Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 65
“…….”
Without any fuss, Ulysses put her down. They had passed all the stairs, so even if she collapsed halfway now, it wouldn’t be too dangerous.
“Why did you do that?”
He asked, and she gave him a fed-up look.
“Did you forget that Caroline is your fiancée?”
To think he matched her pace without even knowing the reason, this man was truly beyond help.
“How would it look to the other party, seeing another woman in the arms of her fiancé?”
“That was the problem?”
Ulysses furrowed his eyebrows slightly.
“I’ve already broken off the engagement with her.”
“Oh, yesterday?”
Cecilia laughed coldly.
“You’re supposedly her fiancé, yet you still don’t know her well.”
Cecilia didn’t believe in love, but she wasn’t ignorant of it. Love, like any emotion, could ignite humans, and sometimes, burn them too.
The love between Caroline and Ulysses was never mutual from the start. It was a tragedy that they went as far as marriage without mutual feelings. As far as she remembered, their marriage was rocky from the honeymoon itself.
‘He’s always been indifferent, hasn’t he?’
On the day of the baby shower to celebrate Caroline’s pregnancy, Caroline seemed very happy, while Ulysses looked utterly apathetic. There was not even a hint of a smile out of courtesy on his face.
Perhaps that pregnancy was Caroline’s last hope.
When it was revealed a few days later that Caroline had a phantom pregnancy, neither of them was smiling. As soon as Caroline’s long unrequited love ended, everything ended in vain.
Caroline’s personality started to openly take a detour from then on. Previously, she managed to pretend to be kind and graceful alone, but her face began to be stained with anger.
From that point on, Caroline thoroughly trampled on Cecilia. It was different from the unintentional hurt during their childhood in terms of intensity.
She took away Cecilia’s few connections and passed on her scandals to Cecilia. With deceitful actions and sharp criticism, Caroline shattered Cecilia’s ego. Technically, Cecilia’s love for her sister was also never returned.
Caroline chose not Ulysses as the object of her venting for being betrayed, but Cecilia, her much-‘loved’, flawed half-sister.
The resentment Cecilia held against her because of this was immense, but she had no intention of becoming enemies with Caroline just because of Ulysses.
Dealing with a malicious Caroline was more troublesome than expected. She wasn’t as cunning as Adam or meticulous as Bernarda, but more bothersome because she attacked whatever she saw.
For Cecilia’s future plans, she needed to keep her as the gentle and kind Caroline.
“That’s why I told you not to do it.”
Cecilia grumbled.
As soon as Cecilia was in Ulysses’ arms in the drawing-room, she started pinching him mercilessly. It must have hurt as if a chunk of flesh was being torn off, but he did not show it.
“Do you not possess a sense of pain?”
“That’s right.”
“Really?”
“Of course not.”
…Ridiculous.
“Anyway, thanks. No, actually, I’m not grateful… Let’s think of it as a favor out of old affection. You can go back to the annex now.”
Cecilia walked with a limp down the hallway, leaving Ulysses behind. When she knocked on Garnet’s room, Lilith came out as if she had been waiting and started nagging Cecilia nonstop.
Because Cecilia had been lying in the first-floor drawing-room, where many people come and go, Lilith couldn’t come to see her. It seemed she had a lot to say in the meantime.
And as always, it always ended with concern and affection.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“I’m okay.”
Ulysses stood at a distance, watching the mother and daughter. In his mind, he continuously reflected on his actions.
‘Why did I carry Cecilia?’
It was purely impulsive. An impulse that flared up like a burning flame.
For someone who thought his life was always in winter, there were no other words to explain this feeling.
It was like a tiny spark that fell onto a bare mountain that only harbored snow.
And it seemed to burn out as quickly as it flared.
What exactly was this?
He didn’t know. He couldn’t explain it.
But one thing was certain.
That tiny spark was slowly melting him.
***
Caroline kept thinking about Ulysses and Cecilia as she hurried out.
Her kind fiancé, helping her younger sister.
…No.
It wasn’t such an idyllic scene.
Rather, it was closer to…
‘A man holding a woman in his arms.’
This was more accurate.
