His Untamed Rose novel Chapter 128

She was in the middle of asking Harriet how she managed it.

But Harriet seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. Instead of answering directly, she sent over a voice recording. “It was simple,” she said. “I played that recording from the car for Cedric. He understood your feelings right away.”

...

After another long-haul flight that stretched over a dozen hours, both Hilton and Casper were exhausted.

To make matters worse, Cedric’s sudden mood swings had cast a heavy pall over the whole cabin.

A flight attendant, slender and graceful, wheeled the meal cart down the aisle and stopped beside Cedric, who sat leaning on his hand, drifting in and out of sleep. “Sir, would you like chicken or beef?” she asked.

Cedric didn’t respond.

Hilton, feeling a twinge of concern, slipped over and tapped Cedric’s shoulder. “Mr. Royce, this is the second meal service already. You haven’t touched a thing. You need to eat something, or your body won’t hold up.”

Still, no reply.

It was only then Hilton realized Cedric had truly fallen asleep, earbuds in his ears.

With a sigh, Hilton asked the attendant to leave a portion of beef, and carefully laid out the fork and knife.

Just then, Cedric’s phone lit up on the armrest.

Hilton glanced down instinctively and saw that Cedric was listening to a voice message from Harriet.

The timestamp showed it had been sent four hours ago, back when they were still at the airport.

Cedric had been replaying this same recording, over and over, ever since they boarded.

Could this be what made Mr. Royce change his mind?

So what exactly was in that audio?

Hilton, curiosity getting the better of him, picked up one of the earbuds and slipped it in.

“How do you plan to leave? When?”

“I’ll go after Cedric’s birthday.”

Hilton’s eyes widened slightly. It was a conversation between Harriet and Ms. Jardin, the same one from the car, but this recording was longer and more complete than anything the surveillance system had captured.

Near the end, Harriet suddenly asked Lumina a question—

“Did you ever love Cedric?”

Hilton had never heard this part before. The unexpected question made his heart leap into his throat. His breathing felt tight and foreign.

He waited, tense, listening to the thudding of his own heartbeat in his ears.

He couldn’t imagine how Mr. Royce must have felt listening to this, waiting for Lumina’s answer.

Clouds drifted past the window. Slowly, the ache in Hilton’s heart began to fade.

As a bystander, he thought, three years together was still a bond, even if fate was thin.

If the mountains and rivers run in different directions, sometimes the only choice left is to let go.

...

The plane touched down quietly in Banyan Town.

Inside the airport, a song suddenly began to play, making Cedric—who’d been silent all this time—pause in his tracks.

Hilton looked up and, to his surprise, saw a flush of red at the corners of Cedric’s eyes.

The singer’s husky, weathered voice drifted through the terminal, full of stories and old wounds—

“We walk this distant road, each chasing our own bright flames.

If you look back from ahead,

and I turn too,

that’s when we miss each other.”