Don’t Ignite It chapter 26

Jealousy

No one had spoken in the living room for a long time.

Lu Zhao gazed at him under the dim light, his complexion even paler than usual.

He gently held Xia Yu’s hand and said, “I’m sorry.”

Since he had reunited with Xia Yu, it seemed like he had been saying those words repeatedly, but no matter how many times he said them, he couldn’t return to that summer.

If he could turn back time, he would never leave Xia Yu standing alone at the door.

But now it was too late.

Xia Yu pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling like he was causing trouble for himself for no reason. It was all ancient history, and he shouldn’t dwell on it.

He patted his body and stood up, saying, “Forget it, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

He didn’t want to deal with Lu Zhao and walked towards the stairs, heading to the study upstairs.

“Don’t follow me. I don’t really want to see you right now. I’m going to the study; there’s something I need to take care of.”

He had just received a document from an employee that needed attention. Originally, he had planned to leave it for the next day, but now, feeling agitated and wanting to avoid Lu Zhao, he suddenly thought that focusing on work might help.

Lu Zhao watched Xia Yu walk away, and after a while, he also stood up. Instead of going upstairs, he walked to the piano room downstairs. In this piano room, there was a large bookshelf, and he had spent a lot of time in there.

He opened the bottom drawer of the bookshelf, where there was a dark red leather briefcase.

Lu Zhao looked at it for a moment before taking the briefcase out. It had a combination lock on it, and although it had been a long time since he had opened it, Lu Zhao quickly entered the combination.

The briefcase clicked open, making a dull sound in the quiet piano room.

Xia Yu had been alone in the study for almost forty minutes. In reality, he had finished his work in just fifteen minutes, merely helping an employee find a document.

But he didn’t want to see Lu Zhao, and for a moment, he even thought about leaving Lu Zhao’s house now and going back to his own parents’ home or to his place with Xu Zhan.

But he thought it would be too melodramatic.

He was already twenty-five years old and didn’t want to act like a child.

So he slowly left the study.

As soon as he stepped out of the study, he noticed that Lu Zhao was sitting on the sofa in the small living room outside.

The living room was dimly lit, and Lu Zhao was quiet. Xia Yu was taken aback.

“Why are you sitting here?” Xia Yu’s mood turned even worse. “Pretending to be mysterious in the middle of the night?”

But when he lowered his head, he noticed a large, dark red vintage briefcase in front of Lu Zhao, and it looked quite heavy.

“What is this?” he asked unconsciously.

Lu Zhao hadn’t figured out how to say it yet. He had been thinking about how to broach the subject before Xia Yu came out.

Seeing the contents of the briefcase, Xia Yu might become even angrier or think he was even more despicable.

But he wanted to offer this belated apology to Xia Yu, to let him know that he didn’t really not care about him.

Lu Zhao stood up, turned on the lights in the small living room, and the bright light suddenly illuminated the room, almost blinding.

He took the contents out of the briefcase.

Xia Yu squinted his eyes, and for a moment, his face showed a blank expression when he saw what was inside.

It was a handcrafted model sailboat, about twelve inches long, with a mahogany hull, a three-masted and three-deck warship, white sails that billowed even without wind, and every detail of the ship, every cannon port, was extremely lifelike.

At first glance, it was almost identical to the sailboat his brother had given him.

“What is this?” Xia Yu asked again.

In his heart, he had a vague idea of the answer, but it felt somewhat absurd.

“It’s the sailboat I wanted to make up for you. Your brother’s sailboat was damaged, and I couldn’t find an identical one, so I drew the blueprint from memory, and I made every part myself. I hope it can make you a little happier.”

Lu Zhao also looked at the sailboat.

He had started preparing this apology gift for Xia Yu a long time ago, wanting to make an identical model sailboat for him.

But he always wanted to wait, to wait until it was perfect before giving it to Xia Yu, but when it was finally ready, he and Xia Yu had already broken up.

He said, “I was too busy back then, and this sailboat was entirely made by my own hands. By the time it was finished, a lot of time had passed, and we had started to argue and eventually broke up. So I never had the chance to give it to you.”

After Xia Yu left, he locked this sailboat in a briefcasecase, and in the first year after their separation, he didn’t even want to think about it.

Lu Zhao was wearing soft home clothes, but he was anything but gentle. Compared to Xu Zhan, Xia Yu’s brother, or anyone else Xia Yu had met in his life, Lu Zhao was always the worst.

But even the worst of people can have their fantasies.

He said, “I’ve been thinking for three years. If I had given this to you earlier, would you have still married Xu Zhan? Maybe you would have, but when you thought of me, would you have hated me less?”

He didn’t want Xia Yu to always remember the worst side of him.

He knew he had never been gentle or loving towards Xia Yu, but he still naively wanted Xia Yu to remember at least some good things about him.

He was greedy like that.

Xia Yu looked up at the ceiling.

He had spent half an hour in the study, trying to be a mature adult.

But Lu Zhao always made him revert to the immature and impulsive kid he had been years ago.

Lu Zhao was right. If he had known that there was a sailboat, handcrafted by Lu Zhao himself, hidden somewhere in this villa, he would probably have been overjoyed.

He knew Lu Zhao too well.

Expensive gifts didn’t represent affection, but items that took up a lot of Lu Zhao’s time and effort were undoubtedly significant.

Even if this was an apology rather than a gift, it showed that he still held a place in Lu Zhao’s heart.

But it wasn’t the same as it used to be, and he couldn’t be appeased by a sailboat alone.

“So, what does it mean for you to take it out now?” Xia Yu smiled. “It’s been three or four years. Are you trying to apologize and make amends?”

Lu Zhao shook his head. “No, I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

He did have that self-awareness.

The pain he had inflicted on Xia Yu couldn’t be so easily wiped away.

“I just really wanted to give it to you, but I never found the right opportunity,” he said. “Even last Christmas, I came back to Chuan City. I stood outside your house with this sailboat, waiting the whole night. I thought about a lot of things at the time—how you would react when you saw me, whether you would hate me and tell me to leave, what I would do then. But I waited for a long time, and you never came back. There was no one in the villa. Later, I found out that you had gone on vacation with Xu Zhan.”

Xia Yu was taken aback and asked, “How is that possible?”

Last Christmas, he and Xu Zhan had indeed gone to the snowy mountains. They had climbed the mountain together to watch the sunrise, found snacks in a small town at the foot of the mountain, and even bought a few blankets with a local ethnic flavor.

But Chuan City was so cold that night, how could Lu Zhao have waited outside his house?

“It’s true,” Lu Zhao said softly. “I didn’t know you had left. It was an old lady who lived across from you who passed by and asked me who I was waiting for. I said I was waiting for you, and she told me that you had gone on vacation with your husband and told me not to wait.”

Xia Yu was momentarily stunned.

He remembered this incident. When he and Xu Zhan returned, the old lady from across the street did tell him that someone had come looking for him on Christmas.

The old lady had described the person as quite handsome but not smiling, making him seem a bit creepy.

At that time, his first reaction had been that it was Lu Zhao, but he immediately thought that he was being delusional and dismissed the idea.

But now, it turned out that it had really been Lu Zhao.

Waiting outside in the snow for hours, carrying a huge briefcasecase—those were all things Lu Zhao had done.

Xia Yu was speechless.

He didn’t feel any sympathy for Lu Zhao. He had agreed to become lovers with Lu Zhao in the first place to take revenge on him. He wanted Lu Zhao to be heartbroken, to go crazy when he saw Xia Yu with Xu Zhan.

But the light in the living room was making his eyes hurt.

He was thinking that even though Chuan City was a southern city, it had been quite cold last year. Waiting outside for hours in the snow was no joke.

Lu Zhao walked slowly towards him and hugged Xia Yu.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me, and I’m not seeking redemption,” Lu Zhao said. “I just want to tell you that I was indeed stubborn and foolish back then. I had never been in a romantic relationship before, so I didn’t understand how to love someone. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t care about you.”

He was genuinely slow to realize it.

He truly lacked the talent for loving someone.

But he had reserved a place for Xia Yu in his heart long before he left.

He closed his eyes, feeling like he had returned to that snowy night. “I didn’t want you to spend Christmas with someone else. Thinking that you would be with Xu Zhan and even making him a terrible Christmas eggnog, I was so jealous.”