’s not what he meant…” Kristytried to mediate.
But I ignored her completely.
“You both knew how selfish you were when you abandoned me back then, and how much damage you caused me. But have you solved any problems? I gave you twen-ty years; have you ever tried to solve a sin-gle problem?” My voice was weak, but it didn’t diminish the anger in my tone.
I stared at Chris intently. “Wow! What a lovey-dovey couple! What a caring hus-band! So now, I don’t even have the right to vent my anger? Or do you think since you’ve already said sorry, it would be un-reasonable of me to not accept your apolo-gy?”
My heart twitched with intense emotional fluctuations, and the pain made cold sweat quickly form on my face. I got dizzy, and my vision became blurred.
“Sweetie? Sweetie, are you okay?” Kristy’sworried voice came in and out.
I forced myself to calm down and took a big breath.
Once my vision cleared, I coldly glanced at
Kristy and Chris.
“I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Dr. Wayne rushed into the ward, quickly checking my vital signs before prescribing additional medications. Chris and Kristy stood by the side, reluctant to leave.
I turned my head and looked in the opposite direction, no longer paying them any attention.
“Mr. and Mrs. Woods, your daughter justhad the ECMO removed.
She doesn’t have to stay in the
ICU, but she still needs at least a week to completely get through the critical period. Please don’t get her emotionally worked up;just let her take a good rest,” Dr.
Wayne said, voicing my thoughts exactly.
With his tactful advice, this affectionate couple finally supported each other and left the ward.
“Thank you,” I said, looking at Dr. Wayne.
“It’s my duty,” Dr. Wayne gave me areassuring smile and glanced at the door, “Even as a bystander,
I’m also on yourside.”
I was surprised.
“Did you eavesdrop just now?”
“What? Haha, not.” Dr. Wayne paused inhis actions and focused his gaze on my eyes. “Most people in the hospital could sense the conflict bet**en you and your parents. Rita even heard some news.”
“What news?”
“Before you came to Antarctica, yourparents initially didn’t plan to take leave,”
Dr. Wayne shrugged, wearing a disapproving exp**ssion. “I heard that when they applied to the station manager, the manager insisted that at least one of。them should go to pick you up.”
It seemed that McMurdo Station was indeed sparsely staffed, to the point where any news could quickly spread throughout the entire station.
“I can see that you’re on my side,” I lightlyt**sed, “I didn’t know about it until you told me.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Never mind. I wasn’t surprised.” I paused.”When I emailed them and told them I wascoming to see them, Kristy, my mother suggested that I come a few months later because it’s currently the breeding season for penguins.”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.