What She Rides

I took a good look around the villa that I'd lived in for the past five years after Hazel left.

I had given this villa to her as a gift after the company went public. The reason was that I wanted to build a real home with her here instead of other random places.

I had fallen in love with her at first sight, and I pursued her relentlessly for two years before she finally agreed to be my girlfriend.

So, after graduating from college, I severed ties with my family for her sake and refused Dad's request for me to return to my hometown and take over the family business.

I'd never gone back home since.

I left all of my friends and family behind and chose to start a new life with Hazel here, away from the place I'd grown up in.

She told me just now that Cecil didn't have any friends. But neither did I.

Yet, after giving eight years of my life to her, all I got in return were just her lies and a distance between us that seemed to grow bigger and bigger each day.

I wasn't allowed to lay a finger on anything pertaining to my family business after the fallout with Dad, so I didn't have a choice other than to switch to the entertainment industry instead, which I was completely unfamiliar with.

In the early days of our business, Hazel and I supported each other, cracking our heads together every day to come up with solutions to keep the company afloat.

That had also been the time when our relationship was at its peak.

Soon, the company was publicly listed, and everything seemed like they were finally falling into place.

Hazel began meeting more people, and her ambition kept growing too. Eventually, she began looking down on my suggestions to just maintain our stability, thinking that I was holding the company back.

Since she thought that was the case, I wasn't going to continue holding her back any longer.

I spent the whole night packing up my things and only received a test message from Hazel in the morning.

"Cecil's leg is injured. I'll be staying at the hospital for a period of time to take care of him."

I only replied with a single word.

"Whatever."

The next day, I arrived at the company and started checking the accounts. I also contacted a lawyer to handle the equity division of the company's shares.

Back when we first started the company together, I originally intended to give her all of the shares. However, she said that she didn't want to take advantage of me, so she insisted on signing an agreement instead.

The agreement said that the shares could be divided equally between both of us in the future, and all decisions would be entirely my responsibility without needing her consent.

So, I signed my name next to her signature from eight years ago.

At that moment, time seemed like an illusory arrow, flying past the last eight years straight into my heart.

I was busy until 2:00 pm and suddenly realized that I hadn't even had any breakfast in the morning.

Hazel happened to walk in then, with Cecil behind her, on crutches. She set down the food on the coffee table and told me to come over and eat.

"I heard from Wilbur that you'd been busy with work all day without having any time to eat. Why are you doing this to yourself again?"

Wilbur Dorsey was my secretary.

Hazel then looked at me playfully and said, "Didn't you promise me that you would take better care of yourself?"

I stared at her. "Isn't he supposed to be at the hospital?"

Hazel grinned. "He said that the company's been very busy lately and he felt bad taking time off to recover, so he insisted on coming to work. He even managed to close a project with a client this morning.

"Cecil is really very amazing, Dylan. Stop holding yesterday's grudge against him anymore."

I got up from my desk and walked toward the coffee table.

"Fine."

I was leaving anyway. It didn't matter whether I held a grudge against him or not anymore.

While walking past Cecil, he suddenly grabbed hold of my sleeve.

"Mr. Blanchard, I know that you've always been dissatisfied with me, but don't worry. I'll always know my place from today onward.

"So, can't you please rescind my punishment today? Everyone keeps talking about me behind my back."

Hazel frowned. "What punishment are you talking about?"

Cecil opened an email on his phone and showed it to her. "HR said that I deliberately skipped work yesterday."

Hazel immediately took out her phone to give the HR department a call.

"It is a fact that he skipped work yesterday," I said. "If you call HR now, you're only inviting even more gossip about him."

My words struck a nerve in Hazel.

"Why are you doing this to him?"

"He skipped work yesterday. I'm just enforcing company rules."

Hazel suddenly rose to her feet. "Don't you dare use company rules as an excuse, Dylan Blanchard. You are the boss! You're the one who gets the final say about it! And you know damn well that I was the one who brought him out yesterday.

"How could you do this to him now? You're deliberately making it difficult for him!"

I replied casually, "I apologize for the collateral damage."

"You!"

Seeing the tense atmosphere between us, Cecil hurriedly apologized.

"I'm sorry, I'll just take the punishment instead. Mr. Blanchard, please don't get mad at Hazel—Ah!"

He suddenly swayed hard and fell straight onto the coffee table, spilling all of the food and drinks onto the floor in a huge mess.

"Mr. Blanchard! Why did you push me?"

Hazel shoved me aside at once, her face filled with terror.

She crouched over Cecil carefully and asked, "Are you alright? Does it hurt anywhere?

"Dylan Blanchard! If you're mad at me, then take it out on me! Why must you involve someone innocent?"

I was caught off guard when shoved aside, and I fell onto a broken glass on the floor.

"I never pushed him."

Hazel glared at me fiercely. "Are you telling me that he fell himself?"

I gingerly avoided the broken glass on the floor as I pushed myself up into a sitting position, blood dripping down my palm onto the white rug and quickly turning into a huge puddle.

Hazel was shocked. However, she was just about to say something when her attention was drawn toward Cecil's cries of pain.

"My leg hurts, Hazel."

She panicked and called the ambulance at once. "I'll get you to the hospital as quickly as possible.

"Just you wait, Dylan. I'll be back to settle scores with you later on."

When the ambulance arrived, she instructed the doctors and nurses to take Cecil away and refused to let them stay even a minute longer to bandage my hand.

"But Hazel, Mr. Blanchard is hurt too…" Cecil started.

She scoffed coldly. "It's just a small cut. He won't die from it. He brought it on himself. None of this would have happened if he had never pushed you."

I quietly closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the last of my deliberations vanished.

Leaving was for the best.

…

Hazel never came back home for the rest of the week, but she also never appeared at the hospital.

She only sent me a text message on the day Cecil was discharged.

"Cecil's fracture turned into a broken leg because of you. I never knew how cold-blooded you could be, Dylan Blanchard. You're already making me doubt if I made the right decision to be with you."

I had already been prepared to leave for a while, but I still felt a pang of hurt in my chest when I read her text message.

She firmly believed that I was the one who hurt Cecil just because of something he said. She didn't even think about verifying it by checking the cameras or any other means.

I slowly typed out my reply to her.

"If that's the case, then let's just break up."

However, I didn't receive another reply from her, and checking the status only told me that she never even received it.

She'd blocked my number.

I tossed my phone to the side and officially began the equity transfer process.

My portion of the company's equity was worth at least ten billion dollars now, and I wasn't going to leave that money lying around. So, I transferred them all out to my closer friends instead.

Before signing their part of the agreement, they kept checking back with me repeatedly.

"If you really give us all your shares, then you won't have anything to do with Hazel anymore. You've loved her for so many years, and you were also already preparing to propose to her this year. Are you sure you can bear to do this?"

I signed my name without any hesitation.

"It doesn't matter to me anymore."

I wasn't the only one who wanted to end this relationship. Even Hazel didn't want me anymore.

I'd seen tons of stories on Cecil's Instagram over the past few days. Most of them were black backgrounds with only some text.

"Her soups are amazing, but it's just too tiring for her. I hope that I'll be the one making her food next time."

"It must be hard on her to care for a sick and injured person. I won't let myself get hurt or sick anymore next time because I don't want to see her like this."

"She looks so pretty when she's sleeping."

The last one was from last night, and this one had included a photo as the background, to my surprise.

The photo was of Hazel nestled in his arms while asleep. Although her face had been blurred out, I could still recognize it as her because of the necklace next to the bed. It was the one that I had personally made for her when we celebrated our first anniversary together.

She had never taken it off for anything ever since putting it on. But now, she had taken it off for another man.

I thought for a while before posting something on my own Instagram stories.

"Who knew it would be this easy to leave a place you'd lived in for a decade?"

After that, I headed straight for the airport without looking back.