His Belated Love for the Abandoned Ex-Wife Chapter 327: Explaining the Three Years

Julian's voice was barely a whisper, laden with a soft, crushing gentleness that bordered on fragility. "Do you want to sleep, or do you want to talk?"

"Talk."

"Do you want to sit on the bed, or the couch?"

"Right here. Just standing."

Julian pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded, exhaling a heavy, resigned breath. "Go ahead."

Iris spoke with unwavering sincerity. "I did live with Brandon for over a year."

Julian lowered his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he struggled to pull air into his lungs. When he finally looked up, he closed the distance between them in two strides, reaching out to grip her wrist. "Let's stop talking. We should just sleep."

Iris allowed him to pull her toward the bed before digging her heels in and shaking his hand off. "I'm not finished yet."

A shadow darkened Julian's face. "I don't want to hear it."

"So, you're telling me you have absolutely no problem with it?"

Julian offered a bitter smile and stepped closer, looming over her from just inches away.

He was too close. Their breaths mingled in the scant space between them, the rhythm of their hearts almost audible in the silence.

She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, her lungs filling with the clean, refreshing scent of his soap. It was a smell that tugged at her heart, anchoring her even as it captivated her.

His eyes burned with a warm, red rim, and his Adam's apple bobbed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse—light yet impossibly deep. "If I don't listen, maybe I'll just have to live with some resentment. But if I do listen? Are you trying to rip my heart right out of my chest?"

Iris shook her head. Even now, the memory of those events terrified her, a wellspring of sorrow that refused to dry up. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, tracking silently down her cheeks. "Julian, nothing happened between Brandon and me. As crazy as it sounds, that is the truth."

Julian's smile twisted with bitterness. "It does sound crazy. Brandon comes from a wealthy family; he's the chief of surgery at a major hospital. He moved all the way to Edulet City for you, lived under the same roof for over a year, and you expect me to believe nothing happened? Logic dictates that story makes no sense."

Iris knew it defied logic. That was exactly why she hadn't dared to offer an explanation in front of Lily and the Everhart family earlier. She knew she couldn't make it sound plausible, and it would only come across as a desperate scramble for excuses.

But if she didn't make Julian understand, that thorn of suspicion would remain lodged in his heart forever.

If she wanted any chance of moving forward with him, she had to rip it out, roots and all.

Iris pressed on. "Brandon is in love with my best friend, Zoe."

"Even if it is your best friend Zoe, there's no way she would have abandoned her family and her career to move across the country to Edulet City just to stay with you."

Iris tasted bitterness in her mouth. Her eyes shimmered with tears as she looked up at him. "Maybe Brandon just pitied me."

Julian frowned, falling into a heavy silence.

The more she tried to justify it, the more insane it sounded.

Iris drew a long, shaky breath. Her chest felt tight, aching with a dull pressure. Remembering that time made her voice tremble involuntarily. "Actually, by my third trimester, I had already decided not to leave you. I thought I would stay and face everything with you. We had a child together, after all. I thought your father might change his stance because of the baby. I thought Lily might finally get over her obsession with marrying you once she saw we had a family."

Julian's expression darkened, urgency creeping into his tone. "Keep going."

"But I was wrong." Tears welled up in Iris' eyes, her voice cracking under the strain. "To get what they wanted, they were willing to do absolutely anything. They were even willing to kill our baby."

Julian's body began to tremble. His hand gripped her arm with bruising force, his voice rising in frantic anger. "What do you mean?"

"The morning I left, I had actually arranged to meet Zoe upstairs so she could take a blood sample to run some background checks. When I got Zoe's text and walked out of the courtyard, the iron gate was already wide open. The security guard was nowhere to be seen. I called Zoe's phone, heard it ringing from outside the walls, and walked out... I went a few dozen yards and saw her phone lying on the ground, but she wasn't there. That's the last thing I remember until I woke up on an operating table..."

Julian let go of her, burying his face in his hands as he staggered back two steps. He lowered his head, gasping for air, his shoulders slumped as if they were bearing the weight of the world. He looked like a man in agony.

Iris wiped the tears from her eyes and continued. "Maybe God felt sorry for me—sorry for Harper. By some insane twist of fate, Brandon happened to be consulting at that hospital that day. He was walking past the OR just after finishing a surgery. They mistook him for the doctor hired to perform the procedure and dragged him in. If it weren't for Brandon, Harper wouldn't be here today.

"Since I couldn't leave the country safely, he sent me to live in Edulet City. That first year after Harper was born, he helped me through the worst of it. He helped me survive."

Julian turned his back to her, bracing his hands on his hips as he took deep, ragged breaths. He looked up at the ceiling, fighting to keep the tears welling in his eyes from spilling over.

The pain and grief were suffocating him. With nowhere for his rage to go, he snapped. He surged forward and swept everything off the shelf in one violent motion.

The tissue box, hand sanitizer, phone charger, and assorted knick-knacks crashed to the floor. Iris flinched at the sudden violence, scrambling backward as she watched him with wide, nervous eyes.

He looked unhinged, like a man who had lost his mind. He reared back and slammed his fist into the wall.

A dull thud echoed through the room, making Iris jump.

She snapped out of her paralysis instantly. She rushed to Julian and frantically grabbed his hand, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably. "Julian, stop! Please don't do this."

Julian squeezed his eyes shut, the rims red and inflamed. His breathing was ragged and uneven. His fist remained clenched and shaking, veins bulging faintly along his forehead and neck.

He was fighting a losing battle to hold it all in, to suppress the storm raging inside him. He wanted nothing more than to turn that violence against himself.