Chapter 445

Max racked his brain, only to realize that the bulk of his time was spent chained to his desk, working overtime. The only respite from his disciplined yet dull routine was the occasional beer with Andrew and a few other colleagues.

Pulling out his phone once more, he stared at the screen. True to form, Brielle hadn’t sent any messages.

After driving for a bit, Max couldn’t shake off his concern. He pulled over, hesitated, and then sent a text. [What are you up to?]

Worried that she was still upset with him, he pondered for a while before scrolling through the emoji options in WhatsApp and sending a rose for the first time.

Sending a rose was a safe bet, right?

Max wasn’t one for emojis, and he rarely chatted on WhatsApp. Apart from replying promptly to Brielle, he would typically ignore messages from others unless they were of utmost importance.

Brielle, however, wasn’t checking her phone. Upon waking, she just lay there, blankly staring at the ceiling. When hunger struck, she would just ask the doctor for a glucose shot.

Her heart felt hollow, leaving her entire being cold and numb. She felt a bone–deep chill paired with an aching pain. Her phone chimed, but it was as if she didn’t hear it. She lay quietly, ready to drift back to sleep.

Max waited and waited for a reply and started to think that maybe she didn’t like roses after all. He opened the emoji menu again, searching earnestly until he found a fireworks emoji. They had watched fireworks together once, and she had loved it.

Max sent one fireworks emoji, then decided it wasn’t enough and sent five more in a row. After sending them, he just sat quietly in the driver’s seat, waiting for a response.

But there was nothing, and his phone was eerily silent. He started to question whether there was an issue with his phone.

The messages were sent successfully, so it wasn’t a service problem.

Max rubbed his temples, reluctant to admit that Brielle might’ve been intentionally ignoring him.

For the first time, he felt what it was like to be given the cold shoulder. But there was another possibility–that something had happened to Brielle.

His heart skipped a beat at the thought. Just as he was about to call Patrick to ask him to check Brielle’s location, she replied to his message.

[Exhausted. Need some rest. Is it okay if I take a few days off?]

11:48 Max’s frown deepened, and he immediately called her. He braced himself for the worst, tearing that something had happened to Brielle and someone else was using her phone, but firielle’s weary voice came through.

“Max.”

He didn’t know it it was his concern, but her voice sounded tearful, and it weighed heavily on his heart.

“What did you do to get so tired?”

Brielle lay in bed, pale as a ghost, gripping the bedsheets so tightly that the veins on the back of her hand stood out. Each word he spoke stabbed at her heart like a knife.

She recalled something Sydney had said and decided to use it. “I watched a TV show. The main characters lost their child. It’s been tough.”

“You’ve been with Aubree watching TV shows?”

“Yeah, it was so engaging. I’m fine, really. Just got a little too invested for a moment,”

Max wasn’t sure how to comfort her. One moment, he found Brielle’s empathy endearing, and the next moment, absurd.

His approach to comfort was always straightforward, “Which TV show? I’ll talk to the scriptwriter and see if we can get the couple another child in the plot.”

Brielle’s tears flowed even harder. “It’s gone… how can they have another? The show said it was hard for the woman to get pregnant again.”