“Leave your suitcase on the trunk and I will wait for you on the other side of the street while you fetch your other luggage.”

“Or I can take a cab and you can message me your address?”

“Not happening. We just got married you think you can just leave me like that?”

“Shen Yi, I’m just taking my luggage. Why are you so frustrated about it?”

“And yet you were living on the same roof with your ex. Please don’t tell me you two shared a room.”

She was ashamed to tell him the truth but she couldn’t lie to him.

“I only moved on his place because I couldn’t pay the rent of my last apartment. We did share the same room and bed but I swear we haven’t crossed the line.”

Shen Yi didn’t respond but Lu Xinyi knew that he wasn’t happy with her situation.

He stopped the car when the stop lights turned red.

“How long have you been living with him?”

“About six months or so but we’ve been in a relationship for almost seven years now.”

“Seven years…” Shen Yi repeated. Lu Xinyi was on twenty-five now, that would mean she’d been with Gong Yijun since she was eighteen. Long years for being boyfriend and girlfriend.

“Then why didn’t you slept with him?”

With seven years being together, shouldn’t she be comfortable enough to be with her ex-boyfriend?

She took a deep breath and leaned her forehead on the window. She didn’t want him to think that she was that petty and childish.

“I wasn’t ready for that. What’s more, we weren’t married. I would like to marry someone like my dad. I wanted a marriage like what my parents had when they were both alive.”

She hadn’t heard Shen Yi respond to what she said so she assumed that he understood where she was coming from.

Lu Xinyi adjusted to her seat and pulled out her phone as Shen Yi drove in the busy streets of the city. Checking her messages, her brows furrowed.

How many times did Gong Yijun messaged her and called her number? Good thing that she turned off her phone as soon as her deal with Shen Yi started.

‘Where are you? Answer your phone.’

‘Please, Xinyi. It isn’t what you think it is.’

‘Come home, please. I will be waiting for you.’

She stared at the messages long.

“Something’s wrong?” Shen Yi asked when he noticed her unusual silence.

Lu Xinyi smiled and shook her head. She then deleted the text messages.

She was over with Gong Yijun. Now, that she’s a married woman, her concern should be for her husband only.

“So where are we going?” she asked. She noticed that they weren’t going on the right way to Gong Yijun’s apartment.

“To a store.” The stoplight changed to green and he continued his driving.

“Why?”

Shen Yi turned his head to her and grinned. He extended a hand to hers and threaded their fingers together.

“To buy you something.”

And that something almost made Lu Xinyi cry in surprise and happiness. She knew she shouldn’t ask or expect something from him. But as he slipped a wedding band on her ring finger, she couldn’t stop her tears from falling.

“You shouldn’t have bothered to give me one,” she said but still accepted her ring.

She could really say now that she was indeed a married woman.

“You’re my wife. It’s only appropriate to give you one.”

They went back to his car so he could drop her to her previous residence. Before he could turn on the engine of his car, Lu Xinyi held his arm, leaned from her seat and gave him a quick peck on his cheek.

He was stunned, not expecting his wife will do something like that. His eyes took in the sight of her, seeing how her eyes gleamed with happiness. Her cheeks were slightly tinted.

Was it his own doing? Did he really make her happy for the first time?

Something flitted on his eyes as he looked at her face. Lu Xinyi turned her eyes away, afraid of what she might see but fully aware that her cheeks were heating up under his gaze. She retracted away from him.

“I’m sorry. Did I offend you?” she asked after the long silence.

“No.” His thumb lightly grazed at the back of her hand. “It’s just I don’t do pecks on the lips.” Then his eyes spotted the shimmer on her lips. By the way, he was looking at her, Lu Xinyi knew that the kiss he meant would be too much for her to handle.

Lu Xinyi sat there with wide eyes. Her hand could still the feel of his touch on her skin. Her cheeks burned with a bit of embarrassment and shyness.

“O-oh.” Her hands curled into fists on her lap while trying to ignore the blush on her face.