Bought For A Baby, Kept For A Lifetime-Chapter 68: Her Feelings Matter

Never!

He’d said until she’d plagued him with another constant session of tears and wails he could no longer stand it.

"Ice cream," he suddenly said, and her cries stopped.

She slowly gazed up at him with crystalline eyes.

"Do you want some ice cream?"

If the alcohol had dumbed her down to an infinite childlike level, she should be enticed by something loved by children.

And as expected, she nodded hurriedly.

And just like that, he found himself going downstairs to the fridge, but unexpectedly, when he pulled it open, he found no ice cream. How could there be any when the dessert in question was one he hated to his very bones?

The girl trailing after him like a child was now wearing one of his dress shirts because he’d torn off her top in his anger.

Massaging his temple, he turned to her.

"Where’s the ice cream?" She peeked behind him expectantly.

When she got no reply, her eyes began to mist over.

"Did you lie to me? You weren’t going to give me any ice cream, right?"

Seeing the tears begin to gather in her eyes, he instantly panicked. If he heard another second of her wailing again, his headache would undoubtedly burst his brain right through his skull.

"I’ll go get it!" he said quickly. "Just give me five minutes and I’ll go get it."

Even last year’s plummet in sales stocks hadn’t put him in this much distress. He found himself instantly proposing to get her what she wanted so she wouldn’t fill his ears with annoying sounds.

Her eyes brightened up, and she wiped off the tears with the back of her hand.

Oh fuck, what the hell had he gotten himself into?

This was undoubtedly one of the reasons he hated random acts of kindness.

A man had given a woman three glasses of alcohol to help her numb her pain. Turns out that was a totally wrong move.

Remind him to ignore her tears next time. He’d become a damned rock first before seeing her drink even a drop of alcohol in front of him ever again.

With that, the girl actually sat in the living room. He kept her busy by handing her a remote, keeping his face in the shadows as the eighty-inch screen television came on, and she excitedly switched through channels while he found himself driving off to the nearest store at around two A.M. in the morning.

He returned swiftly, and the girl jumped up and down after receiving the said ice cream.

To think this girl, wolfing down ice cream like a starved beast, was his antidote to getting a wink of sleep. But here he was, eyes wide open, watching her devour a sweet treat he’d never tasted again in nineteen years. She made it look like the most delicious thing on earth, but he hated it.

It was no surprise there wasn’t a single drop of it in the manor. The first time his mother had bought him ice cream, she’d left him, and he’d despised it since then.

"Kristen used to love this so much." She suddenly stopped eating, the spoon hovering over the ice cream cup with a distant look in her eyes.

"He loved ice cream so much I used to threaten him with it, and he would do anything I said. Now he might... he might never get to taste it ever again."

Her tears fell, and he found that uncomfortable feeling again that made him instinctively move his hand and wipe it off her face because seeing them fall made him feel a stifling emotion.

"You said you wouldn’t cry anymore after getting your ice cream."

She sniffed and wiped the remnants of her tears.

"Will he wake up? Can I really hope to get him back again?"

At this moment, he recognized the kind of hope shining in her eyes. Though he remained in the shadows, she was sitting towards the light.

He’d stopped being reminded of his past, but because of this girl, he would constantly be taken back to the little boy he used to be.

"As long as there’s still life in him, he’ll be back," he found himself saying in a reassuring voice that made the girl’s eyes light up.

"I feel the same way. As long as he’s still alive, I won’t stop hoping he’ll live."

She ate another spoonful of ice cream before her eyes lit up. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"Will you make a wish with me? Let’s wish to the stars that Kristen comes back." She said, then without giving him a chance, she stood up, grabbed his hand, and ran towards the nearest window.

Andrew didn’t have his mask on, so he stayed behind her.

"There are so many stars in the sky. If we wish right now, it’ll surely come true. Hurry and wish with me that Kristen comes back safe and sound."

She joined her palms together and closed her eyes.

Andrew stared at the back of her head for a long time.

If she were someone else, he’d have told her that the dumbest thing to do was rely on wishes.

Wishes were fairytales that never came true.

He knew, for his younger self had wished for one thousand four hundred and sixty days and nights that his mother would return to him. She never did.

If she were someone else, he would tell her to stop wasting her time and breath, he would tell her to stop being delusional.

But it was her, and he realized that he didn’t want to do or say anything that would cause more tears to fill her eyes. He didn’t want to do or say anything that would cause a heartbroken look to surface on her face.

Because some way or another, her feelings... mattered to him.

This realization caused him to stiffen completely. He stared at the girl’s earnest reflection on the window’s glass in front of him.

Her feelings mattered to him. That was why he’d given her a drink when she’d cried.

It wasn’t just giving her a drink. It was him making an effort to comfort her.

A trace of astonishment showed on his rigid features.

He looked at Anne’s face deeply, stared at her without once looking away.

The soft, warm smile on her face with her eyes closed and her palms joined—the look of peace on her face—made every chaos and discomfort in his chest settle. And suddenly, he wasn’t annoyed he couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t annoyed about it at all.

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

The sound of his heart was audible to him, and it almost felt as if she could hear it too.

She opened her eyes and smiled brightly, and his lips slowly raised in a pleasant smile back at her reflection.

It was a smile that came with a tender flutter in his chest.

The rigid man’s ever-cold features looked unexpectedly soft. This genuine smile made his scary aura slowly dissipate into something calm, but it seemed only the woman next to him right now could bring out this non-existent side of him.

.....

Within the walls of the Sterling estate.

Old Master Sterling could be seen sitting in a shade within the garden sharing tea with Butler Jones, who’d come to visit that morning.

"Hahaha! You mean to tell me that girl made Andrew chase her all around the manor?"

The butler shared in the older man’s laughter. "Yes, Old Master. I was just about to retire when I heard the commotion. Not only that, she made Master go out to get her ice cream in the middle of the night. She also made him make wishes with her by the windows. After that, she forced him to tell her stories before she fell asleep."

"Hahaha!" Elder Sterling laughed even harder until a tear slid down his face. "I still can’t believe it. Andrew, do all that for a girl?"

"I know, Master. I was there, but I couldn’t believe it myself. I watched them both all night. I can say with certainty that no one else is compatible for Master other than that girl."

Elder Sterling nodded in agreement.

"Since that’s the case, it’s time to begin with the plan."

A mysterious smile showed on Elder Sterling’s face.

...

Anne facepalmed herself as all the memories rushed into her head.

What the hell was wrong with her?

She’d... done all that?

She must have been crazy.

"Stupid, stupid!" Anne slapped her own head but couldn’t stop thinking back and cringing at everything she’d done.