Inside the car, watching Shea Thorne flee in disarray, Milo Sinclair had no intention of chasing after her.
He slowly sat in the spot where Shea had just been sitting, gazing through the glass at her hasty retreat. The car's ceiling light was still on, and the tablet beside him was automatically playing information about the musician. Just moments ago, she was here, eyes full of admiration for the person on the screen.
But in an instant, she rejected him.
Milo Sinclair leaned back against the seat, activating the back massage function. He rubbed the top of his head where she had pushed him, having bumped it painfully.
"Mr. Sinclair?" The driver lowered the partition and asked, "Where are we going?"
The driver wasn't very clear about Milo Sinclair being rejected just now. The rear compartment was well soundproofed, so he hadn't heard any conversation.
However, when the car shook a little, the girl with Mr. Sinclair got off, ran back to school, and there was no movement afterward.
The driver had a sense of the situation, so he waited a long time before daring to ask.
"Back to the mountain," Milo Sinclair eased his emotions, looked down, and saw Shea Thorne's high heels that she had just passed through, neatly placed at his feet.
From the first time he met her, all the scenes replayed in his mind.
The driver quietly drove, heading toward the mountain.
That was his parents' home, or to be precise, where he lived until he was eighteen.
Unlike the so-called melodramatic conflicts of wealthy families, his family was actually quite harmonious. It was just that his father gave him some choices when he came of age, and after that, he didn't live there anymore. His usual life felt somewhat divided, and he rarely came back unless there was something major.
Tonight, he originally planned to see Shea Thorne's response and then decide whether to return. If she insisted on staying in the dormitory, he would spend a night there. If she followed him back to The Hallowed Grove, he would pick a free day to return later.
After all, at his age, having someone he wanted to develop a relationship with required him to inform his family, lest his mom create unexpected troubles for him at New Year's.
Last New Year's, when he returned home, there was a gentle and well-mannered young lady of a prominent family sitting at home, looking at him with a resentful and wistful gaze, as if he were a cold, neglectful husband who hadn't returned home in a year. She looked at him with joy despite the grievances.
What was his reaction back then?
He seemed to have checked the household registry several times in his room to make sure he hadn't acquired an unexpected wife, almost suspecting that his mother had forged his signature and married him off to this girl at the civil affairs bureau.
As it turned out, the video of the household registry he showed Shea Thorne was conveniently taken at that time, fearing another resentful woman might appear, he would occasionally take it out for a look.
Later, he learned that the girl must have seen him somewhere and developed unwarranted ideas about him.
However, since he rarely socialized, the girl had no way to meet him, so she asked the elders to set them up and got to know his parents.
Through his mother, she wanted to marry him, frequently visiting his old home, but she didn't know he didn't live there, and she was too awkward to say it clearly, his mother couldn't control him either.
So when she saw him at New Year's, she had that expression.
If she had pointed at him and thrown a tantrum, Milo Sinclair might have found her interesting and looked at her twice.
But she, a spoiled, arrogant young lady, insisted on acting aggrieved and pretentious, Milo Sinclair instantly lost interest.
When the car arrived, the lights at the villa on the mountain were already off. Milo Sinclair had just gotten out of the car when the driver followed, quietly asking, "Mr. Sinclair, what should we do with the violin case in the trunk?"
It was then Milo Sinclair remembered that Shea Thorne hadn't taken her violin.
Turning to the trunk, he took out the violin case and brought it upstairs to his own room.
Placing the violin case beside the moonlit bay tree in the room, Milo Sinclair went for a bath to relax before turning on his computer. In his email was a video Aldridge sent him at noon.
Originally, he wanted the video just to observe her symptoms when she was heartbroken, to better diagnose the root cause and help alleviate her pain.
But looking at her face, Milo Sinclair got distracted once more.
If he were too busy with work and never came home, what would Shea Thorne do?
Would she also look at him with resentment and grievances like that girl he had never met before?
But Milo Sinclair felt Shea Thorne should have the temper to tear the roof off the house; she wouldn't let herself stay in a vulnerable situation like that.
The video's cover was her face, pale yet with eyes full of stubbornness and strength. Facing countless jeers and feeling isolated, she pressed her lips tight, trying not to lose courage.
When she mentioned being Miles Crawford's fiancée, that stubbornness disappeared, as if she had become another person, standing in the video, being bullied, like a pitiful little thing with no support, helplessly waiting for someone to save her.
Milo opened another email, which contained surveillance videos obtained by the lab. It showed the complete context of the monitored segment. She indeed seemed like two different people before and after, passive and weak facing Miles Crawford, yet displaying elegance and intelligence in front of him.
It was this kind of elegance and composure that made him overlook her youth, merely twenty years old, possibly without experiences of budding love and confusion in a romantic relationship, that required gradual development. His proposal for them to live together was too aggressive, scaring her into fleeing.
After playing the video, Milo Sinclair frowned, replaying it from the start dozens of times over.
A first-person perspective video, different from the objective surveillance view, after watching it many times, it felt as if Shea Thorne were complaining her grievances to him.
Milo Sinclair, frustrated beyond bearing, picked up his phone to unlock it, intending to send Shea Thorne a voice call, to ask how she felt at the time when her heart ached.
But his fingers hovered over the text area, failing to type a single character. He had long forgotten how he wooed girls during his youthful days.
He knew she had some entanglements with Miles Crawford, hence he demonstrated his social status to her today, allowing her to feel the prestige of standing by his side.
What Shea Thorne wanted, he could fulfill, except for this part. He couldn't express liking, nor easily discuss love, capable of offering all the honor of being together but unable to undertake actions abandoning his pride.
Locking the screen, Milo Sinclair looked at his reflection on the black screen, finding it amusing.
The girl just rejected him.
...
Yet, Ariana Thorne hadn't returned to the dormitory. Not long after she ran into the campus, Shea Thorne regained control of her body. She wanted to return to find Milo Sinclair, but was helpless as Ariana Thorne had spoken too harshly. Going back now would seem abrupt.
So she changed from running to walking, looking back every few steps, hoping Milo Sinclair would catch up. They still had a chance.
But Milo Sinclair didn't, he just gave up like that.
So much for saying he liked her.
Her mind recalled Ariana Thorne's past in a daze. When she reached the artificial lake, Shea Thorne finally reacted a bit, sitting on the scattered rocks by the lake, threading through Ariana Thorne's initial intentions.
This memory came from Ariana Thorne's past life. Her childhood was much the same, her parents divorced. When her mother left, she took everything, including the elder brother who always took care of her, leaving behind only a cello.
The girl depended on her father, an archaeologist with work so unique he was often absent due to business trips, frequently troubling the newly moved-in neighbors, a mother and son, to take care of the girl.
The girl and the boy next door, Miles Crawford, were childhood sweethearts. She held her cello every day, reminiscing about her mother. Miles cheered her up each day, leading her out of memories to learn the cello. They agreed that when the girl stood at the National Concert Hall, her first piece would be his favorite "Aria."
She inherited her mother's beauty and loved the cello to the point of obsession. That year, her biological mother, Alice Lawson, came to the country for a concert, but her father refused to let her go. She carried her cello to Kingscrest to secretly see her mother.
When she arrived, it was night, and due to traffic, Miles Crawford didn't make it in time. The girl walked alone and met with a mishap, dragged into a dark alley.
By the time Miles found her, the cello case was broken, and the strings snapped.
The assailant had long fled into the night, in the corner of the dark alleyway, she hugged her bruised body, nearly strangled to death.
Miles arrived like a ray of light, covering Ariana Thorne with the first garment after her devastation, hiding her fatal scars.
He gave her the last shred of dignity.