5
Lucas wanted to stay at my place indefinitely. I tried to persuade him to leave, but he kept shaking his head.
He said he had wronged me these past three years and now wanted to make it up to me.
He said even if his memory returned, he wouldn’t change his heart.
I shook my head. What’s lost is lost.
“Olivia, I truly love you. Can you give me one more chance? I promise, I’ll only love you for the rest of my life!” Lucas put the chicken soup in front of me, his face full of love and devotion.
I shook my head and simply replied with two words: “I can’t.”
The light in Lucas’s eyes dimmed again.
That night, he received another call from Chloe. Her depression had flared up, and she was suicidal again.
“Olivia, I’m sorry, Chloe’s depression is acting up… I need to go check on her.”
“Please be understanding, okay? I’ll be back very soon today!”
“Don’t overthink it. I don’t love her anymore, now or in the future. You’re the only one in my heart.”
Lucas was very concerned about what I might think, but I didn’t care at all about his melodramatic love story with Chloe.
“Mm, go ahead.”
Lucas’s second surgery was three months later, after Chloe had begged him repeatedly to
have the operation.
In college, I had read many cliché stories about memory loss in romance novels.
The male or female lead would always regain their memory after experiencing some kind
of shock.
But for Lucas, it was simply a matter of surgically removing the blood clot pressing on his
brain.
Before the surgery, he had asked for my opinion. “Olivia, I don’t want to have this surgery.”
I looked at him calmly. “There are many things you should remember. Memory loss isn’t an excuse for you to escape reality. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t, and neither has Chloe. All the paths you’ve taken were your own choices. You need to take responsibility for your actions.”
“I really do love you, Olivia. You have to believe me.”
“I do.”
After saying this, he seemed slightly reassured and entered the operating room.
A
I left the hospital soon after.
I didn’t care about how his surgery went or whether it was successful.
I resigned from my job, deleted all contact information for Lucas, and then went to study for an MBA at the University of British Columbia.
I immersed myself in the foreign culture.
On the banks of the Thames, I felt the thrill of the setting sun.
My heart had never been so calm.
Within a week, I had completely lost contact with Lucas.
During the day, I focused on my studies. At night, I watched videos and played games, enjoying my solitude.
But a phone call in the middle of the night woke me up.
“Olivia Reed, how dare you block me!”
“Don’t you know you’re the first person I wanted to see after my surgery?”
“Do you
have any idea how much I miss you?”
“Where are you? I’m coming to find you right now!”
Lucas was yelling hysterically on the phone, as if he had gone mad.
I understood his feelings all too well because for the past three years, I had felt the same
way every moment.
“I’m in England. I don’t want to come back for now, and even if I did, I wouldn’t see you. Go live your life with Chloe. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To marry her? I won’t stop you. Go ahead and marry her.”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. Then I heard a long sigh.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know I was wrong. You’re the one I love most. I know I shouldn’t have hurt you while taking care of Chloe.”
“Please, can we make up? Please?”
“I promise, Chloe will never appear in front of you again.”
“I won’t marry her either. She has depression, let the doctors treat her. I won’t get involved
anymore.”
I listened to Lucas’s apologies with a sense of helplessness.
“Has your memory returned?” I asked casually.
“No…” Lucas hesitated.
“Mm, you should try hard to recover your memory. That way, you’ll forget about me
quickly.”
After saying this, I blocked this new number again.
Then, one after another, various phone calls came in, all from Lucas. He used different phone numbers to contact me. After I had blocked dozens of his numbers, I finally changed my SIM card.
With that, the world became quiet.
