She Lost Memory Before the Divorce

Chapter 169: Chapter 169 I Love You Chapter 169: Chapter 169 I Love You Huo Tingxiao watched Mu Lan wearing only a thin outer robe and quickly took off his own suit to drape over her.

In an instant, his scent enveloped Mu Lan densely, the familiar aroma uniquely his causing her to space out for a moment.

Pale fingers reached to tug at the coat but were immediately pressed down by the back of Huo Tingxiao’s hand.

“You’re afraid of the cold, don’t catch a cold.”

A simple enough sentence, but it made Mu Lan’s heart twist uncomfortably.

“Even if I catch a cold, it’s none of your business. I don’t need your jacket.”

Mu Lan felt Huo Tingxiao’s hand grip tighten, causing her own hand to ache. She looked up bewilderedly at the man before her, his face devoid of expression, and her tone hardened.

“Huo Tingxiao, what on earth are you trying to do?”

Huo Tingxiao lowered his gaze to look at the slightly angered Mu Lan, his voice carrying an air of entitlement.

“I don’t want you to get sick.”

Mu Lan was taken aback, then retorted mercilessly,
“Now you’re acting the good guy again? Don’t tell me you think that just by saying a few nice words, I can pretend that nothing happened?”

Huo Tingxiao’s expression was unreadable, but a certain emotion in the depths of his eyes was increasingly turbulent.

“I’m not pretending to be a good man, Mu Lan. Every word I say comes from the heart.”

Mu Lan thought this man was utterly ridiculous. If it weren’t for the fact that it was the middle of the night, she probably would have given into her anger and cursed him out loud.

“What do you mean it comes from the heart? What trick are you trying to play now? Huo Tingxiao, do you think this is amusing?”

“I don’t want to play any tricks, I just want us to have a proper talk.”

“Talk? What is there left to discuss? It was you who deceived me, and you who acted as if you didn’t care. What do you think I am? Just because you sent Yun Xi to deal with me, I should act as if nothing happened? Huo Tingxiao, you’re underestimating me.”

Mu Lan unleashed a flurry of words as her emotions caused her chest to heave dramatically. She struggled to contain herself, her voice not loud, but her eyes that seemed ready to shoot fire revealed to Huo Tingxiao just how furious she was.

Huo Tingxiao looked at her anger, falling silent for a while.

And his silence led Mu Lan to scoff involuntarily, the cycle starting again. This man could only adopt an icy demeanor, as if telling her again, “I can’t change, so just keep enduring it.”

But why should she have to keep enduring such a cold person?

“I have not underestimated you. On the contrary, it is because I did not underestimate you that I chose to lie.”

Mu Lan was stunned, watching Huo Tingxiao slow his speech, articulating each word.

“In fact, I’ve had that document for a long time now, and it’s always been locked in the drawer.

Not just the document, but also your phone, it was already broken, but I fixed it all.”

Mu Lan was somewhat dazed; she could hear each of Huo Tingxiao’s words clearly, yet she couldn’t quite understand them.

“Huo Tingxiao, I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with your words.”

Huo Tingxiao looked at her with intense eyes, laughing self-deprecatingly.

“You said a man is trying hard to change for you, who cares whether you eat well, remembers that you suffer from menstrual cramps and are sensitive to the cold, who stands under your apartment in the middle of the night after making you angry, refusing to leave.

Mu Lan, what does that tell you?”

Mu Lan locked eyes with Huo Tingxiao, her heart pounding fast, but she still feigned calmness as she pressed,
“What does it tell me?”

Huo Tingxiao looked at her, laughing at himself again. In his thirty years of life, it was the first time he’d felt this hesitant, but even with his fear, he couldn’t back down at this moment. The emotion in his dark pupils burst forth, and slowly, the words left his mouth,
“It means I love you.”

Mu Lan was stunned. She had envisioned many possibilities, but she never expected Huo Tingxiao to utter those three words. She even wondered if the person in front of her might be someone else posing as Huo Tingxiao.

“You love me? Huo Tingxiao, do you know what you’re saying?”

Seeing her incredulous look, Huo Tingxiao felt deeply that he had failed as a person. He thought he had made it so obvious that Mu Lan would have noticed something, yet she was so surprised that he loved her.

“Of course, I do.”

Sometimes people are like that, completely confused about something until they connect the dots, and it’s as if they’ve unblocked the Ren and Du meridians.

Just like now, Huo Tingxiao had thought that saying “I love you” would be as difficult as reaching the heavens. But once he said it, he realized it wasn’t that hard, and he even felt an indescribable sense of fulfillment.

Confessing to someone felt so wonderful. Had he known it felt like this, he would have wanted to tell Mu Lan a thousand, no, eight hundred times.

Huo Tingxiao suddenly felt that he had been a complete fool in the past, only to find out that true love had been right by his side for so many years.

Actually, there had been clues all along, but he had been deceiving himself. He couldn’t blame Mu Lan for looking at him now as if she were looking at a patient.

After all, he deserved it!

Mu Lan frowned and tiptoed, instinctively reaching out to touch his forehead.

She murmured,
“You’re not running a fever, so what nonsense are you talking?”

Huo Tingxiao was amused by her gesture, his eyes almost dripping with honey-like sweetness.

He caught her slightly cold hand, the warmth from his palm felt so real.

Mu Lan watched dumbfounded as the man before her carefully rubbed her hand, just hoping to warm her up.

In that moment, Mu Lan felt a sense of reality; he… he seemed not to be joking.

But this thought was fleeting.

Frantically pulling back her hand, Mu Lan defensively looked at Huo Tingxiao.

“That joke isn’t funny at all.

Although I don’t know why you are so adamant about not divorcing me,
you shouldn’t make up such reasons.

To cover up one lie, you have to concoct an even bigger lie, and I don’t think that’s a very smart approach.

You love me? How is that possible?

Did you forget that you told me over and over again that you wouldn’t love me?

How can a grown man not keep his word?”

Indeed, it was a classic case of lifting a rock only to drop it on one’s own feet; the flags of the past had become today’s pitfalls.

Huo Tingxiao felt that the greatest enemy on his journey to win back his wife wasn’t someone else, but himself.

“Just consider everything I said before as nonsense, and I want to take it back now.”

Mu Lan was shocked, hardly believing that the man in front of her, playing the scoundrel, was actually Huo Tingxiao.

“Huo Tingxiao, your joke isn’t funny at all. If you want to talk to me about this, then I think there’s even less need to talk.”

She took off the coat she was wearing and handed it back to Huo Tingxiao, turned around intending to leave, but Huo Tingxiao suddenly wrapped his arms around her from behind.

With his tall figure bending down, his chin resting in the hollow of Mu Lan’s shoulder, he actually cooed to her.

“Lanlan, don’t go…”