He Lost Me to His Best Friend novel Chapter 55

Yardley stared into her eyes, refusing to believe it. He convinced himself she was just throwing a tantrum.

"Alright, stop being angry. Julian is back now, so he can take care of Sylvia. I have plenty of time to spend with you."

He softened his voice, trying to coax her.

But the Scarlett sitting in front of him wasn't the kind of woman who could be pacified with sweet nothings anymore.

Whenever she remembered spending her entire pregnancy alone while he was constantly with someone else, whenever she thought of the coldness her daughter had endured, whenever she recalled him abandoning them during critical moments to prepare elaborate gifts for another woman and her son, her heart turned to absolute ice.

She simply couldn't accept a husband who always put another woman first.

And she definitely couldn't accept that the daughter she had nearly died to bring into the world meant so little to him.

Her daughter was her bottom line. The unfairness her little girl had faced since birth fueled an endless, unquenchable hatred inside her.

Yardley looked at Scarlett's icy expression, unable to understand how their relationship had deteriorated to such a desperate point.

She had never acted out like this before. She had never been this difficult to appease. He was frustrated but completely helpless, having no idea how to turn her back into the woman she used to be.

Suddenly, a piercing ringtone shattered the suffocating silence in the room.

The screen lit up with a single name: Sylvia.

Yardley frowned, clearly annoyed, and rejected the call.

But the phone immediately rang again. He declined it once more, only for it to ring a third time.

Scarlett looked at the glaring name on the screen and offered a mocking smile.

"You better answer it. The happy couple might be fighting, and she could be threatening to jump into the ocean again. If you don't pick up, she might actually kill herself. Her husband might be back, but it's obvious she still desperately needs you to obsess over her every move."

Childhood friends. What a perfectly flawless excuse.

A man caring for his cousin was perfectly natural. No one could criticize that.

If it wasn't, Corinne wouldn't have so openly taken Sylvia's side without seeing anything wrong with it.

It felt like Scarlett was the only person in the world who was utterly disgusted by their dynamic, while everyone else thought it was completely normal.

Yardley watched the screen light up and dim repeatedly, a complex storm of emotions swirling in his eyes.

Finally, he stood up, walked to the side of the room, and answered the phone.

"Hello?"

Yardley paused midway through buckling his belt and looked at her.

"Sylvia and Julian had a fight, and she's alone at the beach. She's highly emotional right now, and I'm worried she might do something stupid."

Scarlett completely lost the desire to speak.

So it wasn't that he couldn't feel panic. It wasn't that he was incapable of caring.

It was just that his panic and care were never reserved for her.

She had just recovered from childbirth too... but when had Yardley ever worried about her catching a chill in the wind?

Even just minutes ago, when he forced her into the car in the rain, getting her clothes soaked, there hadn't been a shred of concern or pity in his eyes.

She thought of the day she gave birth. She had been in agonizing pain for twenty hours, and he had been absent the entire time, staying in Country A to accompany Sylvia in the delivery room.

She had laid alone in the maternity ward, listening to the woman next door being comforted by her husband, holding hands, while she only had the cold, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor for company.

Once Yardley finished dressing, he grabbed his coat from the rack. He hesitated for a few seconds before pulling out a bank card and handing it to Scarlett.

"I just got this card set up. Buy whatever you want."