Chapter 422: The Fragile Chance of Love in a Life That Always Repeats
Clyde drew the curtains with a slow, careful motion until the room dimmed. He turned from the window as if the world outside had been muted. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until spots danced behind his lids. When he lowered them, veins throbbed along his forehead. He was trying hard to restrain himself.
From the villa’s second-story window, he had watched the beach, watched the two of them entangled together. He couldn’t hear exactly what Micah and Darcy were saying, but even if he could have, he couldn’t get close; he couldn’t meddle. These two had to come to terms with the swap at birth by themselves. Whatever the truth did to them, it was theirs to digest.
But never in a million years had he imagined Darcy would make a move on Micah. The intimate hug, the intimate touch, and then the way his face got close to Micah, his heart bled seeing all of it.
He wanted to rush out of the room, to burst down the stairs and separate them, shove Darcy away, even beat him up. Yet, his feet didn’t move; they remained rooted on the ground.
Memories- or were they fragments of a dream?- flashed through his mind: Darcy’s resentful eyes, a face hardened into contempt, words that had cut deep. He remembered where Darcy had been colder, crueller, even holding a gun...
He was afraid. If he acted now, Darcy might turn into the resentful man he had been in their first life, and then the past would repeat itself. He still couldn’t remember how exactly the two of them died. He only knew there had been a showdown between him and Darcy. If history repeated itself... what would become of Micah? Being left alone with those four men...
Clyde couldn’t even imagine it. His hatred for them outnumbered his jealousy toward Darcy. So he turned around and shut his eyes. Hiding in his room in the villa, thinking out of sight, out of mind.
He imagined Micah realising Darcy had accepted that they had been switched, that Micah had taken his place in the Ramsy family for years. Despite that, Darcy still came back to him, treating him the same way as always. Maybe, he thought, Micah would finally shed the guilt and light up again.
He, like Zhou Ruyan, had noticed how much Micah had suffered because of guilt. Clyde had learned enough to know that Micah’s tenderness for Darcy was not just because he had replaced Darcy’s life, but also how those four psychos had used Darcy, how miserable he had been in their past life, and as a result, Micah’s soft spot for Darcy had only grown.
Clyde now understood why Micah had done all those stupid things, like crossdressing, going after Aidan. That dream Micah had was not a foreshadowing. It was a reminder of how their past life had been.
Clyde had been agonising for days, wondering if Micah too had foreseen his own demise, dying alone in that apartment, at the hands of those four?
How much had he suffered? How much had he been scared knowing something like that might happen again?
Clyde had no idea how Micah had survived that misery; he didn’t know how Micah had coped. He still couldn’t manage it himself. That was why he kept his distance, hiding just a few steps away.
When he caught Micah lying on Darcy’s back, his heart stopped for a second. He wanted to rush out, scared of what had happened to him, until he heard Darcy’s voice saying he was just asleep.
So he didn’t move. He took a deep breath and just watched as they disappeared inside the villa.
Clyde tugged at the wooden prayer beads on his wrist. He figured out why the master had given him this bracelet many years ago.
Because if he had remembered everything, if the memory of his past lives came spilling out before Micah knew him, before Micah got to know the sane version, wouldn’t their relationship be like the first life? Micah being scared of him? A crazy man obsessed with him? A stalker?
He needed to calm down. He needed to be the man Micah deserved, the version of him with memory loss, the gentle one who could coax Micah, who could help him, who could steady him. Not this version, the wolf with hunger in his eyes, stalking every move like a prey. Not this raw, dangerous energy that smelled like violence and made his hands twitch toward solutions that would erase people.
He didn’t want to lose Micah. Not after a long life of failures. He had finally been granted a fragile chance to be with Micah. The idea of losing that, of having it snatched by his own flaws, made his throat constrict into a fist of regret.
Clyde rubbed his tired eyes. He couldn’t deal with Darcy... but those four psychos, those who had orchestrated so much misery, were different... he could slowly deal with them, could undermine their positions until they meant nothing. He could make them incapable of hurting Micah again.
It didn’t matter whether their wrath fell on Darcy like before or Micah this time; Clyde decided the four had to be removed as a threat.
Yet, a small, ridiculous fear flashed in his mind. What if he made the wrong move? What if he went after them, and again this life went out of order? When again he woke up seeing all of his moments with Micah had been erased, finding himself at the starting point?
He had no idea what should do. Because every time those four had been removed in the previous cycles, something in his timeline had collapsed. Clyde would find himself again in that loop.
He could not tell how much of that pattern had been fixed by cruelty and how much by providence. He only knew that Darcy had changed the equation. In that last life, Darcy’s involvement might be the reason that Micah had dreamed about their past in this life.
Perhaps he should get Darcy on board in this life, too. Then there might be a new ending for all of them.