Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 302: Heart To Heart

Chapter 302: Heart To Heart

"Serious question," smiled Zhao Jun Jie as he continued to clap slowly from where he sat on the white couch. "Is that how I looked at you when we first met?"

Wu Bai Hee sat down on one of the other couches with a sigh. "You are going to be a bit more specific," she said, checking her nails. It was almost a relief to not have to be perfect every second of the day.

"That glazed-eyed, ’I’ll believe everything you say’ type of look. See it as an outsider really is something else," continued Zhao Jun Jie as he placed his hands on his knee and looked at the woman across from him.

He could still remember the moment he first saw her when she walked into his office. She looked so pitiful. Her hands were dirty, and her clothes were practically rags. But he still remembered that feeling... as if he had finally found why his heart beat.

Now, years later, to find out that it was nothing more than a product of her manipulation, he wanted to kill someone. But now she was the mother of his child, and he wouldn’t do that to the innocent life inside of her; he couldn’t.

"Sort of," she admitted, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the back of the couch. "But there was one major difference."

"Oh, and what is that?" asked Zhao Jun Jie, intrigued. This was the most honest conversation he ever remembered having with her.

"You could give me what I wanted. You never held back; there was no need to manipulate you after that first meeting. You willingly gave me everything you had. Food, clothing, money, power. Whatever I wanted, you gave me. You might hate me sometimes, but you are the one who created the Princess. Don’t forget that."

"That was because I was in love with you back then," shrugged the man, hating the fact that he was a willing participant in everything when it came to her. He would have killed people if she asked; hell, he built sanctuary the way she wanted it.

"Ah, love. I was in love once... in fact, I was planning on letting you do all the leg work of building this city in order to gift it to the man I loved." Wu Bai Hee looked off in the distance, her eyes tearing up a bit as she thought about her original plans.

"Excuse me?" demanded Zhao Jun Jie with a snort. "What was your plan?"

"You heard me; there is no need to play stupid. It’s just the two of us, no powers or anything. I was planning on handing City A over to Liu Wei when he came back for me, but at the end of the day, he fell in love with someone else. That is how I know there is no such thing as love."

Even though that man had killed her and set fire to the mansion with his own grandfather in it, she still wanted him. Still waited for him.

She looked down at her belly with a sneer. "But then I got unexpectedly pregnant. And who wants a woman with someone else’s child growing inside of her?"

"I would have," shrugged Zhao Jun Jie honestly. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would have still loved her if she had appeared before him pregnant at the beginning. "99% of being a parent is just showing up and doing the work. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was the biological father or not. At the end of the day, that child would have called me dad."

"Well, I guess we’ll never know," replied Wu Bai Hee with a shrug of her own. Words were nice and all, but the only thing that she believed in was actions.

"I guess we’ll never know. What about your father? Don’t you miss him every so often?" It was one of those things that had always surprised him. She seemed to be so compassionate toward those that she didn’t know but hardly blinked an eye when her own father died.

"My father?" asked Wu Bai Hee, confused.

"Yes, Peng Yong Rui, the man who brought you to City A. You said that he was your father."

"No, my father is Wu Jian Jun, the head of the Black Mountain Syndicate. That man was someone I came across when I left City B. I didn’t think that I would make it on my own, so I made him believe that he was my father," replied the woman as she pulled her hair forward and checked each strand for split ends.

"That man was devoted to you," murmured Zhao Jun Jie with a shake of his head.

"All men are devoted to me," replied Wu Bai Hee with a smile on her face. "I am all things to all men."

"So I saw," sneered Zhao Jun Jie. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before, her manipulation.

She has teams of men out in the city that would happily die for her, and even more than they have. And yet, she couldn’t care less about them. It was always about her.

"Oh, get over it," she hissed in reply. "It’s not like you didn’t stop me just then. You could have spoken up, let them lynch me and pull me out into the street like a whore. But you didn’t. So don’t pretend like you are this virtuous person right now."

"No, I’m not," admitted Zhao Jun Jie. "I am well aware of what I was or was not willing to do. Despite everything, you are the mother of my child, and I will not let anything happen to you."

Wu Bai Hee let out a bark of laughter. "As if I can depend on you. You have nothing in comparison to me. I am sure that if I overthrew you and took over the running of the city, then not a single person would come to your rescue. You are nothing more than a weak man trying to appear strong."

Zhao Jun Jie opened his mouth to speak but then closed it. It wasn’t worth getting into an argument with her. She was pregnant, and he needed to be more understanding.

"Whatever you say," he murmured instead, coming to his feet. He needed to get dressed and go back to his office. If people were killed in a zombie raid, he would need to do something about it.

Despite everything, they relied on him, and he always tried his best not to let anyone down.