Chapter 441
441
“ Yes . ” I answered.
William stared at me—just stared unreadably at me for a long while. Suddenly, his expression broke into a devastatingly charming smile.
“Then, let’s get married,” he said.
I was taken aback at first. Then, my eyes widened in shock. It was as though I had just heard the most ridiculous suggestion. No, I really had! Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined something like this happening.
I stood frozen for a very long time before I returned to my senses.
“You must be joking, Mr. Ashford,” I said.
—
Naturally, I assumed William was kidding. Never mind everything else he had just been trying to persuade me to give Noah a chance. So, how could he possibly turn around and want to marry me now? Hence , no matter how I looked at it, William was just joking with me.
I looked at him with a gaze that said not to make jokes like this.
However, when William met my gaze, he spoke with complete seriousness. “ I’m not joking–I meant every word.”
I was stunned again by his seriousness. It took me a long time to recover. And even when I did, I had no idea what to say. I had no clue why he, of all people, would suddenly propose to me.
As I stood there, dumb and dazed, William spoke again. “I know you genuinely see Noah as a younger brother and treat him as family. That’s why you can’t imagine being romantically involved with him.
“However, you’ve seen how fixated he is. With that level of obsession, he’ll never give up on you for the rest of his life if you never marry.
“But if you marry someone else, Noah will definitely try to sabotage it. However, it’s different if you marry me. Not only won’t he interfere, but he will completely give up on you. He’ll gradually start living his own life,” he declared.
After hearing all this, my foggy brain finally cleared. I had an epiphany and realized what this was about. Of course! William truly was a good uncle. He was doing this for Noah’s sake!
I was about to commend him for this and tell him there was no need to marry me out of sacrifice, because surely there were other ways.
But then, as though seeing through my thoughts, William said, “I’m not marrying you for Noah’s sake. Helping him move on is just a bonus that comes with marrying you. The important thing is I proposed because I truly want to marry you!”
I was dumbstruck , utterly perplexed.
I had absolutely no idea why William would suddenly want to marry me. We only knew each other because of Noah, and I still addressed him as “Mr. Ashford” as though he were a stranger,
“I was the one you rescued on Daiti Island,” he added.
He hadn’t originally planned on telling me, as he didn’t want me to think he was proposing because he felt indebted to me But William also knew I saw him as an elder. So, for him to suddenly propose to me, he knew he would need a solid reason for me to believe him.
And truthfully, this idea really had only taken root in his mind because I had saved him.
I stared wide–eyed in shock at him again. I hadn’t expected William to say he genuinely wanted to marry me. Even more unexpectedly, he turned out to be the person I had rescued back then.
Suddenly, I recalled what Cordelia had said when we had bumped into William during that dinner. At that moment, my mind
1/2
441
+25 BONUS
couldn’t process what was happening.
William continued , “But I’m not marrying you just because you saved my life. The main reason I want to marry you is that I have feelings for you, I want to be with you.”
He explained, “Even before I knew you were my savior, I was alreally drawn to you. But because Noah liked you, I couldn’t act on those feelings. And now that it’s clear you’ll never be with Noah, why don’t you consider marrying me?”
I was totally speechless. I had truly never imagined William would have feelings for me. In the face of his sudden confession , I was at a complete loss for words.
442