WITH A smile on his lips, Cade touched his cheek. No one had ever slapped him before. Yumika was the first. And he was both amused and shocked at the same time. He couldn’t tell if he was angry at her for slapping him. What he knew was that he was entertained by his wife’s reaction after he kissed her. She was a fiery little fox. He had a feeling she wouldn’t be easily convinced to live in the same house with him. But he was up for the challenge.
From where he was standing, he walked over to the window. He drew the curtain aside and looked outside. He smiled again when he saw Yumika hurrying to get into her car. She must have sensed that someone was looking at her because she looked up. Their eyes immediately locked up.
He waved sarcastically at her. Through the glass window, he could see how her nose flared, and that made him laugh. Yumika just gave him a quick glare before climbing fully into the car and speeding off.
“Where is Yumika?” Attorney Tan asked when he returned in the room.
“She left,” Cade answered casually, as if nothing had happened between him and his wife. He sat back down in the seat he had been in earlier. He rubbed the cheek where Yumika had slapped him again. It no longer hurt, but he suddenly remembered the incident and he just shook his head.
“You’ve got to convince your wife, Cade.” The old man added in a serious tone. “Or else the Hernandez empire won’t be yours.”
Cade nodded confidently. “I know exactly what to do, Attorney. Yumika may appear uninterested now when it comes to me, but I was once her kryptonite. I have my ways.” He was confident enough that he had the guts to smile.
Attorney Tan leaned back against his swivel chair. “Whatever that plan of yours is, I just hope it works on Yumika. After all she went through when you left her, I think she’s learned her lesson.”
Cade went silent with that statement, the smile on his face slowly disappearing. He didn’t know how to respond to that. All of a sudden, he remembered what he did to her that one night…
“P-Please don’t go, Cade. Please don’t leave me.” She was crying as she pleaded, trying to snatch his trolley away. Cade looked at her with disgust in his eyes. He felt nothing but contempt for his wife. She had done nothing but complicate his life. She hadn’t been satisfied with just clinging to him, and now she was making sure he would be hers for the rest of his life.
He yanked her hand away roughly. “You still don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to be near you, Mika. And I’m damn sure I don’t want you as my wife,” he said, ignoring her pained expression and cries. “You ruined my life by forcing this marriage—by forcing yourself on me!” He sputtered, and she flinched, stepping back an inch.
“C-Cade…”
“And you know what else, Mika?” He grabbed her by the arms and she winced in pain. But he felt nothing but hatred for her. “I will never, ever, love you.”
“If you really want her to cooperate with you…” Attorney Tan’s voice cut through his thoughts. He didn’t notice the older man rising from his chair and grabbing drinks for the both of them. He took the glass he handed him and sipped quietly. “…then you’re really going to have to do a lot of groveling, hijo. She didn’t just suffer a broken heart when you left her. Yumika also faced humiliation. She was, in a way, the town’s laughingstock back then.”
Cade sighed, feeling guilt creeping up inside him. “Did she try to find me while I was gone?”
The older man shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I know of. But I guess she did. Everything was in chaos at that time. Your family can’t even reach you. They didn’t know which corner you were hiding in. All they knew was that you had gone to another country. Your father had managed to trace you somehow. You were in London, but they couldn’t find you from there.”
“I knew my father would look for me, so from London I traveled overland to the neighboring countries.”
“Your father suspected that. And you used a different name too, I believe.”
Cade nodded. “I also changed my looks. I dyed my hair, grew facial hair, and wore contact lenses when I went out. I stayed low. I met a very good friend, and I told him what I was going through. He offered me a job as his assistant manager at a local inn. And that’s how I lived for the past two years. It was hard at first, but eventually I got the hang of it.”
Attorney Tan sighed as he went back to his chair. “Cade, hijo, Yumika…” He paused, as if searching for the right words to say. “She developed social anxiety disorder because of what happened, but fortunately, it was addressed in time. There was also one time when the local press cornered her because her car had broken down, and she had panic attacks. Good thing your sister went to rescue her. Yumika’s never been the same since then.”
Cade just stared into emptiness, imagining Yumika after he left. He’d be lying if he said she never crossed his mind while he was in hiding. He had also wondered how her life was after he had left. Though the anger had still managed to creep up inside him from time to time. For now, he wasn’t sure if the anger was still there. After seeing her earlier, two years later, he couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. He couldn’t seem to put a finger on it.
Cade paused his thoughts and went back to reality. He looked at the attorney and saw that he was just staring at him as if he was reading him. He cleared his throat. “If you’re worried about me and Yumika sharing the same house together, don’t be. I promise you, we won’t kill each other.”
Attorney Tan laughed at the joke. “Nah, that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m more concerned about Yumika. She went through a lot, Cade. Please don’t make her suffer any more.”
“If that is your way of asking me to reciprocate her old feelings—”
“Nope.” The older man cut him off. “That is my way of saying do not play with her heart. Do not lead her on and then leave her for the second time around. Your father blamed himself for what had happened, he felt responsible for Yumika’s pain. Even with his last breath, he still apologized to her. I'm just saying, Cade, don't hurt her again, for your late father's sake.”
Cade fell silent. He didn’t know what to say. He wondered—if his late father knew what Yumika had gone through when he left, why would he insist on forcing them to live together under the same roof?