Chapter 26: Harboring Hidden Intentions

After a brief, suspended standoff, Xia Chan was the first to break. She turned away from He Huaisheng's gaze.

The atmosphere inside the car held its tension for roughly twenty minutes, coiled and unspoken, until the car pulled into a quiet residential development and stopped. Most of the apartment lights were dark — a newly opened complex, largely unsold, the kind of place where scattered occupied units floated like islands in the silence.

He Huaisheng got out from his side. Xia Chan looked at the building through the window and did not move.

He came around, opened the passenger door, and waited. She looked up and met his eyes immediately — cold, composed, showing her nothing.

He Huaisheng looked down at her. "You actually had the nerve." A pause, as though the words were costing him something. "Why did you come to me?"

His manner remained undiminished despite the difficulty of saying it.

Xia Chan pressed her lips together and said nothing.

She had been aware, lately, that she had become too sentimental — more than she had ever been before, more than she recognized in herself. She had always been the kind of person who said what she meant and moved through the world without excessive second-guessing. But this man was something else entirely. He was like an abyss she couldn't stop approaching: she would drift toward the edge, fascinated and frightened in equal measure, and never let herself look directly into the depth. She would stand at the periphery and toss something in — a word, a test, a small provocation — just to watch what happened. And the moment he responded, the moment she saw the surface move, she would turn and walk away as fast as she could.

She was a coward. She knew this about herself. And she had no one to resent for it but herself.

Xia Chan bent forward and stepped out of the car.

He Huaisheng moved back by half a step, still looking at her from above.

She looked back at him, holding everything she felt — all the contradictions of it, the wanting and the fear and the despair that had been building for longer than this evening — and then, from somewhere below all of that, a final, reckless impulse surfaced. The kind that comes when a person has weighed a thing for too long and finally decides that uncertainty is worse than the fall.

She clenched her teeth. She reached out, slowly, and took his hand.

She felt his hand tremble slightly.

Xia Chan stepped forward, tilted her head up, and held his gaze. "He Huaisheng, I—"

She had nothing ready. The words had not organized themselves. So she let them go, hooked her arm around his neck instead, rose onto her toes, and kissed him.

He Huaisheng went still for a fraction of a second. Then his arm went around her waist and pressed her back against the car with a force that left no room for second thoughts.

The kiss was nothing like tenderness. It was closer to combat — lips and teeth and the urgent stealing of breath, two people who had been maneuvering around each other for too long finally closing the distance. Xia Chan's legs stopped being reliable, and she was the first to break, needing air, needing relief from the intensity of it.

He Huaisheng didn't let her go.

She pulled back far enough to look into his eyes and whispered the only thing that would move this forward: "Let's go upstairs."

He kept his arm around her waist and walked inside, covering the distance with a stride she could barely match without being pulled.

In the elevator, he kissed her again before the doors had finished closing. Xia Chan stopped herself from thinking.

Inside the apartment, he didn't reach for the light. The door shut behind them, and then her back was against it.

She was wearing what she'd had on for the exhibition — a fitted blazer, a pencil skirt that left very little room for movement. Formal clothes had always been a form of armor for her: they sharpened her, added the layer of authority that thoroughness of preparation only partially provided. In other contexts, she moved better in this kind of clothing than out of it.

Here, right now, it was simply an obstacle.

Her hand was being gripped too tightly. She hissed through her teeth: "I need to shower — I've been wearing this all day—"

He Huaisheng gave no indication of having heard her. Or perhaps he had heard her and had decided the information wasn't relevant.

The armor was not equal to what was happening to it. She felt one leg lifted, felt him press forward into the space created, and made a sharp sound through her teeth — it genuinely hurt, in a way that was sharper than just pain.

She reached for something to steady herself and hit the light switch instead. The impact stung her palm hard enough to make her gasp.

Milky-white light came down.

Xia Chan pressed her teeth together and looked at him.

His hair was black against the light. His brow was furrowed — as though he too was in something, some version of what she was in. The line from his collarbone to his jaw was severe and clean in a way that she found impossible not to look at.

She reached out and touched his throat.

Something shifted in the quality of what was happening — less like resistance, more like recognition, a ruthless and predatory clarity that rose in her alongside everything else.

She let him see her eyes.

Eventually, Xia Chan caught the last fragment of practical thought and used it. "You forgot something."

---

The apartment was smaller than the others — perhaps seventy square meters, a single bedroom. The room was neat, the air dry and clean with the specific quality of a place that is maintained but not often occupied.

He Huaisheng handled what was necessary and got up to turn off the light.

Xia Chan caught his hand.

She looked at him. "Are you really going to turn it off?"

He paused.

She had witnessed her parents' marriage collapse early — had seen the specific damage that kind of intimacy could do when it went wrong, watched Zhou Lan carry that damage across years. She had developed, from those early observations, a deep wariness of closeness, an instinctive preference for keeping people at a distance where they couldn't hurt what mattered. It was not a policy she had decided on. It was simply something that had grown in her in the years when she was too young to resist what was growing.

And right now, she felt the edge of the abyss very clearly.

She knew what waited at the bottom if she stepped off. She had decided, arriving at the car park, that she was willing to lose whatever there was to lose.

Xia Chan put her hands on his chest and pushed him back, then shifted her weight and straddled him, looking down.

And stopped.

She held his gaze and did not move. She bit her lip and said nothing for a long moment.

This was what she had needed: to see him clearly. Or at the minimum, to let him see her.

After a while, she moved.

This was different from the last time. The last time had been curiosity, and a glass of red wine, and a story that had softened the edges of everything into something she hadn't been able to resist. She had been less than entirely herself.

Now she was entirely herself. She knew exactly what she was doing and had chosen it.

She held the wheel. They were the boat, and the water moved under them, and she let it.

The waves built and broke, the spray of them rising, and the two of them went under together in the long, gradually deepening current of it.

---

Afterwards, Xia Chan lay still and considered whether her fingers contained enough motivation to move.

She thought, somewhat absently, about Zhou Lan's treadmill — she still needed to order that when she got back to Chongcheng, and she really did need to begin exercising herself, because otherwise she would not be able to manage this with any dignity if there was a next time.

If there was a next time.

The air in the room was heavy and warm, and she felt, unexpectedly, a profound sense of security settle over her — the specific comfort of having shared something private and slightly disreputable with another person, the feeling of holding a secret between two people that belonged only to them.

After a while, she forced herself to move. He Huaisheng pulled her back.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to eat. I'm actually starving."

She was. She hadn't touched the barbecue, and the last of her energy had been thoroughly spent. Her stomach made an announcement that required no interpretation.

He Huaisheng was already out of bed. "I'll go."

While he was out, Xia Chan showered. The hot water came down and she stood under it and made small involuntary sounds because it still ached in ways she was choosing not to examine too closely.

She came out, found a large t-shirt in his wardrobe, and put it on. She retrieved her phone from her bag near the door and found several messages from her team about the logistics of the day after tomorrow. She answered each one, then lay back on the bed and texted him: Buy me makeup remover and clean underwear.

He Huaisheng replied: What size?

Xia Chan sent an emoji with wide eyes: Didn't you get the information at some point?

No reply came.

She laughed until her sides hurt.

---

Half an hour later, He Huaisheng came back with two bags. The smell reached her before he did. Xia Chan took the food from his hands without ceremony, opened the container, and found red bean dumplings, chicken soup dumplings, and crab roe shrimp dumplings arranged in their compartments.

She had just picked up her chopsticks when something occurred to her. "Can I eat on the bed? You're not meticulous about these things, are you?"

He Huaisheng looked at her.

She read the silence as permission and did not stand on further ceremony. She settled on the bed with the container balanced on the nearby cabinet, folded her legs under her, and ate with total commitment and no particular concern for presentation.

She glanced over. He Huaisheng was texting.

She tapped his shoulder. When he turned, she asked: "Work?"

He shook his head.

She nodded and went back to her food.

Everything was gone in short order. She cleaned up after herself, then went to the bathroom to remove her makeup and rinse her face, and came out to find the clock pushing toward midnight.

He Huaisheng waited until she was done, then went to the bathroom himself.

Xia Chan was sitting on the edge of the bed idling on her phone when she heard his phone buzz on the nightstand. She turned on instinct.

The screen lit up with a WeChat notification. She caught the preview before it could fade: Brother! Happy Birthday! Congratulations on getting old!

She went still.

The screen darkened before she could read anything further. She checked the time on her own phone.

Just past midnight.

Xia Chan sat with this for a moment, then got up.

She gathered her clothes from where they'd been scattered in the entrance, put them on, picked up her wallet and the apartment key from the entryway, and left.

There were no shops immediately outside. She opened her maps app and found a twenty-four-hour coffee shop within walking distance. She went.

While she was paying, He Huaisheng texted: Did you go home?

She replied quickly: No. I came out to get something. Back soon.

She took the paper bag from the counter and walked back. Fifteen minutes. She unlocked the door and went in.

He Huaisheng was on the living room sofa in his pajamas, waiting.

Xia Chan changed into the spare slippers by the door and came inside, holding the paper bag, and then stopped.

He Huaisheng looked at her with a question in his eyes.

She stood there and recognized, clearly and uncomfortably, that she was behaving exactly like a high school student who had just discovered what romantic gestures felt like and hadn't yet developed the sophistication to pretend otherwise. She thought of her deskmate in high school — the one who had made heart-shaped chocolates for her boyfriend on Valentine's Day, packaging them in a pretty box with considerable care. She had always found that kind of thing faintly ridiculous. Knitting scarves. Carving tokens. Making chocolates by hand. It all struck her as clichéd and excessive, the kind of affectation she had never had any patience for.

She stood in the entrance of He Huaisheng's apartment, holding a paper bag from a twenty-four-hour coffee shop, and understood that she had absolutely no ground to stand on.

She hesitated for a long moment. Then she put the bag behind her back and said only: "Today is your birthday, apparently. Happy birthday."

He Huaisheng looked at her with visible surprise.

She decided not to explain. She reached for the bag with the intention of putting it in the trash.

He Huaisheng stood up and took hold of her arm. Before she could prevent it, he had the bag in his hands and had opened it.

Inside: a single piece of chocolate mousse, purchased from the only option available to her at midnight with no alternatives. It was not particularly attractive.

Xia Chan felt the warmth moving into her face.

He Huaisheng looked at the cake. Then at her.

She found she had nothing useful to say, so she turned and walked toward the bedroom. She took off her blazer and put the t-shirt back on and came back out carrying her suit jacket and skirt together.

She nearly walked directly into him in the doorway.

He was holding two porcelain plates. The mousse had been cut cleanly in half — one portion on each plate.

He held one out to her.

She hesitated. Then she took it and followed him back to the living room.

They sat. The plates went on the coffee table, side by side.

Xia Chan looked at them and then at him. "Make a wish. There aren't any candles, but still."

He Huaisheng shook his head.

"Then let me make one for you."

He neither agreed nor stopped her.

"I wish," she said, "that everything you want comes true. And that you're happier next year than you are now."

She glanced at him sideways.

For her part, she was, right now, quite happy. This was a fact she acknowledged quietly and kept to herself, the way certain facts are best kept — not announced, simply known, held close and private, belonging to no one else.

Live for now. The present moment is enough.