She's Too Busy Winning to Watch Him Cry novel Chapter 535

Rowan still hadn't returned Lyra's phone. Stepping out of the shower that night, he effortlessly bypassed her passcode and swiped onto the home screen.

He tapped into her photo gallery first, scrolling through the images. It held plenty of casual landscape shots from her travels, but mostly everyday pictures of a pair of twins. The soft, radiant smile Lyra wore in her selfies with them stirred up a complicated knot of emotions in his chest.

It felt like she hadn't smiled at him like that in years.

Pushing down the bitter ache in his chest, he exited the gallery and opened her messaging app. A friend request popped up in the notifications. An account with the alias 'Mimi' had been relentlessly spamming requests. Given the aggressive frequency, he immediately suspected it was some guy.

A predatory chill settled over Rowan's gaze. Without a second of hesitation, he accepted the request.

Messages instantly flooded the screen.

[Darling, you finally added me! I'm so happy!]

[The internet is going crazy! I heard Rowan locked you up in the mountains for a month. Can you tell me what happened?]

[Rowan is so damn hot. Darling, you must have fallen for him by now, right?]

He paused, a mix of skepticism and intrigue washing over him. Tapping the screen, he simply replied with one word: [Yeah.]

That single word was like kicking a hornet's nest.

The other person instantly fired off several messages in a row, their text practically vibrating with unbridled excitement.

[Oh my god! The feeling is mutual! My ship is sailing!]

[So spending day and night together in the mountains for a month really heated things up between you two, right?!]

[Darling, you have to spill all the details!]

Rowan suddenly understood exactly why Lyra hadn't accepted the request. He was just about to block the number.

A second later, an image popped up on the screen. It was an old photo from years ago—back when he was in high school and Lyra had just started middle school. He was wearing his uniform, and a petite, slender Lyra stood beside him. The young girl was looking up at him with a luminous smile. Her features were youthful and soft, radiating an innocent, shy adoration that made her childhood crush painfully obvious to anyone looking.

Rowan traced his fingertip lightly over her smiling face in the photo, his usually hardened features unconsciously softening.

She used to smile at him like that all the time, but he had always turned a blind eye to it.

A suffocating wave of regret crashed over him, making his chest tight and his breathing heavy.

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