The Love I Begged For Was Never Real novel Chapter 205

Gideon stood by the bar, one arm wrapped around Nora, who had passed out completely.

He had intended to head straight back to the old estate to keep Giselle company after leaving St. Jude's this evening.

But halfway there, Special Assistant York called with an update, mentioning that Nora hadn't returned to the villa after leaving the atelier, and her location showed her drinking her sorrows away at a remote tavern.

He couldn't let it go. The image of Nora sitting on the marble steps of St. Jude's with a tear-stained face kept flashing through his mind, and even he found it absurd.

Nora's stubbornness and coldness at the orphanage gates today proved she was still targeting Giselle. He should have let her suffer a bit outside to learn her lesson.

Yet as the rain poured harder, an inexplicable sense of irritability urged him on, prompting him to order the driver to turn the car around and search all the way here.

And here, in this out-of-the-way tavern, he found her drinking herself into this disastrous state.

Gideon looked down at the woman bawling messily in his arms. Nora was still muttering something unconsciously, but her voice was too soft, entirely drowned out by the tavern's music.

He hadn't heard the lengthy tirade of her earlier complaints, only catching her final, desperate question right as he caught her.

"Why am I... the only one who remembers..."

Remembers?

Remembers what?

Gideon's brows knitted tightly, a flash of confusion crossing his eyes.

Aside from this three-year marriage in name only and the seven years she had spent relentlessly chasing him, what shared memories could he and Nora possibly have?

Gideon pulled a few bills from his pocket and pinned them under the glass on the bar. He bent down, looping one arm behind Nora's knees and the other around her back, sweeping her up into a bridal carry.

Gideon leaned back against his seat, carefully searching his mind for any intersecting timelines they might have had. He couldn't think of any notable past he shared with Nora from their early years.

Gideon's memories of his childhood and that orphanage were actually a blurred and chaotic mess.

When he was seven or eight, the Hayes family was going through a brutal power struggle, and he had been dumped at that orphanage on the west side of town.

In that dog-eat-dog environment where starvation and freezing were the norm, his brain had instinctively engaged its defense mechanisms just to survive.

He hadn't paid much attention to the people or events around him back then, spending his days huddled in the darkest corners like a frightened beast, coldly watching everything unfold.

Perhaps he had lent a hand to a few of the surrounding kids during chaotic scuffles for food, pulling them up.

But those scenes were too fragmented, too insignificant, long since buried by endless hunger, the director's beatings, and the fear of the unknown.