Meng Ruozhao didn't say much more.
In her eyes, Pei Jiangmu was pitiful yet somehow quite tenacious.
No man at this age would not care about his face, right?
"You should rest first. I'll stay with you here."
After the nurse came to deal with the blood - stained tape,
she pulled up the blanket for him, covering those muscles that might arouse imagination.
Amid the ticking sound of the disinfection equipment, Pei Jiangmu suddenly turned his face.
"Sister doesn't need to stay with me."
His Adam's apple rolled as he deliberately exposed the red rashes on his body to Meng Ruozhao's sight.
"I'm used to being alone."
The ending note was soft, like a feather brushing against her eardrum.
Meng Ruozhao was just adjusting the drip speed for him. Hearing this, she directly turned on the bedside night - light.
"Shut up and rest."
Her fingertips accidentally grazed the back of his hand, and both of them trembled at the same time.
The man immediately curled up into the blanket, only showing his flushed ear tips, desperately restraining the impulse to touch the skin she had touched.
The warmth of her fingertips still lingered there.
But he couldn't. That would be very strange.
The ward became quiet. After Meng Ruozhao watched the drip finish, she called the nurse.
The nurse removed the needle and whispered instructions to Meng Ruozhao.
"Pay attention to observing the patient's condition. Call us if he feels uncomfortable."
Meng Ruozhao nodded and glanced at Pei Jiangmu on the hospital bed.
The lights in the ward were dimmed. Only the moonlight shining through the window cast a faint silver glow on Pei Jiangmu's face.
He closed his eyes, breathing steadily. His eyelashes cast a small shadow under his eyes, like the trace of a butterfly landing.
His already three - dimensional facial features were especially clear in the dim light.
His nose was straight, his lips well - defined, and his jawline smooth and sharp, yet softened a bit by the current tranquility.
Meng Ruozhao unconsciously held her breath. Her gaze fell on his slightly furrowed brow.
There was a very faint wrinkle there, as if he was still enduring something in his dream.
His lips were pale, almost bloodless, like someone who had lost too much blood. Even his breathing was so light that it was almost imperceptible.
She couldn't help reaching out her hand. Her fingertips hovered above his cheek, but she finally didn't dare to touch him.
This action was too overstepping. Even before she reached out, she didn't know why she did it.
Fortunately, she stopped in time.
She quickly stepped back and sat down on the accompanying bed beside.
She originally planned to sit and play with her phone for a while to observe Pei Jiangmu's condition.
But perhaps because it was too late at night and the room was too quiet, as she was looking at the phone, it slipped to one side, and she fell into sleep.
When the moonlight spread over the window sill, Pei Jiangmu, who had been pretending to sleep, finally heard the even breathing from the accompanying bed.
He neatly lifted the blanket off his body, turned over and got out of bed.
In order not to wake her up, he could only kneel carefully on one knee beside the bed, but he smiled contentedly.
There was a greedy look in his deep pupils that could melt people, but his fingers were neatly placed behind his back.
Finally, he only dared to touch her cheek with his lips, like a believer kissing the base of a holy statue.
As if this could deceive his surging desires.
He hadn't seen her for half a year, and even his breath was filled with crazy longing.
His right arm, which had suffered a comminuted fracture while protecting her in the car accident and whose treatment had been delayed, still hadn't healed properly and always ached faintly.
However, at this moment, the more painful thing in his body was his wildly beating heart.
The bruises and scabs from the desperate rehabilitation finally allowed his knees to kneel steadily beside the accompanying bed.
He smelled the lingering fragrance of gardenia in her hair and suddenly remembered the sound of the windshield shattering at the moment of the car accident.
Among the flying broken glass at that time, a piece had pierced near his optic nerve. The doctor said the surgical risk was a bit high and he might go blind.
But on the operating table, he only thought about one thing: he must keep these eyes so that he could still watch her smile at him.
Now these eyes were hungrily scanning her trembling eyelids in her sleep, like a desert traveler sipping a mirage with his eyes.
He noticed that the ends of her hair were a bit frizzy, and all her fingernails were shorter than before, and she didn't do manicures.
These subtle changes made his throat bitter - the time he had missed in the past half a year was slipping through his fingers second by second.
And in the past half a year, she hadn't been carefully cared for.
Was it the right choice to leave her in the Du family?
The kiss that fell again was as light as the wind, but at the moment of contact, a shiver ran through his spine.
He quickly retreated into the shadow and bit his trembling knuckles with his teeth.
This was not enough, far from enough.
But compared to the days when he could only stare at secretly taken photos during rehabilitation half a year ago.
At this moment, being able to hear her real breathing had already turned the screeching of brakes that had appeared repeatedly in his nightmares into hymns.
Pei Jiangmu finally managed to restrain the impulse to hug her tightly.
He curled back into the shadow, like a beast licking its wounds, suppressing his breathing until it was almost suffocating.
Half a year of rehabilitation had allowed his body to barely regain the ability to move, but it couldn't cure the greed deep in his bones.
He still wanted more, but he could only carefully suppress it.
Meng Ruozhao gently turned over in her sleep, and a wisp of hair slipped to the corner of her lips.
Pei Jiangmu's pupils suddenly contracted, and his Adam's apple rolled. It was as if he was being strangled by an invisible force.
He wanted to reach out and push the hair away for her, but he suddenly withdrew his hand just as his fingertips were about to touch her.
He was afraid of waking her up, and even more afraid that once he touched her, he would never be able to stop.
Outside the window, the moonlight gradually shifted.
Her phone lit up.
Because she was afraid of disturbing his rest, she had set it to silent mode.
The three words "Yan Qiubai" made Pei Jiangmu frown.
He slowly stood up, took a deep look at her, picked up her phone and turned towards the door.
His steps were very light, as if he was afraid of disturbing a fragile dream.
But just as he was about to step out of the ward, a very soft murmur came from behind.
"Qiubai..."
The two syllables were like two rusty steel nails drilling into his brain along his ear canal.
His back suddenly froze, and his heart almost stopped beating.
The knuckles holding the doorknob made a brittle sound under the unbearable pressure.
The emergency light in the corridor cast his distorted shadow on the fire door, like a devil burned by jealousy.
"Yan, Qiu, Bai."
He silently chewed these three words, and the taste of rust filled his tongue.
After a few seconds' pause, he walked out of the ward and gently closed the door.
The unlocking of the phone illuminated his spasming pupils. Sure enough, her unlocking password was still her birthday.
He opened the address book, blocked everyone, and deleted Yan Qiubai's call record.
Finally, he installed a hidden positioning software in the phone.
After doing all this, he wiped his face. His palm was wet and cold. Only then did he realize that he was smiling.
There was a rustling sound from the accompanying bed frame as Meng Ruozhao turned over in the ward.
He saw through the crack of the door that Meng Ruozhao unconsciously hugged herself tightly.
Was she very cold, or did she dream of hugging Yan Qiubai?
He thought: Maybe he should send a silk banner to the rehabilitation department.
Thanks to those electro - shock therapies, now even the pain of his heart being pierced by jealousy had become a kind of enjoyment.