AFTER NEVER (Charlotte's Story)

Chapter 40/112: Breath

Won't waste much of your time! Just enjoy~
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I froze, and my lips parted.

My breath hitched, and my eyes widened.

"Wh...at?" My voice croaked.

She did not look into me, but rather towards her well-manicured fingers pursed together before her.

"Rickard and I met during our first year of university," She muttered, "He was as cold and arrogant as you might imagine, but he was also... warm." Her eyes watered.

"Proud, gentle, hardworking, and serious," She spoke with a dreamy smile, "I fell for him at first sight."

My heart clenched at her words.

'I fell for him at first sight.'

"Long story made short, it did actually take fate much time to play back and forth between us before he responded to my feelings." Her voice was drugging. Too composed and vulnerable.

A sharp tug pained my heart, and a knot was tied at my throat.

I bit my lips, "M-Mr. Ellington..."

She let out a soft breath, "He was too good to be true," She whispered, "Handsome, smart, and with a presence earth-shattering. He was like a dream."

My heart gave a long squeeze.

"I loved him so much."

A tear strolled down her face, "And I still do."

The knot in my throat suddenly felt like it was pure, burning charcoal.

"Th-Then why..." I croaked.

She parted her lips.

"Though in every dream, there was always a way out to reality."

I could not find the proper words, so I preferred to stay silent and just listen.

"And for me," Her eyes darkened, "Trevor Ellington Conway was my official way from a dream straight-off to a nightmare."

My eyes widened, and I gasped, "Huh?"

She wet her lips, "Back then, Rickard had gone against the chairman's will in studying Astronomy. He got into Cambridge as a scholarship student without his father even paying a penny. Trevor Ellington wanted his son to continue the family's business and inherit the enterprises."

I bit my lips, and my breath shook. I remained speechless though.

Truthfully now, there was not much for me to say at such a moment.

"Rickard was way too stubborn, and the problems with his father reached to the point of the chairman disowning his son from all of his rights and properties as the upcoming elder of the Ellingtons." She muttered, her voice almost suffocating, "Nevertheless, Rickard didn't care, he was willing to go with his major in mind to the extreme. 'I want a major with no limits, and space is the only field which can offer me so.'─He always said." 

I could feel my heart hurting by now, and my tear glands preparing for work.

"It's true, I was not a girl with much money, and back then, even Rickard was not a man with much dollars," She started, softly.

"But we were willing to fight our way through it."

A tear threatened to escape, but I quickly shook it away.