Chapter 803
“Okay,” Jonathan replied and wrapped his arms around Rosalie. Before he left, he sneaked a peek at Callum.
At that instant, Callum’s visage was inundated with endless sorrow, even brimming with incomparable despair.
It seemed that even if he was alive, he was nothing more than an empty shell.
Jonathan’s heart skipped a beat, and his footsteps also came to an abrupt halt. Pieces after pieces of images flashed across his mind, but they all flickered way too fast that he could not even tell what those scenes were. “What’s the matter? Jon?” Rosalie turned and regarded Jonathan who stopped with befuddlement.
“It’s nothing.” The man’s eyelashes trembled slightly as he lifted his footsteps once more and left the banquet alongside the lady.
After hopping into the car, Jonathan leaned his back against the seat, heaving a breath while shutting his eyes.
“Are you tired?” A gentle female voice sounded near his ear.
“Kind of.”
“Have a shut-eye, then. It’ll take more than half an hour to reach the Youngblood residence from here, anyway,” stated Rosalie.
Jonathan tried hard to relax himself, but somehow, his heart appeared to be racing even quicker. The despair on Callum’s countenance he glimpsed a while ago kept running through his head.
It felt like he himself had also been that desperate once upon a time.
That said, never could he recall when he was last enveloped by such desperation.
Suddenly, something flitted across his mind again. However, that time around, he had a vivid view that he himself was holding an urn and wailing in pain.
That voice in his head sounded so hopeless and sad that it was as though he had no intention ‘whatsoever of living on but was forced to merely survive instead.
“Why didn’t I die in your stead? Why? I’m the one to blame! I’m the one who deserves death!” In that scene, he was weeping buckets and yelling
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his lungs out. To call him miserable would be an understatement.
Little could he fathom the reason for him to utter those words. He wondered if that picture in his head was from the time when he mistook Rosalie’s death.
“Was it because I thought she was dead that I became that desolate?” was his thought.
A severe headache began swelling in his head.
The throbbing pang was almost as if his head was about to explode at any second. A muffled scream escaped Jonathan, and all of a sudden, he only felt like he was trapped in total darkness, a choking devastation permeating his body.
“No… No! Why…” One groan after another came intermittently from him.
With all his might, he struggled to break free from the shackles of overwhelming distraught and flee the darkness.
Out of the blue, a voice chimed in his ears.
“Jon, are you okay? Are you feeling unwell? Can you hear me? Open your eyes!”
The voice kept bombarding him, seemingly pulling him out of dejection.
It was then that he felt her fingers rubbing his forehead to ease the agony within him.
The hurt gradually faded away, and Jonathan slowly opened his eyes. That delicate, sweet face of the woman instantly came into his sight.
Anxiety was written all over Rosalie’s face. “Are you having a headache again? Should we go to the hospital? Or should I ask Gary to contact Dr. Hale and let Dr. Hale make a trip to the Youngblood residence as soon as possible?”
Her questions elicited no answer from Jonathan. The latter’s dark gaze was fixated on the person before his eyes. A sheen of perspiration was layered upon his forehead.
Racking his brain, he was dying to know just how much he loved the lady back then, to the extent that he would feel that much torment upon mistaking her demise.
At first, the broken memories in his mind might look like pure projections from a bystander watching from the sidelines, the last episode he felt, though, was surreal that it carried a touch of personal experience.
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He clearly felt what he was like in the past, and the suffering at that time was so torturing that his soul would break down amid the hopelessness. “Jon?” The man’s silence made her frown and even raise her hand to wave it in front of his eyes.
The next moment, Jonathan suddenly grabbed her hand. Feeling the warmth of the woman’s hand in his palm, he could feel that she was a living body, not the ashes in the icy urn as pictured in his memory a
minute ago.
Jonathan leaned over precipitously and embraced Rosalie. “Tell me, how deep was I in love with you before this?”
His low murmur was laced with a sort of urgency Rosalie had never heard before.
Startled, although Rosalie did not understand where his sudden question came from, she still answered, “You were head over heels for me. You’d sacrifice anything, including your own life, for me.”
Even though her last memory of her falling off the cliff had yet to come back, she could already imagine the shocking scene from Carlos’ description alone and clearly felt how much the man in front of her loved her.
Jonathan burrowed his head into Rosalie’s neck, taking in her breath and reassuring himself that she was indeed right in his arms. It seemed that that was the only way he could keep his sense of security in check.
“If so, you mustn’t draw your last breath before me from now on out!” he pronounced stiffly.
“Was Calvin telling the truth, Jon? Back then… Were you really aware of who the killer was, but for the interest of the company, you chose to sit by and do nothing? Why? Why must it be you? What should I do? Even if… I could force myself to forgive you, my heart… could never seem to accept to be by your side.”
Rosalie slammed her palms over the sink, supporting herself as she vomited so hard that her mien turned a ghastly white.
Standing outside the bathroom, the man only felt suffocated as if he had been hurled into an ice-cold snowstorm, his heart sinking down the oceanic abyss.
