Love's Cunning Ruse novel Chapter 60

Julie wasn't sure if Kieran was involved in the matter and it wasn't easy to ask him directly. So, after hesitating for a few seconds, she finally said, "I just want to confirm if you actually don’t know which hospital Sansa is in."

She didn't know why she was so certain, but she believed that Kieran would understand her meaning. After a while, Kieran's voice came from the other side of the phone, "Don't use the donation money in Sansa's name, because I didn't donate anything."

It seemed that Kieran already knew about this.

"I see." With that, Julie hung up the phone.

Kieran, on the other side of the phone, turned his gaze to Karl's face and asked, "Have you figured out who made the donation?"

Karl shook his head, "The other party was very secretive, and we haven't found any clues yet."

"Call Ivan over, and you can leave now," Kieran told Karl.

A few minutes later, Ivan appeared in Kieran's study, "Karl said you wanted to see me?"

"Where's your handwriting practice?"

Ivan presented his practice book to Kieran like a treasured item, "I practiced for an extra half an hour! Can I have my phone back now, dad?"

So now he remembers to call him dad? Kieran expressionlessly opened the practice book, took a look, and then sternly said, "Hand over your phone to me now!!"

The practice book, filled with Ivan's handwriting from the past two and a half hours, was indeed impressive. But what's with these messy scribbles of 'Kieran is single'?

Upon hearing that his phone was going to be confiscated, Ivan quickly covered his pocket, then looked at Kieran with an innocent face, "The teacher taught us to be honest!!"

"And so!" Kieran looked at Ivan, "Saying that I'm single is being honest?"

Although... he wasn't wrong. But Ivan didn't dare to defy Kieran's authority. So he could only pout, "Kieran, you're just jealous that the woman who kissed me is prettier than the nanny you hired for me, so you're confiscating my phone!"

"Hmm," Kieran nodded, "There is that reason."

Kieran's frank admission left Ivan speechless for a moment. After stuttering for a while, Ivan finally said to Kieran, "Karl said that you have symptoms of being single. I don’t know what that means, but being single is something Shawna taught me! Can you not take my phone considering I've learned a new word?"

Ivan tried to please Kieran by tugging at his sleeve. From the time he was born until now, he had never tried so hard to please Kieran.

"Give me your phone, I'll give it back to you tomorrow morning," Kieran said to Ivan.

Upon hearing this, Ivan knew that this was the biggest concession Kieran was going to make.

So he could only reluctantly take his phone out of his pocket and say, "You can't delete my photos!"

"Well, go to bed now!"

After getting Kieran's assurance, Ivan finally left reluctantly.

Kieran glanced at the phone handed over to him and casually placed it on the table. Just as he was about to start working on his computer, his phone suddenly vibrated. Kieran glanced at the phone and then picked it up.

There was an unread message on WhatsApp. Kieran curiously opened the message. Someone had sent a smiley face emoji.

Without a profile picture on WhatsApp, Kieran casually clicked on that person’s status, which only had two updates, one from five years ago and the most recent one.

The status from five years ago read: Waiting for the flowers to bloom and fall, the song ends, the people scatter, the heart cools.

The most recent one read: Flowers bloom endlessly, old acquaintances meet but do not recognize each other.

The date of the status from five years ago was the day Julie formally proposed a divorce to him and the day they signed the divorce agreement.

"Waiting for the flowers to bloom and fall", in Julie's world, she was the leaf and Kieran was the flower. This was something Julie had once said.

In their second year of high school, they went camping in the wild. There was a field of wildflowers near the camp. Just as it was getting dark in the afternoon, Julie secretly picked a bunch of flowers. Although the arrangement was not very beautiful, it looked pretty decent when wrapped in plastic wrap.

With the fiery wild roses on the outside wrapped in a layer of grass and then another layer of lotus leaves.

She presented the flowers to Kieran like a treasure, shyly yet assertively saying to him, "This is for you, accept it!"

Julie felt she needed to clarify something: "You don't have to take a kid's words seriously, sir."

"Are you married?" Kieran, holding his phone, let a smile touch his lips.

Julie was taken aback by the message and weakly replied, "I was."

"Are you divorced then?" Kieran asked further.

Julie honestly replied, "Yeah."

"Coincidentally, I've been divorced once too," Kieran quickly shot back.

Julie was taken aback by the response.

Then another message came through: "Did you divorce due to incompatibility?"

Incompatibility? Julie gave a self-mocking smile and didn't answer the question. Instead, she shot back, "So, sir, did you get divorced because you and your ex were incompatible?"

For Julie, because she didn't know who was on the other end of the line, the stranger Kieran felt like someone she could open up to. People are like that, often finding it easier to pour out thoughts that are hard to express in front of friends and family to strangers. So on WhatsApp, Julie felt no need to hide anything.

Reading Julie's message, Kieran pondered and replied, "No, it's because my wife didn't need me anymore."

Feeling that this wasn't expressive enough, he sent a sad face emoji. Kieran swore, this was the most shameless thing he'd ever done.

Julie didn't expect this response, so it took her a while to reply, "Oh..."

Kieran imagined Julie on the other end, probably wearing an awkward expression. The thought made him laugh. He quickly typed, "So what's the reason for your divorce?"

Julie didn't really want to talk about this, so she simply replied, "Because we realized there was no future together."

Kieran held his phone, typed a few sentences, then deleted them all. Finally, he sent another question: "So, Ms. Abraham, have you considered remarrying?"