The Day I Stopped Waiting Was the Day He Started Begging novel Chapter 87

After returning to Azure Bay, Madeline washed up and went straight to bed.

Feeling restless and frustrated, York stepped out onto the balcony to smoke.

From the balcony, he had a clear view of the small garden filled with the colorful roses Madeline had meticulously transplanted.

It was the height of summer, and the heavy fragrance of roses drifting through the air should have been relaxing.

But York's mind wandered back to a memory from long ago.

During his sixth month in San Francisco, it wasn't that he hadn't come back.

No one knew he had quietly booked a flight and returned to The Capital for a single night.

He had stood right at the intersection leading to Azure Bay, waiting in the shadows.

Madeline had come home at midnight, looking visibly thinner.

He had watched her from a distance, agonizing over whether he should swallow his pride and show his face.

But then he saw she was holding a financial magazine. And right on the cover was a massive photo of Hunter Holt.

Even though it had been early summer, the night breeze had chilled him to his absolute core.

From that night on, no matter how fiercely he missed Madeline in San Francisco, he refused to ever return.

The burning ember of the cigarette reached his fingers, the sharp sting snapping him back to reality.

Sloane had called him a spoiled brat, accusing him of being utterly self-absorbed.

He accepted the insult.

But to claim he didn't care about Madeline, or didn't want to understand her life—that was both true and false.

He was a man who fixated on things to a destructive fault. Once he set his sights on something, he would pursue it until the bitter end, even if his methods were entirely unscrupulous.

He knew exactly what kind of toxic bastard he was, which was why he had stayed away.

He had forced himself to get used to a life without Madeline.

But the moment he received the critical condition notice from the hospital, his only coherent thought had been that he couldn't just let her slip away. He refused to accept it.

Even if he couldn't crack through the walls around her heart.

Years ago, when his grandfather had dragged him to see a psychic, the old man had looked at him and said he possessed a rebellious, stubborn soul, and that his romantic life would be fraught with disaster.