Mr. Warner, Your Wife is Running Away Again!-Chapter 78: Looking for Jealousy Where There Is None
Shane halted, discreetly taking half a step back to create some distance, a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, speaking in a flat tone, "It’s better for Miss Wilson to ask this question at a cosmetic surgery clinic; abdominal sculpting is quite trendy nowadays. And seeing Miss Wilson’s face, you should be quite familiar with this field, so I won’t show my lack of knowledge here."
When he finished speaking, he ignored Crystal’s livid expression, lifted his foot and bent his body to slip into the camper.
Crystal stomped her foot angrily, not believing that a man like Shane, with power and influence, would be genuinely faithful to one woman, to one marriage!
After taking a shower, Shane returned to the tent to see Audrey Sutton sprawled over a small table doing homework.
Math was her weak subject, and whenever she worked on math problems, she bit the end of her pen.
When others bite their pens, they might be thinking; when she bites her pen, eighty percent of the time she’s distracted.
"Ahem—" Shane cleared his throat softly, reminding Audrey to regain her focus, "Not done yet?"
Audrey glanced up at him, "I don’t know how to do it."
"What were you doing in class?"
While his mouth questioned her, he had already moved over to sit cross-legged in front of her, reaching out to take the workbook from her hand. After looking at the problem, he said, "Isn’t this the same type as the problem I explained to you last time?"
Audrey uncertainly asked in return, "...Is it?"
"It seems you weren’t paying attention when I explained, because if you genuinely understood it then, you’d be able to solve this one too."
Audrey had already forgotten what he had explained to her last time.
"Hand me the pen."
Audrey paused for a moment, took the pen from her mouth and handed it to him. Shane frowned and glanced at her; she hurriedly and silently removed the pen cap stained with saliva.
Seeing him holding the pen, he first analyzed the problem for her, then fluidly laid out the formulas on a notepad.
He explained while writing. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂
Her eyes were clearly fixed on his moving hand, and his voice was in her ears, yet her mind drifted uncontrollably to all sorts of random thoughts.
Under the small lamp, the ring on his ring finger glinted.
Audrey suddenly froze and said, "Where’s my ring?!"
Shane, who was explaining a problem, was interrupted by her, and looked at her helplessly, seeing her roll over and grab a backpack from the bedhead, rummaging through it on the bed until she dumped everything out and fished out the tiny ring among the cosmetics.
She put the ring on her finger, satisfied, and returned to the table only to find Shane staring at her with a stern face, as if blaming her for not paying attention.
Audrey gave a flattering smile, "Explain it to me again."
Before they got married, she relied heavily on her older brother Stephen Sutton for help with schoolwork. Although Stephen taught English at school, he was also proficient in other subjects.
Even though Stephen had graduated five or six years ago, his involvement in the education sector meant his knowledge hadn’t faded much.
However, Shane, after graduation, probably hadn’t touched the subjects he learned in school again, yet his memory of those math formulas was unexpectedly sharper than Audrey’s, who was currently studying them.
"Watch less cartoons later and memorize these formulas well."
"...Okay."
It seemed like explaining the problems had made Shane crave a smoke, because after he finished, he fished a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his suit pocket and slipped outside the tent.
Audrey diligently went over his explanations in the notepad again. He didn’t give her the answer directly, only the solution approach.
After solving it, Audrey took her workbook outside to ask him, "Check if this is correct."
Shane didn’t even reach out to take the workbook from her hand; he just slightly bent down to glance at her answer. After a moment, he said, "The answer is correct, but you took the long way."
He thought Audrey would spend some more time figuring out a simpler way to get the answer after hearing what he said, but he didn’t expect her to immediately close the workbook and say with a smile, "Who cares if it’s the long way or not, as long as I reach the destination!"
With that, she lifted the tent flap, tossed the workbook inside, and ran back to stand beside him, looking at him and asking, "Do you...want a beer?"
"Finished your homework?"
"...Yes."
He obviously didn’t believe her, but then again, since they were out having fun, there was no need to discipline her so strictly. The fact that she brought the workbook along was already commendable.
Shane then asked, "What happened to your tent?"
Audrey dazedly looked at her tent, where taped patches reflected light under the lamp, and she said, "It’s broken, but we’re only staying for two days, and it won’t rain, so it’ll make do."
Shane looked at her skeptically, but didn’t pursue further. He stubbed out the cigarette in his hand and tossed it into a bin by the lakeshore.
"Weren’t you going to get beer?" he said.
"I’ll go get it!"
...
At night, the breeze by the lakeshore was slightly cool. In this place far from the big city, you could see stars when you looked up at night.
It was past eleven o’clock at night, and most people had returned to their tents to rest.
The two of them sat side by side on the grass, with the General obediently squatting on Shane’s other side.
Audrey came over with a case of beer, and Shane doubted she’d be able to drink it all, but she boasted that she could drink a whole case by herself.
"I’ve always been curious about something: how many girlfriends have you had before?"
Shane turned to her and asked, "Why do you think I must have had girlfriends?"
Audrey sized him up and said, "With your conditions, even if you didn’t actively date, there would definitely be girls wanting to date you. You might have passed the age of falling recklessly in love now..."
Halfway through the sentence, noticing him furrow his brow, Audrey quickly explained, "I don’t mean you’re old, just that you’re no longer naïve and reckless like in youth. But when you were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, right at the age curious about love, if a girl happened to want to date you, you’d surely try it out, right?"
To her surprise, Shane didn’t answer her question, but instead asked her, "Did you date anyone when you were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen?"
Audrey pouted and said, "Haven’t I told you before? No boy dared to pursue me. You haven’t answered my question yet!"
Shane looked at the lake and quietly said, "Didn’t have time to date."
"So that means you were willing to. Who are you thinking of now?"
Shane chuckled softly and said to her, "You’re just looking for jealousy where there isn’t any."
Audrey stubbornly said, "I’m not jealous. I’m just casually asking, so just honestly answer. I don’t mind at all."
"The environment I grew up in was different from yours. My family wasn’t as harmonious as yours."
Audrey gave an understanding "oh" and quietly took a sip from the beer can, thinking how someone who could achieve multiple times more than peers at his age must have extraordinary talent and unimaginable pressure and efforts since childhood.
