He Waited She Wilted (Ottilie and Yorath) novel Chapter 251

Yorath gestured toward the chair beside him, an unspoken invitation.

Ottilie had no idea what he wanted to discuss.

From his posture, it looked like this was going to be a long conversation.

She sat down, spine perfectly straight, and waited for him to speak.

"Three years ago, when you had that accident on set, I was right in the middle of preparing for public office," Yorath began. "It was a critical moment for my high-level background checks. The people who framed you were my grandfather's political rivals, and they were aiming for me. If I had recklessly bailed you out back then, they would have sprung a trap they’d been setting for months. If I had dragged you out of that mess, it wouldn't have just been the Fordham family going down—my grandfather would have been implicated too. My retreat meant our family ultimately won the war."

"That same year, a major political powerhouse announced his retirement, and his son-in-law, a real estate mogul, went bankrupt overnight. He still owes the banks billions today. You've probably heard about it."

"When the nest is overturned, no egg stays unbroken. Tilly, I am never just representing myself. I have a vast network of people to consider. I can't act like an ordinary man who can throw caution to the wind and just live a quiet life with you."

"At the film set, their witnesses, the physical evidence, the video footage... their stories were flawlessly unified. I'm not a god, and I am bound by the law. I had no way of defending you to get a not-guilty verdict."

"There were only two paths left. The first: I cut all ties with you, secure my public office, bolster my grandfather's position, and let you go to prison."

"The second: I dug into your past and found that you struggled with your mental health as a child and saw a therapist. I used that to have a lawyer plead insanity on your behalf. As long as you pled guilty, you could get probation."

Yorath rubbed his temples, his brows furrowed in deep distress.

"But you were so impossibly stubborn. You absolutely refused to plead guilty, meaning you had to be committed to St. Dymphna's Psychiatric Facility. On paper, we were just a casual arrangement. I kept you safe, placed you in a hospital owned by my own family, and even had Jevon Crawford pull strings to look out for you. I thought that once the timing was right, you'd be discharged, find a decent job, and live out the rest of your life in peace."

"Later, the investigators doing my background check dug into your file and discovered I had interfered. I failed the vetting. Three years later, as I was preparing to run for office again, I ran into you. At that restaurant. You were on a blind date with another man, handing him a basket of homemade treats."

"At first, I thought you were just trying to get close to me, to rekindle what we had. But later, when I held you, your resistance... your absolute coldness... it made me realize I had lost your love. And I realized that I love you."

*I love you.*

Ottilie didn't love him anymore. He had thought about taking a long time to slowly win her heart back.

But facing her total indifference now, he realized that true human agony was simply beyond words.

"How can you be so cruel to me?"

"Have you ever seen *Monkey King's Odyssey*?" Ottilie asked softly. "There's a scene where the hero looks at someone's retreating back and says to his lover, 'Look at him, he looks just like a dog.' Three years ago, I was that dog."

Yorath could choose not to love her. He could choose to abandon her.

But what he couldn't do was abandon her, force her to live like a stray dog, and then demand that she still love him.

"You call me cruel. But did you ever spare me?"