You Had Me, You Lost Me, You'll Never Find Me novel Chapter 60

Sylvia shoved him away in frustration, not wanting anything to do with him. "Are you trying to be annoying, Ashton?"

But Ashton merely let out a low chuckle. "Whatever you say goes."

He knew exactly how to map the contours of her body. He quickly dragged her into the scent of their passion, tossing the wrapper aside, and didn't find his release until well past one in the morning.

The next morning, he took her again.

After half a month of abstinence, he was relentlessly demanding and seductive. When Sylvia's alarm went off, she reached her slender wrist out from under the covers to silence it, only for the man behind her to pin her hand down. Her six-fifteen alarm was hijacked by his insatiable stamina until past eight. The alarm kept blaring every fifteen minutes until the battery finally died and the room went quiet.

That was the absolute last time Sylvia remembered seeing her phone.

Now, she suspected it might have been kicked under the bed.

She searched the immediate area but found nothing, assuming the housekeeper might have tucked it away while cleaning.

Using her phone's flashlight, she swept the space beneath the bed and noticed a hidden drawer built into the frame. When she slid it open, a small notebook tumbled out. Sylvia didn't think much of it and was about to toss it back in.

But guided by some twisted impulse, she opened it. The notebook was small, its pages lined with transparent, sealable plastic sleeves.

Inside those sleeves were meticulously preserved ticket stubs—amusement park passes, boarding passes, restaurant receipts...

The dates were all from at least five or six years ago.

The stack of boarding passes alone was shockingly thick. Some were flights to Europe, others to the US, heavily concentrated during a single year a half-decade ago. There were easily over two dozen of them. There were also endless tickets for amusement parks, movie theaters, and a wild variety of extreme sports—ice skating, rock climbing, hiking, bungee jumping...

Looking at the evidence, Sylvia felt her heart sink to the bottom of the ocean, a suffocating pressure crushing her lungs.

He had taken that girl to experience every thrill the world had to offer, treating every scrap of paper from their time together like a sacred relic.

He had ruthlessly fought through jet lag, flying across continents just to support her piano career.

"I'm sorry..." It was the first time she had ever seen him look this deeply terrifying. She could barely breathe, her voice shaking violently.

Ashton completely ignored her. He crouched down and began picking up the stubs one by one. His movements were painstakingly gentle, handling them as if they were priceless treasures.

He didn't look like a man picking up old receipts; he looked like a man frantically trying to piece his shattered memories back together.

His gaze was soaked in a devastating, reverent tenderness. It was the first time Sylvia had ever seen the cold, arrogant void in his eyes melt into something so raw and vulnerable.

He gathered every single stub from the floor, meticulously placing them back in order.

When he finally looked up at Sylvia again, every trace of emotion had vanished, leaving his eyes pitch-black and suffocatingly dead.

"Get out!"