“Then why…” I struggled to get the words out, my voice thick with emotion, “why were you so distant with me for the past three years?”

Fu Yanli turned his head toward me, the rims of his eyes rimmed with red. The man who was always so unflappable that the sky could collapse without disturbing his calm looked like a fortress on the brink of crumbling.

“Because I was terrified,” he rasped out. “I was terrified that if I showed even a fraction of how much I cared, I’d lose control completely. I was afraid my twisted possessiveness would scare you away.”

He let out a soft laugh, a bitter sound far sadder than crying.

“I thought if I just gave you the best life possible and locked myself away, I could keep you by my side forever. But it turns out… I was wrong.”

He closed the distance between us step by step, each footfall echoing the frantic beating of my heart.

“Tang Yu, I was so wrong.”

He stood right in front of me, his hand trembling as he reached up to touch my face, only to freeze in midair, looking like a guilty child waiting to be punished.

“When I saw you with that guy today, I went mad with jealousy. I wanted to…” He closed his eyes tightly, his breathing ragged. “I wanted to ruin him. I wanted to lock you away. You see? I’m a lunatic. I’m a monster.”

Opening his eyes, his dark pupils locked onto mine as if searching for a final answer.

“Now… do you still want a divorce from someone like me?”

I stared at the man standing before me, who had stripped away his perfect façade for the very first time to expose his raw vulnerability, his obsession, and his wild extremes. His gaze burned so intensely it threatened to consume everything around us.

Divorce? The word sounded almost laughable now. Hadn’t I put on this entire spectacle just to force out this exact side of him? I just hadn’t expected my plan to blow up quite this dramatically.

I didn’t offer a verbal answer. Instead, I quietly reached out and clasped his hovering hand. His skin was ice-cold, so I used my palm to warm his, degree by degree.

“Fu Yanli,” I murmured, meeting his deep, passionate gaze. “You really are an idiot.”

With that, I stood on tiptoe and initiated a kiss, pressing my lips to his. It wasn’t a provocation or a test, it was the most genuine, ardent kiss I had ever given him.

He went rigid for a split second before launching a fierce counterattack. His hand clamped around the back of my neck, deepening the kiss. This time, it wasn’t the cold, territory-marking claim from earlier; it was the desperate hunger of a man who had just reclaimed a lost treasure. Urgent, yet excruciatingly tender.

The kiss dragged on until we were both desperately starved of oxygen. Only then did he finally let go, pulling me tightly into his arms as if afraid I’d dissolve into thin air.

“Don’t leave me… Tang Yu, I’m begging you, don’t leave me.”

I rested against his solid chest, listening to his heart pounding like a battle drum. The man the entire academic world revered was currently holding me like I was his sole lifeline in this world. As it turned out, I wasn’t unappealing at all—his romantic operating system was just severely glitched.

I wrapped my arms around him and whispered, “I’m not going anywhere. But you have to promise me one thing.”

“Ten things. A hundred. Anything,” he replied instantly, like a student reciting a memorized answer.

I let out a laugh and poked his chest. “First: no more cold shoulder. Whether you’re happy, sad, jealous, or angry, you have to say it outright. I need a real husband made of flesh and blood, not a professor-bot.”

He looked at me as if I were his entire universe and nodded with dead seriousness. “Okay.”

Then, a sudden thought struck him, and his expression instantly darkened into something dangerous. “So… that guy named Zhou…”

“Fake!” I quickly threw my hands up in surrender. “Purely an act! Today was the first time I ever met him.”

He let out a long breath of relief, though a slight hesitation lingered. “And the mark on your neck…”

“Also fake!” I teased with a giggle. “YSL Shade 196. I just applied it a little too heavily.”

The tips of Fu Yanli’s ears turned a suspiciously bright red. This academic genius, as it turned out, had the emotional intelligence of a high schooler in his first relationship.

“I… I suspected it was fake, but I wasn’t sure. I was terrified that if it was real, you were using lipstick to cover up the truth…”

I looked at him, completely lost for words. Cupping his face, I asked in all seriousness, “Fu Yanli, do you want to do something to me right now?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed heavily. “…Yes.”

His voice was thick and raspy, dripping with raw desire. Leaning in close to his ear, I whispered, “Then I’m giving you permission. Do whatever you want. I’m all yours, right now.”

My words acted like a key unlocking the iron cage of a long-restrained beast. The look in his eyes transformed entirely, and his logic went completely offline.

Without another word, Fu Yanli swept me up into his arms, pinning me against the wall right beside my eighteen-year-old portrait. On one side was the icy surface of the wall; on the other was the scorching heat of his chest.

“Tang Yu…” He gritted out my name in a low, heavily restrained growl, then shattered every last shred of self-control.

His kisses descended in a violent storm, from my lips down to my throat, coming to a halt at my collarbone where he had once left his fountain-pen signature. There was no restraint left, only a wild, unbridled possessiveness.

“You’re mine… you can only ever be mine…” he chanted like a solemn vow, or perhaps a self-imposed spell.

I had never seen Fu Yanli this unhinged or obsessed, but strangely enough, it gave me a sense of absolute security. Because I knew that this time, he would never hide his feelings from me again.

The “battle” inside the study dragged on for a very long time, so long that the golden sunset outside the window was completely swallowed by the deep night sky. The divorce papers were still sitting on the desk, but chances were, they would never see his signature.