“Why won’t you let me touch you?”

Jiang Hansheng didn’t let go. Instead he pressed in closer, more insistent than before.

In the darkness, fabric rustled against fabric. Jiang Hansheng closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the back of her neck.

“Did you sleep with Jiang Cheng?”

And then, without any ceremony, he bit down.

Zhou Jin winced in pain. The humiliation of it burned away the last of her patience with him. She twisted around, wrenched herself free, and shoved him hard.

Jiang Hansheng stumbled back two or three steps.

Zhou Jin pressed her hand to the sore spot on the back of her neck, her brow furrowing tight. She glared at him. “What is wrong with you!”

She reached over and switched on the light.

The sudden brightness made Jiang Hansheng squeeze his eyes shut. It seemed to sober him slightly, and he stood in silence.

Zhou Jin stared at him. His face and the tips of his ears were flushed a faint, suffused red — he was more drunk than she had ever seen him.

She walked over, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the bed. “Jiang Hansheng, you’re not yourself right now. I don’t want to fight with you. Whatever it is, we’ll talk when you’re sober.”

Jiang Hansheng turned the grip around and caught her wrist instead, reclaiming control. In one swift motion, he pushed her down onto the bed.

Zhou Jin, furious, tried to sit up — and was immediately pressed back down.

She bent her right knee, hadn’t even gathered the force yet, when he blocked it with his knee, effortlessly dismantling her attempt to resist.

“What if this is just who I am?” His eyes were shot through with red. “You were right, Zhou Jin. I’m not normal.”

Zhou Jin said, “That’s not what I meant—”

“I’m jealous of Jiang Cheng,” Jiang Hansheng said. “Jealous enough to want to kill him.”

Zhou Jin’s pupils contracted. She stared at him, shaken.

The ferocity in his expression was barely concealed — and when he said those words, it didn’t sound like anger talking. It sounded like something he might actually do.

If not for Jiang Cheng’s existence, Jiang Hansheng would never have known how pitiable he was, how wretched and small, how low he could sink inside himself.

Yet Zhou Jin couldn’t begin to understand the depth of his hatred toward Jiang Cheng.

“You said you didn’t mind that Jiang Cheng and I were once together. You even helped me rescue him… I always thought…”

What she had always assumed had now been proven wrong. There was no point saying it out loud.

Zhou Jin forced herself to calm down quickly and tried to reason with him clearly. “You should have just told me. Jiang Hansheng, you can’t do this to people — say nothing, give nothing, and then expect them to somehow understand what you’re feeling.”

Jiang Hansheng’s voice dropped very low. “You never told me that you like rainy days but hate thunder — I know anyway, because when it thunders, you instinctively move closer to whoever is familiar. You never told me you love spicy food but can’t stand anything with a fishy smell — I know anyway, because the faintest trace of it makes you wrinkle your nose.”

Zhou Jin was silent.

“You never told me that your closest relationship in the Serious Crimes Unit is with Team Leader Tan, because he’s your mentor and has taught you so much. And after him, it’s Zhao Ping — he makes a habit of twisting open a bottle of water for you, and whenever he hands it to you, you don’t guard yourself against him at all.”

“If you want to hear more, I can keep going. There’s so much more — things you’ve never told me, but that I know.”

With every word he spoke, the feelings inside him became harder to hold in check.

“Zhou Jin, it’s not that you don’t understand. It’s that you’ve never once paid attention to me.”

She was just like Jiang Bozhi.

Jiang Bozhi could do without him — he could have another child with Fang Rou, one that truly belonged to the two of them. Zhou Jin could do without him too — she could marry Jiang Cheng, or anyone else she chose.

He was always the one who wasn’t needed. Always the one who could be replaced.

Zhou Jin wanted to argue against what Jiang Hansheng said, but as she thought back over everything — all of it came back to her, all the jealousy he had carefully buried, only for it to slip through the cracks of their daily life without him realizing.

She had told him that the smell of him was pleasant, and he had asked whether it was better than Jiang Cheng’s.

She had explained to him that even if Jiang Cheng came back, nothing between them would change — and he had said he didn’t mind, yet had been so urgent in his need for her to prove it.

He hadn’t liked her staying in Jiang Cheng’s old apartment. And when Yan Bin brought up Jiang Cheng, he had sulked and drunk himself into a stupor.

Right now she could smell the sharp weight of alcohol on his breath, and beneath it, the faint, clinging scent of tobacco on his shirt.

When had he started smoking and drinking like this?

Probably right around the time Jiang Cheng came back.

She had seen it all clearly. But the August 17th case and everything surrounding Jiang Cheng had kept her occupied, and she had never let herself sit with it.

Zhou Jin drew a slow, deep breath.

In this moment, she couldn’t find in him the vulnerability she had come to know so well.

His eyes were savage and razor-sharp. When he looked at her, they were full of resentment — like a beast trapped in a cage, bloodied all over, with no strength left to fight back, capable only of snarling and snapping at anyone who dared come near.

He still looked like Jiang Hansheng. Yet it was a kind of devastatingly ravaged beauty she had never seen on him before.

Seeing him like this made the ache in her chest deepen. She wrapped her arms around him, tilted her head up, and kissed him in a rush. “I’m sorry. I haven’t done well enough.”

But Jiang Hansheng turned away from her kiss. His hand moved to her neck and closed around it, as if he were choking her.

He wasn’t so drunk that he had lost his senses. He was clear-headed enough to know that right now, Zhou Jin should get away from him as fast as possible — not draw any closer.

“You shouldn’t be apologizing. You should be refusing me.” The hand at her neck slowly began to tighten.

If only Zhou Jin would refuse him, he would let go — he absolutely would, without hesitation.

But she didn’t. The gaze she turned on him was still full of tenderness and gentle concern.

The more she looked at him like that, the more it enraged him.

Because he couldn’t bring himself to let go of Zhou Jin, and yet he was being ground down every single day by his own deep jealousy and his doubts about her loyalty to him — ground down until he was nearly out of his mind.

He was desperate to test whether Zhou Jin truly loved him, even if it meant doing so in a way that hurt her.

Jiang Hansheng’s eyes blazed with an unsettling light. He gritted his teeth and warned her one final time. “Refuse me, Zhou Jin!”

The faint lack of air made her face flush. She threaded her fingers through Jiang Hansheng’s soft hair, gave it a gentle touch, and said quietly, “Hansheng.”

It was like a kind of permission. The emotions he had been holding at the very edge of his limits suddenly came crashing past the point of no return.

He released his grip, lowered his head, and kissed her deeply. He bit down on her lower lip, drawing it open, and a faint, iron-tinged taste spread between them.

Zhou Jin’s brow furrowed slightly. She didn’t pull away. Instead she kissed him back, clumsy but present.

The blood in his veins roared in a soundless boil. The desire he had suppressed for so long surged outward without restraint, driving him to go further still.

Jiang Hansheng drew out the thin sash at her waist — the one he had already half-loosened — and looped it twice around her wrists, binding them behind her.

Then a tearing ache drove the moisture to Zhou Jin’s lashes. She struggled in small, helpless movements, and a cry escaped her that was tangled through with tears. The wetness slipped quietly from the corners of her eyes.

Jiang Hansheng’s breathing grew heavier. He knew she was in real pain. He braced himself on his arm beside her, lowered his head, and used his chin to brush aside the loose strands of hair at her temple before taking her reddened earlobe gently between his lips.

“Zhou Jin.” His low voice, when laced with desire, always carried something impossibly difficult to name. “You should have refused me.”

Zhou Jin’s lips had gone pale. She buried her face in the pillow and murmured, barely audible, “It hurts so much…”

It hurt the way a first time does.

Her lover was reckless, forceful, without any finesse whatsoever. All Zhou Jin could do was endure it.

She was willing to endure. They would have to find their way through this together — learning, slowly, what brought each other ease and comfort — even though the night ahead was long and full of hardship.