My Alleged Husband

Chapter 2002: Chapter 1796: Warmth

What people want out of life is actually very simple—peace and harmony are enough. But there are so many things you just can’t control.

Xia Jing looked at her husband, who still had that utterly indifferent expression, and she grew even more anxious inside. She didn’t want to be the one taking the fall for this again. She didn’t want to once more become the villain in everyone’s eyes, because none of this was ever the ending she wanted. But why is it that after everything happens, all the responsibility has to be shoved onto me? Am I really destined to just be the scapegoat?

”I want you to think this through. I’m going to lay it all out for you right here today. I’m the one who made this decision, yet you, without even figuring out right or wrong, only think about leaving with me. In everyone else’s eyes, what kind of person does that make me? They’ll only think I egged you on to leave with me, that I’m once again making you abandon them. I don’t know what everyone really thinks deep down, and I don’t even want to. But I hope that as my husband, you could stand in my shoes for once and think from your wife’s point of view, just this once?

Do you really want me to carry this blame one more time? These past few years, you know perfectly well how many times I’ve taken the heat, how many times I’ve been the one to shoulder everything. And now because of you, I’m supposed to face public judgment all over again, be pushed into the storm one more time. Everyone will think it’s because of me that you’re leaving with me. All the neighbors will say I’m an unfilial daughter-in-law, that I made my husband abandon his own father yet again. How do you expect other people to look at me? You’ve put me in danger again and again. I could always pretend not to care, never complain. But today I really can’t bear it anymore. I don’t want something that has nothing to do with me to end up dumping me right in the center of the storm. That’s just too unfair to me.

As long as you cared about me even just a little, even a tiny bit, I would never be like this right now. I just hope you can really think it through. Every decision you make comes with its own responsibility. Don’t do something just because you’re hot-headed for a moment. You think your decision is right, but for me, your decision might not be right at all. I hope you can always, always try to see things from my point of view, even just a little. It would already make me so, so much happier.

Everyone’s here today, and I really want to make everything clear right to your faces. Today’s matter has nothing to do with him, and even less to do with me. What I said was that I wanted to leave by myself, alone, and let him stay at home. If he insists on leaving with me, I hope you won’t dump all the responsibility on me yet again. I really am not that scapegoat. I can’t let you keep hanging the blame on me over and over, can’t keep helping you carry all your sins while you live freely and comfortably. You think everything is my fault, you think I deserve all the punishment and all the pressure of public opinion.

Sometimes when I think about it, I feel the people whose lives we’ve hurt are innocent—but what about us? Aren’t we just as innocent? We’ve been kicked out of this house time and time again, and time and time again you’ve pinned all the mistakes on us. We can’t even speak our grievances. Just because we made one mistake, we can only silently bear the huge pain you keep inflicting on us, over and over. We have no way out. We can only rely on our own efforts, again and again, to prove to everyone that every single thing I’ve done is right. I can’t let anyone look down on me. Do you have any idea how much that kind of public pressure hurts?

Today I’m actually tearing the roof off and speaking from the heart, saying everything to this point, which means from now on I will never again take the blame for anything. I won’t let anyone casually pile all the mistakes on my head. I don’t have that responsibility, and I certainly don’t have the obligation to shoulder the criticism for the mistakes you’ve made.”

At this moment, Zhang Zhentian suddenly realized that maybe everything he’d done in the past really had been wrong. All those things he’d done, again and again, had never exposed him to any public pressure at all—it was always his wife. Yet back then he still had the nerve to say how overboard his wife was acting. But did any of it really have anything to do with her?

It seemed like all of it, every last consequence, had actually been caused by him. What right did he have to blame his wife? She was the innocent one, dragged into danger again and again, forced to carry all the responsibility every time. She had no choice, because he was her husband. She could only choose to shoulder it all alone.

Maybe the decisions he’d made before really were wrong. Maybe he’d never once made a truly right decision. Thinking about his past self was laughable—so naïve, so sure that every decision he made was correct, that every path he walked was a broad sunny road. Now that he thought back, how many irreparable mistakes had he made? Those mistakes had crushed him over and over, aging him before his time, leaving him unable to face life.

”I’m sorry. Back then I never considered your feelings. I pushed you into the line of public fire again and again, made you suffer over and over. I really am sorry. I never thought my actions would bring you all this. All I wanted was to give you a stable life, but in the end I couldn’t even manage what I promised myself, let alone give you the life you wanted. I don’t know how I’m supposed to treat you, but I just want, sincerely, to keep you by my side. I want to spend this lifetime quietly accompanying you, never giving up on you. Even if you want to leave, I’ll follow in your footsteps, stay with you, by your side, every minute of every day!

You may all think what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, is selfish, that I don’t care at all about what my family thinks. But do you know? When a man loves a woman down to his very bones, at that moment he’ll give up everything for her and never regret it. He’ll feel it’s all worth it. I don’t know how to make you understand that feeling. It’s a feeling from the deepest part of the heart, a feeling that can’t be put into words. I’m happy. I only want to keep her by my side. I only want to open my eyes every morning and see her in that first instant. Then I’ll feel that this life of mine is the happiest life there is!

Maybe you see things completely differently from me, but that’s fine. I don’t care. What I care about is whether I can keep her by my side, make sure she never gives up on me for the rest of her life...”

”Grandpa, tell me, is there any way I can get back what I’ve lost? Will she... will she still be willing to come back?”