This was something that had been firmly held in his heart since he was a teenager. He was like a little boy who didn't know anything, who quickly grabbed a piece of pumice wood in front of him to keep himself from drowning in various things in this world.
"You always ask me why other people can, but you can't." Qin Gengxin suddenly looked at Xian Guiying and said softly, "I'll tell you now."
For some reason, Xian Guiying felt suffocated.
She had known Qin Gengxin for too long, and he had never said this much in front of others, nor had he ever shared his thoughts with anyone.
He was always like that, whatever he wanted, he didn't need anyone to understand, he never explained, and he didn't have the patience to explain anything either for a person or for a matter.
His words, "I'll tell you now," were something Xian Guiying had expected after so many years of marriage. She clearly had a sliver of expectation, but when she thought about it carefully, her expression instantly turned cold.
Her expression didn't change. After all, Qin Gengxin was the one who wanted to talk, so she just quietly listened and didn't interrupt.
"Why can't you be the only one?" Qin Gengxin looked at her and said seriously, "Because I care about you, Guiying. I don't want you to be hurt by my ridiculous stubbornness towards Jiang Ruolan. I can be rude to other women and act on the spot. Even when they fall in love with me, I can still retreat cleanly because the future is too unknown. I am not a good person, Guiying. I can't provide and give you anything that you want, but at the same time, I don't want to hurt you, either."
"So even though I knew your thoughts from the beginning, I still pretended not to know. And until you revealed it all. When you asked me with red eyes why I couldn't consider you, I just…Whether I answer it or not, you still won't be spared from the heartbreak, that's why I kept my distance from you. I want to lessen your pain."
He fixed his gaze on her. "Xian Guiying, do you know what I thought when I found out that you were pregnant with my flesh and blood and hid it from me for seven months?"
"Hate me?" Xian Guiying finally spoke.
"Hate?" Qin Gengxin laughed. It was only after a long while that he retracted his smile and looked into her eyes. "Perhaps I should hate myself. I was just very confused. After I found out that Jiang Ruolan was married to Xian Zihao, I felt so confused for a long time. That was the most perplexing time for me in the past thirty years. Men are indeed not like women, who will cry whenever they feel wronged, but the heart is still made of flesh, and there are times when Qin Gengxin is weak. "
"My life was already messed up and before I could sort everything out, I found out about your pregnancy. When I learned the reason for your pregnancy, I only felt that it was a bolt out of the blue. Although I drink a lot and am occasionally drunk, I still have my own awareness. In our circle, there are a lot of women who want to get into my bed, but even when I'm drunk, no woman has ever succeeded."
He paused. "Just you."
"Afterwards, I couldn't even remember your face at all and then, you got pregnant. For seven months, I didn't know you carried my flesh and blood. Hate was not the word I would use, but anger does exist."
He looked at her seriously, "The relationship between the Xian Family and the Qin Family is something that cannot be joked around. This matter not only will destroy you but also damage the relationship between our family, as well as the relationship between your brother and me."
"Do you know?" Qin Gengxin narrowed his eyes and looked at Xian Guiying's face intensely. "When I kicked open the door to the Xian Family's hall and saw you were kneeling on the ground with such a big stomach and realized that it was my child, at that moment, I felt deceived. The anger of being fooled flooded my head. Do you know how much self-control I had to use back then in order not to tear down that hall?"
Xian Guiying will never forget his expression that day. The anger in his eyes and the heat that was always there in him finally began to cool when in contact with her.
She had been thinking about it for the past two days. Maybe she's wrong. That night, she shouldn't have been selfish and shouldn't have helped him. She knew that she also played a big part in this matter, but it's all in the past now. She had been waiting for two years in silence, waiting for him to notice her. When she was tired, when she finally decided to let go and when she saw how happy and affectionate he treated Bai Nuying, today, however, he suddenly told her that she had a special place in his heart and he never intended to hurt her?
Xian Guiying's eyes were very cold. Looking at his face, she suddenly realized that in the past eleven years, she had never felt so unfamiliar with him.
"So, Qin Gengxin." Xian Guiying looked at him coldly. "You were saying that you had feelings for me? That you loved me?"
Qin Gengxin pursed his lips and calmly looked at her, neither admitting nor denying.
Still, she saw traces of tenderness in his eyes. This tenderness was too foreign to her.
Xian Guiying suddenly broke into laughter. She stood up and looked at him coldly, "I thought you had never had any feelings for me, that you were only treating me like a sister, so from the moment I entered this hotel until now, I never complained. Not even a little bit. Even if it is hatred, I can only hate myself for all these years that I have wasted on you."
"But today, you actually told me that I've always been special to you? You even liked me and loved me?" Xian Guiying looked at him and smiled. "You loved me, but you didn't believe me! Love me, but you won't even listen to a single explanation! If you love me, you won't take revenge on me in this way! Qin Gengxin, I wish you had never loved me! I would rather have been one-sided, at least I would not hate you, because I always thought I'm the one who forced you into this! But now you're telling me you always have feelings for me?"
She smiled, but her smile did not reach her eyes. "From the day of our wedding, when you appeared late, I already knew that you were taking revenge on me. Tell me the truth, how much exactly do you hate me in order for you to treat me like this?"
She seemed calm on the surface, but her anger was obvious underneath. Qin Gengxin stared into her eyes that were filled with indignation, before saying in a low voice, "There will be no hatred if there is no love. You can hate as much as you love. I know you're mad at me."
Xian Guiying looked away and a smile still plastered on her face, but her tears were hidden behind her eyes as she gritted her teeth in hatred.
For more than two years, all the pain and sorrow she had felt and concealed under her smiling face, all the wounds she had suffered had returned to her in an instant.
She had thought that she had gotten used to pain. All the pain she had suffered during the past years had been less than a tenth of the pain she felt right now.
Xian Guiying clenched her fists at her side as she recalled Qin Gengxin's attitude towards her all this time. His every move, his every expression.
When she remembered the wedding night and the words he had dropped, it almost stabbed into her heart like a knife.
"So this is what you want to talk about? This is how your feelings towards me in these eleven years?" Xian Guiying endured her pain and astonishingly looked at him. Her gaze was ice-cold as she looked at his expression, which was as calm as it could be.
