CEO Ex-Husband, Don't Bother Me-Chapter 43: Pregnancy and Marriage (3)
After they got in the car, Ken drove. Julian Donovan rubbed his temples, which were throbbing from the alcohol.
"Ken, tomorrow, announce publicly that I’m marrying Naomi Shaw. I want you to start preparing for the wedding too. The sooner, the better. Also, hurry up and finalize the arrangements for the trip to Meridia!"
Ken glanced at Julian Donovan’s tightly furrowed brow in the rearview mirror and said lightly,
"Miss Shaw is a good girl. I will put my heart into preparing the wedding."
Having been by Julian Donovan’s side for two years, Ken naturally knew the nature of his relationship with Naomi Shaw. He was very optimistic about them. He believed that a couple’s personalities should complement each other. Julian’s current circumstances and childhood trauma had inevitably made his temperament somewhat violent. Naomi Shaw, on the other hand, had never been hurt; she was kind-hearted, pure, gentle, and accepting—capable of tolerating everything about him. She was the most suitable person for Julian Donovan. As for that Juliet Jennings, Ken felt she was just a fleeting, impulsive infatuation of youth, not someone you could build a life with. ’Who hasn’t been young? Who hasn’t thrown caution to the wind for love?’
Arnold, sitting beside them, chimed in with a happy laugh.
"Wow, that’s great! Donovan, you’re finally giving Miss Naomi a proper status. She must be ecstatic, right? I’m going over to her place tomorrow for some of her delicious food!"
Over the past two years, whenever Julian Donovan was in a good mood, he would buy all sorts of crystals to give to Naomi Shaw. Sometimes there were other gifts too—clothes, jewelry, and other things girls liked—but he never gave them to her himself. He always had Arnold deliver them. Because of this, Arnold often got to enjoy Naomi Shaw’s cooking. And Naomi, being kind-hearted, would often call Arnold herself to come eat whenever she made something good, especially after learning he was an orphan. She would also thoughtfully buy him new clothes.
Arnold adored her—though strictly in the way a younger brother adores an older sister. He was constantly in Julian Donovan’s ear, chattering on about "Miss Naomi this" and "Miss Naomi that." At first, Julian got angry with him quite a few times, but Arnold never learned his lesson. Eventually, Julian realized that Arnold was just a soft, kind-hearted person by nature, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Julian Donovan’s brow furrowed even deeper. He shot Arnold a glare.
"Shut up!"
’Why does everyone around me like her so much? How come I can’t see what’s so great about her? Other than her gentle temper and lack of a backbone, that is.’
Ken and Arnold drove Julian Donovan home. From a distance, they saw that all the lights in his house were off. In the past, whenever they brought a drunk Julian home, she would be waiting anxiously by the door long beforehand, a hangover-soothing soup already prepared. But today, the cold, empty house felt unsettlingly strange.
After helping Julian Donovan into the bedroom, Ken frowned and glanced around.
"Why isn’t Miss Shaw home?"
Julian Donovan, lying on the large bed, pulled the covers over his head, hiding his frustration.
"I don’t know. She can go wherever she wants. It has nothing to do with me!"
Although Julian Donovan said that, the perceptive Ken had a bad feeling. He turned and instructed Arnold,
"Arnold, call Miss Shaw!"
Arnold obediently took out his phone and dialed Naomi Shaw’s number. The ringtone, however, came from downstairs. Arnold scrambled down and came back up a moment later with Naomi Shaw’s phone.
"Miss Naomi’s phone was left in the sofa!"
Ken’s frown deepened. Annoyed by them, Julian Donovan threw off the covers and shooed them away.
"Alright, alright, you two can go. She probably went to the hospital to take care of her dad!"
’If she’s not here, she must have gone to the hospital to look after Ian Shaw. His condition is so serious now, she probably wishes she could stay by his side every day.’
But the thought of this long night without her soft, warm body to hold made him feel incredibly lonely. He rolled over on the large bed and murmured an order to Ken,
"Ken, go find me a woman!"
"Young Master Donovan, you’re drunk. Get some sleep. We’re leaving!"
Ken completely ignored his request and left with Arnold. After they were gone, Julian Donovan tossed and turned on the bed for a long time before finally succumbing to the alcohol and falling into a deep sleep.
The next day, Julian Donovan was woken by the increasingly urgent ringing of his phone. The hangover gave him a splitting headache. Groaning in pain, he reached for the phone on his nightstand. ’Why wasn’t it this painful when I got drunk before?’ Of course, he wouldn’t remember that in the past, a large bowl of hangover-soothing soup always greeted him when he came home drunk. Nor would he know how many times she had placed a cool towel on his forehead during the night to ease the pain from the alcohol.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know any of it. And even if he had known, he wouldn’t have cared.
The cold, empty space beside him in the bed made him freeze for a moment. He came to his senses, only then remembering that she hadn’t been home last night. He answered the phone, and the anxious voice of the usually unflappable Ken came through.
"Young Master Donovan, it’s bad! Miss Shaw is at the hospital right now. She went to the gynecology department, said she wants to get rid of the baby!"
After leaving Julian Donovan last night, Ken had asked Arnold to find out where Naomi Shaw was. She wasn’t at the Shaw Residence or the hospital. Ken immediately sensed that something was wrong. Later, his men reported that they had found her at a nearby temple. They didn’t disturb her. After she finished praying, she went to the hospital to care for Ian Shaw. This morning, the person Ken had assigned to watch her reported that she had gone to the gynecology department. Ken instantly understood why she had gone to the temple last night. ’She must have gone to repent for getting rid of the child today.’
Hearing Ken say she was going to get rid of the baby, Julian Donovan’s heart trembled. He shot up in bed, clutching the phone. Although he had told her before that if she got pregnant, she should go to the hospital, the truth was, from the moment he found out she was pregnant yesterday to being forced into marriage by Ian Shaw, he had never once thought about making her get rid of the child. He just didn’t want to marry her. The child was innocent, and it was a life, after all.
He just hadn’t expected that she, who was always so kind, would be even more ruthless than him this time and actually go through with getting rid of the baby!
Ken was a smart man. He hadn’t acted on his own before figuring out Julian Donovan’s true feelings. Now, hearing the tone in Julian’s voice, he understood his attitude toward the child and immediately said,
"We’ve already asked the doctor to stall her. You should get over here right away!"
"Dammit!"
Julian Donovan cursed under his breath, hung up, threw on some clothes, and raced to the hospital.
In an operating room at the hospital, a pale-faced Naomi Shaw lay on the surgical table, waiting for the doctor to administer the anesthesia. The decision she had made yesterday was clear: get rid of this child, stop entangling herself with him, and let him be with Juliet Jennings. Even though she loved him so much, she felt exhausted. His constant disregard left her heartbroken.
She was a devout Buddhist and shouldn’t take a life, but she had no other choice now. That was why she had gone to pray at the temple last night, to repent sincerely before the Buddha, hoping He would forgive her for this sin.
For some reason, the anesthesiologist still hadn’t arrived. She lay there with her eyes squeezed shut, biting her lip so hard her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides, forcing herself to endure the waves of sorrow crashing over her. Every extra second she spent on this operating table deepened her pain.
Suddenly, the sound of hurried footsteps came from outside the door. The next second, the door to the operating room was brutally kicked open with a loud BANG. Startled, she quickly sat up on the table, only to see a furious Julian Donovan storm in. He yanked her off the operating table, his roar shaking the room.
"Naomi Shaw, how dare you!"
She flinched, then lowered her eyes, her face pale. She pursed her lips and said nothing. She didn’t know how he had found out she was here. ’But does he really need to be this angry? I thought he didn’t want this child. Would he really keep the child of a woman he doesn’t love?’
Her calm silence, her refusal to argue, only made Julian Donovan angrier. He gripped her chin, forcing her to look up at him, and glared at her through gritted teeth.
