Seven years later, I was standing in a conference room when the receptionist called.

“Ms. Hayes, there’s a woman here asking for you.”

“Does she have an appointment?”

“No.”

I continued reviewing the contract in front of me.

“Then schedule one.”

The receptionist hesitated.

“She says her name is Tessa Miller.”

My pen stopped.

Seven years vanished in a second.

The gold bracelet.

The suitcase.

The closed guest-room door.

730,000 yuan disappearing from an account I’d spent years filling.

Then I remembered who I was now.

“Send her in.”

Tessa entered five minutes later.

She wasn’t wearing gold.

She wasn’t even wearing a wedding ring.

She placed a bank draft on my desk.

730,000 yuan.

I looked at it.

“What is this?”

“What I owe you.”

“Seven years late.”

“Yes.”

I leaned back.

“And Gabriel?”

Her face changed.

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Interesting.

Tessa sat down without being invited.

“The promotion happened six years ago. I divorced him immediately afterward.”

I stared at her.

“So the arrangement really was temporary?”

“Yes.”

That should have made me feel foolish.

It didn’t.

Because their marriage had never been the real reason I left.

“Then why didn’t anyone return my money?”

Tessa lowered her eyes.

“My family took most of it. It took me years to recover everything.”

“And Gabriel?”

“He tried to repay your share.”

I laughed softly.

“How? I changed my number.”

“He searched.”

I said nothing.

Tessa looked around my office.

“You did well.”

I had.

After leaving, I started again with almost nothing.

I took a position in logistics management.

Then another.

Eventually I founded a consultancy specializing in supply systems and emergency operations.

For once, all the skills I’d used to make Gabriel’s life easier were building my own.

I tapped the bank draft.

“Why come personally?”

Tessa swallowed.

“To apologize.”

“For calling me vulgar?”

Her face reddened.

“For all of it.”

She looked at her hands.

“I was twenty-three. I thought because General Ward was willing to sacrifice so much for my career, I must be special.”

“You enjoyed watching me lose.”

“Yes.”

At least she didn’t lie.

“But I learned something afterward. Gabriel wasn’t in love with me.”

“I know.”

“He was obsessed with being the person who solved everyone’s problems.”

That sounded painfully familiar.

“He saved my career without asking what saving me would cost you.”

Exactly.

Tessa pushed the draft closer.

“Take it.”

I did.

Not because I needed it.

Because it had always been mine.

—

Gabriel arrived three days later.

I knew Tessa must have told him.

When my assistant said, “There’s a General Ward downstairs,” I almost corrected her.

Then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

“Send him up.”

Gabriel entered.

Older.

More lines around his eyes.

More silver at his temples.

But unmistakably him.

And on his wrist was my old watch.

No.

The watch he’d once given me.

The one I’d left behind.

His gaze met mine.

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

Finally:

“I found you.”

“No. Tessa did.”

A faint, painful smile.

“You haven’t changed.”

“I have.”

He looked around the office.

“Yes.”

That one word contained seven years.

He sat across from me.

“Why did you leave without saying anything?”

I stared at him.

“I proposed ninety-nine times.”

His jaw tightened.

“I think I’d said enough.”

“Amelia—”

“You married someone else.”

“To protect her.”

“You gave her our savings.”

“To protect her.”

“You moved her into our home.”

“To protect her.”

I leaned forward.

“Do you hear yourself?”

He went silent.

“You were willing to protect everyone except the woman who had spent eight years standing beside you.”

“I thought you’d understand.”

“I did understand.”

My voice softened.

“That was the tragedy.”

He looked up.

“I understood every deployment. Every emergency. Every soldier who needed you. Every family you had to comfort. I kept making myself smaller because your reasons always sounded noble.”

My throat tightened.

“But noble reasons can still hurt people, Gabriel.”

He closed his eyes.

—

Then he said something I hadn’t expected.

“I was wrong about the money.”

Not the marriage.

Not Tessa.

The money.

“I had no right to take your savings.”

“No.”

“I convinced myself that because the purpose was good, I didn’t need your permission.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve spent seven years realizing how arrogant that was.”

He removed something from his pocket.

A small velvet box.

My heart didn’t move.

Inside was no ring.

Just a folded piece of paper.

A bank transfer authorization.

My original contribution to the account, adjusted with seven years of interest.

“I know Tessa repaid the 730,000.”

He placed the paper down.

“This is separate.”

I looked at the amount.

Then at him.

“You calculated my contributions?”

“Every deposit.”

The old Amelia would have cried.

The woman sitting there only nodded.

“Thank you.”

His face fell slightly.

Perhaps he had expected forgiveness to sound more dramatic.

“Is that all?”

“What else should there be?”

He stared at me.

Then whispered:

“Proposal number one hundred.”

I almost laughed.

“Gabriel.”

“Just listen.”

“No.”

His eyes widened.

For eight years, he’d been the one saying that word.

Apparently he had never learned how heavy it felt from the other side.

“You don’t even know what I’m asking.”

“Yes, I do.”

I looked at the watch on his wrist.

“You kept something I returned seven years ago and built a fantasy around giving it back to me.”

His hand instinctively covered it.

“I never married again.”

“That was your choice.”

“I never stopped looking for you.”

“That was also your choice.”

His voice cracked.

“Didn’t you miss me?”

There it was.

The dangerous question.

And I decided he deserved the truth.

“Terribly.”

He froze.

“For the first year, I woke up wanting to call you almost every day.”

Hope flashed across his face.

I extinguished it gently.

“But missing someone isn’t proof you should return to them.”

—

Gabriel came back once more before leaving the city.

This time, he didn’t bring money.

He didn’t bring promises.

He brought the watch.

He placed it on my desk.

“I think this belongs to you.”

I shook my head.

“No.”

“You wore it for years.”

“Because I needed evidence that you loved me.”

His expression tightened.

“I used to look at it whenever you disappointed me. I’d remember how you competed while injured to buy it, and I’d tell myself, ‘See? Gabriel loves you.’”

I pushed it back.

“I don’t need evidence anymore.”

“Because you don’t love me?”

I thought for a moment.

“Because I finally love myself enough not to negotiate against my own happiness.”

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he took the watch.

And for the first time in our relationship, Gabriel accepted my no.

—

A year later, I received an invitation.

Tessa was being promoted.

At the bottom, she’d written:

“I finally earned something no one had to marry me to protect.”

I attended.

Gabriel was there too.

We sat on opposite sides of the hall.

When Tessa received her insignia, she stood straight, proud and entirely her own person.

Afterward, she hugged me.

Then she went to Gabriel and saluted him.

There was no romance between them.

Maybe there never had been.

And strangely, that made what happened to me neither better nor worse.

The lesson was never that Gabriel secretly loved Tessa.

It was that he believed his good intentions gave him the right to sacrifice things that weren’t his.

My time.

My money.

My dignity.

My future.

Me.

—

Years later, I did marry.

Not quickly.

Not because someone rescued me.

And certainly not after ninety-nine proposals.

His name was Nathan.

When he proposed, I laughed so hard that he became nervous.

“Was that a no?”

“No.”

I wiped my eyes.

“It’s just that someone once made me ask ninety-nine times.”

Nathan stared at me.

“Ninety-nine?”

“Yes.”

“And you still wanted marriage after that?”

I looked at the ring.

Then at him.

“I didn’t stop believing in marriage.”

I smiled.

“I stopped believing love should have to beg.”

He asked once.

I said yes once.

That was enough.

On our wedding morning, a small package arrived.

There was no sender.

Inside was the old watch.

And a note in Gabriel’s handwriting.

“You were right. Love that requires you to keep proving your worth isn’t love being offered freely. Be happy, Amelia.”

I held the watch for a long time.

Then I closed the box.

I didn’t wear it.

I didn’t throw it away either.

Some things aren’t meant to be reclaimed or destroyed.

They’re simply evidence of who you used to be.

Eight years.

Ninety-nine proposals.

730,000 yuan.

For a long time, I thought those numbers measured everything I’d lost.

They didn’t.

They measured how long it took me to understand one simple truth:

Gabriel’s greatest mistake wasn’t marrying Tessa.

It wasn’t even taking the money.

It was believing I would always be there when his latest act of heroism was finished.

But I had finally made proposal number one hundred.

Not to Gabriel.

To myself.

Never again would I beg someone to choose me.

And unlike the first ninety-nine—

that was the one proposal I kept for the rest of my life.