Volume One, Chapter 58 He kissed her cheek once more.

Xu Zhi was utterly petrified.

Liang Jinmo’s lashes drooped slightly, but he didn’t rush her. He simply watched as her delicate face gradually flushed crimson.

Xu Zhi, scarcely able to believe it, felt her ears burning. “You… You’re just taking advantage of me! If I had my phone, I’d ask myself.”

Liang Jinmo replied, “But you don’t have your phone.”

Xu Zhi was speechless.

She lowered her head, turned to leave, but after just a few steps, she glanced back.

He was still there, his posture relaxed, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe, watching her. His skin was almost porcelain pale, made even more striking by the black sweater he wore, which only accentuated the fairness without making him appear weak. Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and features so sculpted they looked the work of a master craftsman. In the depths of his eyes and brow, there lingered a trace of amusement that only those close to him could discern.

No one else ever saw him like this. Suddenly, she had a thought: With a face like this, stealing a kiss wouldn’t be a loss.

It was only a kiss, nothing more, and she was tired of being the well-behaved, rule-abiding girl.

She walked back to him, eyes averted from his gaze, focusing only on his thin lips.

Her heart pounded. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, rose on tiptoe, and then—

She couldn’t reach.

—She! Just! Couldn’t! Reach!

Xu Zhi was mortified.

Liang Jinmo looked at her.

Her heels returned to the floor. Xu Zhi wished she were a hamster, so she could burrow away in escape.

A strange silence lingered before she asked, “How tall are you?”

“One eighty-three.”

Xu Zhi thought her one sixty-five wasn’t short, but now, standing before him, she truly felt small.

Her first attempt to kiss a man, and she couldn’t manage it—she found herself doubting her entire existence.

Liang Jinmo couldn’t hold back a slight curve at his lips. “You’re standing too far away.”

She only wanted to get it over with quickly, deliberately avoiding touching him, which left a gap between them. Coupled with their height difference, it was no wonder she couldn’t reach.

As he spoke, he suddenly stepped forward.

Before she could react, she felt herself lift off the ground.

She gasped in surprise.

His hands held her easily, lifting her up, and then he turned, setting her atop a cabinet by the study door.

Xu Zhi’s heart still raced as she came to her senses. His hands remained at her sides, and for a moment, she thought of how one might hold a child.

Her whole body seemed to burn as she stared at him in astonishment.

Liang Jinmo’s hands moved lower, gently parting her legs as he stood between them.

Now, she was actually a little taller than him.

Xu Zhi didn’t know why, but the posture felt terribly embarrassing. She wanted to close her legs, but he blocked her way.

Her mind went blank, and he had already tilted his face up, simply uttering one word: “Go on.”

He issued only the command, making no move to take the initiative himself.

Xu Zhi’s heart pounded wildly. She had wanted to make this perfunctory, but now, he’d made it feel like a ceremony.

Nervous, she swallowed, lowered her head, and leaned in. The moment her lips brushed his, she wanted to pull away. But he moved faster.

He caught her lips, forcefully prying them open, invading without hesitation.

Her mind went completely blank—she couldn’t think at all. At some point, his arms locked tightly around her waist, and her hands, with nowhere else to go, came to rest upon his shoulders.

That feeling returned—weak to the point of melting, her thoughts drained away, her soul floating as if on clouds, weightless.

Time blurred; she had no idea how long it lasted before he finally stopped.

Xu Zhi was limp, her breath ragged and urgent.

His hand stroked her back, his lips dropping gentle pecks at the corner of her mouth and her flushed cheek.

Those soft, tender kisses made her lashes quiver. She had no resistance to such affectionate touches.

She struggled to pull herself together, turning her face away, her hand weakly pushing at his shoulder. “Don’t…”

Her voice was fragile, almost coquettish. “I still have a cold. What if I pass it on…”

“I’m not afraid,” he murmured, kissing her cheek again.

Xu Zhi still felt short of breath, leaning against his shoulder.

He held her close, silent, his hand tracing over her back, feeling the abrupt lines of her shoulder blades through her sweater.

Their bodies pressed together, heartbeats seeming to merge into a single rhythm.

Xu Zhi didn’t want to let go. Suddenly, she said, “I don’t think I’m very well-behaved right now.”

A good girl wouldn’t kiss a man she had no confirmed relationship with. She remembered all the lessons she’d been taught—how the world is always harsher on women. A good girl, if kissed by a man without warning, should be angry, upset, and make her stance clear, not secretly longing for it to happen again.

A woman’s desires must always be more restrained than a man’s, or she’s not a good woman.

Liang Jinmo immediately understood. His lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “Whether you’re good or not doesn’t matter to me. As long as it’s you. Besides…”

He paused, his voice low and almost bewitching. “Is this what you call being not well-behaved?”

As he spoke, his breath grazed her earlobe, making her shiver.

His fingers slid down her spine, pausing just above her tailbone. “Do you want to try what really being naughty is like?”

She sensed danger, tensed up, and immediately pulled away. “Call the number already!”

She thought she heard him laugh softly. Embarrassed, she dared not look at him.

Yet everywhere he’d touched still tingled. She doubted herself—she’d never heard of anyone’s back being a sensitive spot.

And now, she couldn’t even claim the kiss had been her initiative…

Liang Jinmo kept his word and made a call—to Liang Zhenguo.

At that moment, Liang Zhenguo was still in the hospital.

Everything after last night had been chaos. The old master insisted that Liang Muzhi and Xu Zhi get engaged this month, but Liang Muzhi adamantly refused, threatening that if they kept forcing him, he’d just go and register his marriage with Chen Jing.

The old master, already suffering from high blood pressure, grew so angry that his hand shook as he pointed at Liang Muzhi. Before he could even shout, he collapsed.

An emergency call was made, and he was rushed to the nearest hospital, diagnosed with a cerebral hemorrhage caused by hypertension.

The surgery was, in truth, a success, but considering the old man’s age, the doctors kept him in the ICU for forty-eight hours as a precaution before he could be moved to a regular room.

When Liang Zhenguo received Liang Jinmo’s call inquiring after the old man’s condition, he was truly surprised.

Perhaps because their relationship had always been so distant, hearing this child express concern for his grandfather moved him. With a hoarse voice, Liang Zhenguo said, “It’s all right now. The surgery went very well last night, but he’ll need to stay in intensive care for two days.”

Liang Jinmo was silent for a few seconds, apparently at a loss for words, then finally said, “Take good care of him.”

Most people would have added a polite remark about visiting soon, but he didn’t.

Liang Zhenguo knew, even this call was already a rare gesture.

After hanging up, he turned to look at Liang Muzhi sitting beside him.

None of the three had slept last night. At the moment, Fu Wanwen had gone off to arrange for a nurse, leaving just father and son on the bench outside the ICU.

Liang Muzhi’s eyes were bloodshot, his whole bearing dejected and disheveled.

He hadn’t expected things to become so serious—a cerebral hemorrhage. The doctor said the old man’s aged, fragile blood vessels couldn’t withstand the emotional spike in blood pressure and simply burst.

It was hard to predict the outcome now. Though the old man’s life was likely safe, whether he’d suffer any lasting effects remained to be seen.

And it was all because of him.

He’d simply been pushed too far—everyone forcing him, and he just couldn’t take it.

Liang Zhenguo fixed him with a look. “Are you satisfied now?”

Liang Muzhi closed his eyes. “I didn’t think it would be this serious.”

“If you insist on being with Chen Jing, this is just the beginning,” Liang Zhenguo sneered. “You might even be the death of me.”

“Dad!” Liang Muzhi called out.

Liang Zhenguo was silent for a while, then said, “I agree with your grandfather’s arrangement.”

Liang Muzhi was stunned. “What?”

“You and Xu Zhi should get engaged as soon as possible,” Liang Zhenguo said firmly. “I want to see if Chen Jing is really so shameless, so eager to be the other woman.”

Liang Muzhi couldn’t believe it, but before he could say more, Liang Zhenguo had already risen. “I need to make a few work calls. Do you have any idea how much is going on at the company? Your grandfather fell ill today, so I can’t go in. It’s Jinmo and my secretary who are handling things for me. And you, the so-called rightful heir—besides infuriating me, what have you done?”

Liang Muzhi was at a loss for words, wanting to argue, but unable to find anything to say.

“Don’t make me even angrier,” Liang Zhenguo said as he walked away, footsteps fading into the distance.

Liang Muzhi clenched his fists, desperate to vent, but this was a hospital—there was nothing suitable to smash.

A whole night of worry and fear, now compounded by deep frustration and defeat, left him lost and listless.

After a long time, he took out his phone.

There were several missed calls and unread messages, all from Chen Jing.

He had no idea how to explain any of this to her, choosing instead to ignore them. As he was about to close out of WeChat, his gaze fell on the chat pinned to the top.

His conversation with Xu Zhi had been pinned there for years.

Back when WeChat first came out, he was a freshman, and Xu Zhi was the very first friend he added.

But Xu Zhi’s first added friend was a girl from her class, which had annoyed him at the time.

She’d told him, “Don’t worry, no matter how many people I add, you’ll always be at the top.”

When the pin-to-top feature was introduced, she pinned their conversation and showed him.

Only then was he satisfied, and he pinned her chat as well.

Now, opening the conversation, he saw that their messages had dwindled to almost nothing, and recently, there was nothing at all.

For years, no matter what happened, Xu Zhi had always been the first person he wanted to confide in—they’d once had endless things to say to each other.

He tapped the screen, typed a few words, then deleted them.

He remembered: Xu Zhi had already deleted him.

There was no point in keeping this pinned chat anymore. He thought about deleting it. But staring at her profile picture, his finger hovered for a long time, unable to press down.

The screen went dark. Frustrated, he shoved his phone back in his pocket, feeling as if there was a hole in his chest—empty, aching.