Those Seven Years Between Me and Him: From Lovers to Strangers

I am Elianna Lambert. The day I received a tearful call from my best friend, Regina Haynes, telling me that her ex-husband had abused her, my boyfriend, Kristian Reynolds, and I flew back to the country overnight and rescued her.

To help Regina get even, I set aside all business interests and took every order from her ex-husband's company. Kristian also made it clear that he would have him blacklisted across the entire industry.

The day her ex-husband went bankrupt, Regina hugged me, laughing and crying at the same time.

"You two cannot fight, okay? If you break up, who am I supposed to go with?" She said jokingly.

Kristian pulled me out of her arms. "Shut up. There is no way I am ever breaking up with Elianna."

Later, I had her move into my apartment to live with Kristian and me so that I could look after her; I even arranged for her to work at my company, and encouraged her to find a new boyfriend and start a new life.

Every time Kristian would wrap his arms around me and ask, seemingly jealous, "Who is the one you really love, anyway?"

Everything was fine until I left on a three-month business trip and secured a major international deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

When I finally returned to the country, I was eager to surprise Kristian. He drove to pick me up. Out of habit, I opened the passenger-side door and was about to get in when my fingers brushed against something wedged between the seat cushions.

It was a used condom.

...

I held it between my fingers, which were trembling uncontrollably.

It took me a long time to finally remember how to speak. I stared at Kristian in the driver's seat and asked, "With whom?!"

Kristian was clearly flustered, but he kept his lips tightly pressed together and refused to explain.

The atmosphere inside the car grew increasingly suffocating and tense, and my heart sank little by little.

I turned my head away, stubbornly refusing to let my tears fall.

I only sent Regina a message. "Regina, I am breaking up with Kristian. Pack your things. We are leaving."

A few minutes later, Regina hurried downstairs, but she had not brought anything with her.

I thought she had been in too much of a hurry and stepped forward to explain why I wanted to leave.

But the next second, Regina avoided my hand with red-rimmed eyes and walked over to stand beside Kristian. "Elianna, I am sorry. We both drank a lot that night..."

The air seemed to be stagnant. All I could hear was the wind rushing past my ears.

Looking at Regina, who seemed about to cry but was holding herself back, I felt sick to my stomach.

I stared coldly at Kristian and Regina, who did not dare meet my eyes, and gritted out, "What exactly are you two trying to say?"

Regina's face turned deathly pale. She bit her lip, looking as though she were about to burst into tears.

Kristian immediately stepped in front of her, shielding her behind him. He gently patted the back of her hand to comfort her before turning to look at me. "Elianna, it is not what you think. Just listen to me. Regina is timid and sensitive. She has been going through a really hard time lately. We have been meaning to tell you this... I am sorry."

The last shred of hope I had been clinging to was completely extinguished.

My body swayed; a sharp pain tore through my chest, and the world seemed to spin around me.

Kristian's expression changed. He seemed to instinctively reach out to steady me.

Just then, Regina spoke timidly. "Elianna, did you forget to take your painkillers again because you were too focused on work?"

As she spoke, she took out the painkillers she carried with her.

I took a step back. Seeing the two of them standing together, looking so perfectly matched, I felt the sight almost unbearable.

"I will throw out everything of yours in my apartment," I said.

Then I grabbed my suitcase and walked away without looking back.

When I returned to the apartment, it still looked exactly as it had when the three of us lived there together, except that at some point, Regina's belongings had gradually outnumbered mine.

I had kept my emotions under control the entire time, but I finally broke down. Tears streaming down my face, I angrily stuffed every one of Regina's and Kristian's belongings into garbage bags.

The thought of what they had done in this apartment made me feel sick.

After throwing out everything that belonged to them, I sank to the floor. I looked at the gifts I had brought back for them inside my open suitcase, and found the whole thing absurd.

I threw those gifts into the garbage bags as well.

Just then, Regina and Kristian arrived at the apartment.

Regina looked around at the messy apartment, and the guilt and remorse on her face deepened. Tears immediately fell from her eyes. "Elianna, we never wanted to hurt you. But you cannot control who you fall in love with..."

Kristian saw her tears and pulled her into his arms, his heart aching for her.

Regina pushed against him as though she wanted to resist, but in the end, she let him hold her, looking as if she simply could not win against him.

I watched their little performance and let out a cold laugh.

Regina's body trembled slightly, and Kristian immediately turned to me and said, clearly displeased. "Elianna, can you stop being so harsh on her? She already knows she was wrong. Do you really have to humiliate her like this?"

He made it sound as though they, who had betrayed me, were the ones who had suffered some enormous injustice, while I had become the narrow-minded, heartless villain.

The chronic migraines I had developed from years of high-pressure business negotiations flared up when I was overcome by emotion.

A sharp pain shot through my temple, and I could barely stay on my feet.

A trace of pity flashed through Kristian's eyes. He lowered his voice and said to Regina, "Go wait in the car. We do not need any of this. I will buy you those."

Regina looked at me, wanting to say something but holding back.

In the end, she chose to listen to Kristian.

I watched her walk away and finally accepted the reality.

Regina had always been like this-she always needed someone to depend on, like a hothouse flower.

She used to depend on me to survive. After I was gone for three months, she immediately latched onto Kristian.

I just could not understand why, out of all the men in the world, she had to choose Kristian.

I bitterly curled my lips upwards and avoided Kristian when he tried to help me.

His hand froze in midair. He gritted his teeth and said, "You are always acting like you do not need anyone. But we are lovers! What would it hurt to depend on me a little more?"

He sighed and added, "Regina would never be like this."

He had fallen out of love with me, yet he put the blame on me and even compared me to Regina.

I cut him off coldly. "I don't depend on you because I can get what I want by myself. Regina has to depend on you because she has no ability to stand on her own feet. And we are not lovers. We stopped being lovers the moment ago."

Kristian frowned. After a long silence, he sighed in reluctant compromise. "No matter what, we've wronged you. I will talk to my father and have him give you control of this project."

When I heard him say so, I sneered. "Kristian, I do not need your favor. Even if you do not give me that project, it will be mine in the end."

Kristian said nothing more. He gave me one long look before finally turning and leaving the apartment we had once shared and called home.

I could not hold myself up any longer. I collapsed onto the sofa, and the headache I had been forcing myself to endure came crashing back, overwhelming me.

With those seven years with him having ingrained the habit so deeply in me that it had become instinctive, I murmured without realizing it, "Kristian, it hurts..."

But the only response I got was silence.

The apartment felt empty and cold. No one would ever instinctively turn toward me in the middle of the night again, pull me into his arms, and tuck the blanket around me.

I suddenly came to my senses and remembered that Kristian was no longer here.

From the moment he chose Regina and left me, the seven-year secret relationship between us had ended in the most humiliating way possible.

I forced myself upright, but my body was weak, and my head was spinning, and I saw black spots before my eyes.

Years of high-pressure work had left me with chronic migraines. Whenever one struck, I could not get through it without painkillers.

I had no choice but to brace myself against the wall and slowly walk toward the living room to search the cabinet for the painkillers I always kept on hand.

Just as I steadied myself, the doorbell rang softly.

My heart skipped a beat. I walked to the entryway and opened the door.

On the doormat sat a brand-new box of imported painkillers and a packed thermos with warm, soothing herbal tea in it.

Two sticky notes were attached to the medicine box. I could recognize the handwriting at a glance.

I could see Kristian's bold and sharp strokes he wrote with a pen. "I know you will get a headache in the middle of the night. Remember to take your medicine on time. Do not try to tough it out."

And I could see the other one Regina wrote with small words and elegant handwriting. "Elianna, take care of yourself. We did not mean anything by this. We just feel sorry for you."

I looked down at the two notes, written in such nonchalant tones, and found the whole thing deeply ironic.

The two people I trusted most had cheated on me, and now they were pretending to care about me and trying to comfort me.

I picked everything up and hurled it outside before slamming the door shut. The click of the lock sounded painfully sharp in the silence of the night.

And my headache only got worse after that.

I could not be bothered to deal with anything outside. I went into the kitchen, turned on the stove, and cooked a simple pasta.

I carried it to the empty dining room, took my painkillers with some warm water, and mechanically shoved forkful after forkful of pasta into my mouth.

The pasta tasted utterly bland.

When I was about to take the last bite, a lump suddenly formed in my throat, and hot tears fell down without warning and landed in the porcelain plate.

I could not understand it.

Kristian and I had been together for seven years.

Things between us began when we had been business rivals, then we had secretly fallen in love and been together. We had survived countless battles in the business world, schemes from our competitors, and all kinds of crises when dealing with overseas projects. We had been to the darkest lows together and shared the joy of reaching the top.

I could not believe that everything between us after all those years could really be destroyed so easily because of someone else.

I could not understand Regina either.

She had been my best friend for more than a decade, and I had treated her like family.

When her ex-husband abused her, I flew 621 miles back to the country to help her. She had hugged me and told me she loved me the most in the world.

They had both said they loved me. Yet they had both chosen to betray me.

I did not understand what kind of love could make Kristian give up on me, whom he had loved and had been with for seven years.

I did not understand what kind of obsession could make Regina betray me without hesitation, despite everything I had done for her as her best friend for more than a decade, either.

I spent the entire night lying awake until the sky began to lighten.

The next morning, I put all my negative emotions aside, changed into a sharp business suit, and arrived at Lambert Group headquarters right on time.

There was a crucial negotiation today.

My car entered the underground parking lot in the headquarters office building. I had just parked my car, and when my eyes happened to drift toward the lounge area nearby, I froze.

Two familiar figures were standing side by side over there.

Kristian was dressed in a custom-tailored suit. He had his head slightly lowered as he patiently fixed the loose strands of hair around Regina's face.

Regina tilted her head up to look at him, her gaze soft and affectionate, and she leaned against him dependently.

They were naturally intimate, as though they had always belonged together.

I forced myself to look away and walked past them without glancing sideways at them.

Kristian noticed me too. A flicker of barely perceptible awkwardness crossed his eyes, and he instinctively let go of Regina.

He took several steps forward and stopped me. "Elianna, you should get more rest with such a bad headache. I will let you have today's project."

He was probably trying to make it up to me and ease his guilt.

After all, Kristian had been born privileged as the heir of the Reynolds family, the most powerful elite family in the world.

And I was the only person in the past twenty years who had ever taken a project away from him.

That summer, when I was eighteen years old, he had stopped me and grinned at me with that cocky, teasing smile. "Elianna, right? I remember you. You are good, but I will beat you next time."

I had smiled at him. And just like that, seven years had passed.

To keep people from getting suspicious, we had always kept our relationship a secret.

So no one knew that we had already broken up.

I looked up at him and said, my voice cold and utterly emotionless. "No need. Mr. Reynolds, one could only win in business competitions with one's ability. I have never needed anyone to give me a project out of mercy, and I certainly do not need you to step aside for me."

With that, I stopped looking at him and walked straight past him into the headquarters office building, throwing myself into business negotiations.

By the time I finished all my work, it was already noon.

Lambert Group and Reynolds Group shared the same employee cafeteria. With people coming and going all around me, I found a quiet corner by the window and sat down alone for lunch.

I looked toward Regina, who was nearby and surrounded by people, all of them asking about her relationship with Kristian.

It seemed that in just one night, everyone at Lambert Group had already learned that Kristian, the CEO of the Reynolds Group, had been with a woman, Regina, who was sweet and gentle.

I found it deeply ironic that it was not that he did not want to make his relationship public, but he simply had not loved me enough.

He loved Regina so much that he wanted everyone to know she was his girlfriend.

I was lost in thought when a figure stopped beside my table.

It was Regina.

She quietly slipped away from everyone without letting them notice her and came to me. She held out her delicately slender hand, a single piece of fruit-flavored hard candy resting in her palm.

It was my favorite when I was a child.

I stared at the candy for a moment, lost in thought.

I had grown up under my parents' strict discipline. If I failed to complete my studies or pass my tests, I was not allowed to eat or rest.

Through countless hungry days, Regina had secretly slipped over to me and thrust a piece of candy into my hand.

Later, I had told her everything I liked without holding anything back, and it had been her who had quietly told Kristian that I loved candies.

That was why, for the next seven years, Kristian always carried my favorite candy in his pocket.

Regina looked at me with guilt in her eyes and spoke softly. "Elianna, this is the candy you love. Here."

I looked up at Regina calmly, but I did not reach for the candy. "No. It is just a little sweet treat. When I was a child, I did not have much, so I treasured it. Now I have more than enough. I do not need it anymore, and I do not feel like I am losing anything by giving it up."

The sweetness of a single piece of candy was fleeting and cheap.

Regina's hand froze in midair. Her face went pale. In the end, she silently pulled her hand back, lowered her head, turned around, and hurried away.

I watched her leave, then looked down at the food on my tray, and found that I had completely lost my appetite.

I cleared my tray and returned to the office.

The key overseas project between the Lambert and Reynolds families officially kicked off, and everyone began intense work.

As one of the core leaders of the project, I brought my team to the site first thing in the morning, checking every piece of data and confirming every step of the process.

Everyone in the office was buried in work, rushing to meet the schedule, except Regina.

She sat at her desk, holding her pen without writing a single letter for a long time. Her eyes kept drifting past the crowd and resting on Kristian nearby as he was talking about work with the others in a meeting.

I stood behind her and watched for two minutes.

I knew that unmistakable look of admiration and dependence in her eyes too well, and she did not even bother to hide it.

I suppressed the messy and complicated emotion inside me and looked down at the parameters of the project on her screen she had entered.

"Regina," I said calmly. "Take a look at the data you entered. You can even make mistakes in such basic data verification work. What exactly were you looking at just now?"

Regina stiffened as she was being called out for her mistake in front of everyone. She immediately snapped back to reality.

Everyone around us turned to look at her. Her face went pale, her lips trembled slightly, and tears fell from her eyes the next second.

Kristian pushed through the crowd and stepped in front of Regina, shielding her behind him with an evident displeased look on his face. "It was just a mistake when entering the data. It happens all the time. She'll fix it, and it'll be fine. You do not need to be so harsh on her."

As I watched the scene unfold, countless old memories came rushing back in my mind.

Back when we worked together, even if I made a tiny mistake that did not matter much, he would never shield me.

He would frown and tell me that there were no lucky breaks in the business world, and that one careless mistake could ruin everything.

He used to be a man of principles. He hated nothing more than carelessness at work.

That was exactly why I had fallen for him.

He was a Reynolds, heir of the most powerful elite family. He could have spent his life indulging himself, yet he worked harder than anyone.

We were rivals, but we were also two of the few people in that world who were like-minded.

I had once believed that we were the most clear-minded people in this glittering world.

I looked up at him. "There are no lucky breaks in business. One careless mistake can ruin everything. Kristian, you were the one who told me that."

Kristian's body went rigid.

He stared at me blankly, as if he had recalled all those years we had spent side by side at those words.

But the guilt in his eyes lasted barely a second. The next moment, he turned to look at Regina, who had already run out of the office crying.

Without giving me another glance, Kristian immediately chased after her.

I suppressed all my emotions and finished the work I had, then went to the rooftop of the group's office building alone.

This place was my only haven.

For years, whenever the pressure from work became too much, I would come here to catch my breath.

It was a secret only Kristian and I shared.

But the moment I pushed open the metal door to the rooftop, I saw a slender figure standing in the wind.

It was Regina.

I felt devastated to find that he had told her everything.

Without me knowing, the secret that he and I had once shared had already been told to a third person.

Regina turned when she heard the door open, her face still tear-stained. "Elianna, please don't be mad. I was wrong just now. I was not focusing on my work."

I said nothing but simply looked at her silently.

She continued, "Kristian and I really did not mean for this to happen. We were both drunk that night..."

I cut her off directly. "Was that night the only time? Then what about the used condom I found in his car? Were you both drunk that time too? You were drunk, yet somehow you still remembered to use a condom?"

Regina's face turned even paler. After a brief pause, she continued. "I know you have always been good to me, but people cannot control who they fall for. I never truly meant to hurt you, so I do not think I truly wronged you. You are terrific. You are exceptional with your career, your connections, your abilities, everything. But I am not. I am ordinary, timid, and useless. I need someone to protect me. I appreciate everything you have done for me, and I will always remember that, but I do not owe you anything."

After hearing that, I suddenly wanted to laugh.

I had spent more than a decade giving my heart to her, but she thought that it had all been something she simply deserved. In the end, she even said she did not owe me anything.

Just then, the door to the rooftop opened again. Kristian walked in.

He looked at me. "Elianna, you are too strong-willed and aggressive. It seems like you never need me, and you can handle everything on your own. A lot of the time, I felt like you did not care about me at all. With or without me, you would still live your life just fine. But Regina is not like that. I am all she sees. Only when I am with her do I feel truly needed."

When I heard that, I finally laughed.

But as I laughed, tears began to fall.

He said I did not care about him.

But in seven whole years, he was the only person I had ever truly loved.

I never relied on him too much because I believed what we had was love between two adults, which should not be built on childish dependence.

I was afraid my vulnerability would become his weakness and my dependence on him would become a weapon someone else could use against him.

I never realized that he would take all my independence and strength as proof that I did not care about him.

And Regina was not some fragile, innocent woman. She had simply made a habit of choosing whoever could protect her best.

I wiped away the tears from the corners of my eyes and did not want to say anything more, knowing that when two people had completely different values, there was no point in saying anything at all.

I looked up at them and said calmly, "Are you finished? If you are, get out of my way."

This place had been my secret haven. But from this day forward, I would never come here again.

Without giving either of them another look, I turned and walked away from the rooftop.