The Billionaire's New Wife in Chief-Chapter 883 - 301: He Has Loved Her for Seventeen Years (Part 2)

...

Song Qiao didn’t come down for dinner, and Lu Jingchen naturally didn’t eat much either. After a few simple bites, he put the barely touched dishes back in the fridge, leaving only the soup out.

Lu Jingchen didn’t immediately return to the bedroom but went straight to the study.

He couldn’t quite remember how long it had been since he last came to the study. Before the wedding, he was always busy with wedding preparations, and every day he would finish work at the company and come straight back home. Upon returning, he usually had dinner with Song Qiao and then sat in the living room, busy with other things.

And after the wedding?

Song Qiao went straight back to the Mu Mansion, and he rarely returned to the villa, let alone the study.

He turned on all the lights in the study, and the once dim room instantly became as bright as day. Perhaps because Mrs. Chen often cleaned it, there wasn’t the slightest hint of an off smell, even though he hadn’t been up to the study in a long time.

He walked straight to the desk and sat down, not opening the computer, but instead opening the bottom drawer of the desk. After rummaging around a bit, he pulled out a photo album from a pile of neatly arranged items in the drawer. The album didn’t look very old and was well-preserved.

Lu Jingchen placed the album on the desk and untied the small red string wrapped around it, then opened it. The first thing he saw was a photo of a little girl who appeared to be about six or seven years old. The bottom right corner of the photo indicated it was taken 17 years ago, and the picture wasn’t taken naturally; it was clearly a candid shot, only showing her profile. However, the little girl’s appearance was still clear in the photo.

If Song Qiao saw this photo, she would definitely be startled to recognize her seven-year-old self.

Lu Jingchen’s slender and well-defined fingers gently brushed over the photo, as if caressing the girl’s face, his expression becoming noticeably softer.

After a long time, he turned to the second page, the third page, the fourth page... going through each page, all filled with photos of Song Qiao as a child, from age seven to fifteen. After fifteen, there were no more.

Lu Jingchen spent over half an hour in the study, simply looking at this one album. It wasn’t large, and all the photos were of Song Qiao from ages seven to fifteen, amounting to only about twenty or thirty photos. Very few showed her face directly toward the camera; it was clear they were taken candidly.

Who would have thought that the esteemed president of the CK Group had actually developed feelings for his wife when she was still a little girl?

Perhaps even Song Qiao wouldn’t have imagined that at age seven, Lu Jingchen had already deemed her the most important person in his life.

Because, even now, Lu Jingchen found this quite unbelievable.

But if it weren’t for this, when Song Qiao forced him to marry her on the street back then, if he hadn’t recognized her then, no matter how bold Song Qiao was or how much effort she put in, he wouldn’t have agreed to marry her so easily.

He had always been a man with great self-control, and his marriage wasn’t something anyone could dictate, not even his parents. He had once thought that if he never met the woman he loved in this lifetime, he wouldn’t get married, and if the time came when he had to have a wife, he would just marry someone randomly.

Before Song Qiao forced him into marriage on the street, he indeed thought this way. Love in marriage meant nothing to him at that time because he was essentially a person with little desire.

But then he met Song Qiao, the girl who had made his heart flutter over ten years ago. So he didn’t deliberately restrain himself; he followed his heart and acted as he felt upon meeting Song Qiao.

After closing the album, Lu Jingchen left it on the desk and leaned back in his chair, his deep eyes gazing at the crystal chandelier above, finding his eyes feeling sore and discomforting. He couldn’t help but pinch the bridge of his nose, the sense of powerlessness becoming increasingly apparent.

For a moment, he felt tired, but giving up on Song Qiao was something he couldn’t even bear to imagine, let alone do.

...

The next day, Song Qiao woke up naturally. She lay looking at the ceiling for a while before slowly recalling the events of last night.

When she tried to move, she realized she seemed to be trapped, and it wasn’t until then she noticed the familiar scent of a man lingering in her nostrils.

Strangely enough, in that moment, she suddenly let go of all her previous decisions. Listening to the man’s steady heartbeat, she inexplicably felt a sense of peace and couldn’t help snuggling further into the man’s embrace.

Ever since she realized she had fallen in love with Lu Jingchen, she had painstakingly hidden her feelings so no one would find out. Sometimes, she could even deceive herself, convincing herself she didn’t love this man. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

That’s why she had been so decisive previously, without a moment’s hesitation.

Her cautious movements eventually woke the already very sensitive man. He slightly opened his eyes to look at Song Qiao in his arms, seeing only the top of her head. Thinking she was still asleep, he didn’t move.

—Originally, I wanted to write about Qiao having a miscarriage, but should I or shouldn’t I?