"Easy... husband, that hurts."

In the dead of night, her soft, trembling voice suddenly broke the silence.

It was the first time Nathan Caldwell had ever heard Clara Caldwell call him that. His hand, which was rubbing her ankle, shook on the spot. The pressure in his fingers slipped heavier without him meaning to, and the pain made Clara’s eyes sting with tears.

"I... I’ll be gentler."

He answered in a tight, nervous voice, then quickly lowered his head again and kept rubbing the medicated wine into her ankle. He didn’t even dare look at her for long, but his hands had turned unbelievably careful.

Clara looked at his handsome profile, at the way his brows were drawn together, then at the plain mud-brick room around them, its walls pasted with bright red wedding cutouts. Her chest swelled with emotion, half thrilled, half dazed.

She truly had never imagined that after dying of cancer, she would wake up again in 1978.

And today, of all days, was the day twenty-year-old Clara had married twenty-three-year-old Nathan.

Clara had grown up spoiled and cherished, like a little princess raised in honey. She had always had her own dreams, her own plans for what life should be.

But in her previous life, on the night of her twentieth birthday party, she suddenly learned that her father, to repay a life-saving favor, had decided to marry her off to a rough country man from some remote mountain village.

She refused to become a tool for her father’s gratitude, and even less did she want to marry an uneducated, rugged man. Because of that, she made a scene at the Whitfield house for a full month. In the end, under Richie Whitfield’s repeated pleading, she still married into the Caldwell family against her will.

After the wedding, she and Nathan never had loud fights day after day, but the two of them had always lived like strangers under one roof, polite on the surface and cold to the bone. She had never once given him a warm look. Countless times she wanted a divorce, but Richie Whitfield refused every time, so it never happened.

Then, in the tenth year of their marriage, Nathan suddenly took the initiative and asked to divorce her.

Clara hadn’t understood why, but she had still felt relieved, as if a chain had finally been cut. She agreed right away, and from then on, they went their separate ways for good.

After the divorce, Clara took over the Whitfield family business and carved out her own place in the business world. On the outside, she had status, money, everything people envied. But inside, there was always an empty space she could never fill.

In 2018, after years of exhausting her body, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

The illness came hard and fast. With no husband, no children, she stayed in the hospital alone through treatment. During that time, only her secretary and the hired caregiver came by to see her and look after her.

It was only after she died, when her soul drifted above the hospital room, that she suddenly saw a figure both familiar and strange rush through the door and drop straight to his knees beside her bed.

The man was wearing a high-end black tailored suit. His bearing was extraordinary, impossible to ignore. But his jacket buttons were left undone, his hair was in disarray, and one look was enough to tell he had come in a blind panic.

His face was still as striking and sharp as it had been when she first met him forty years ago.

Only now, there were two more lines on his forehead, and his eyes were red.

"I'm sorry, Xiner. I came too late. I didn't take good care of you."

Nathan Caldwell gripped Clara Caldwell's hand so hard, even though it had already gone cold. His voice was rough, breaking on every word. Grief hung over him so heavily it seemed to swallow the whole man, as if the one thing he treasured most had just been torn away.

Was he... crying for her?

But didn't he not love her?

Hadn't he treated their marriage like a joke too?

Then why was her death hurting him this badly...?

Clara stared at the scene in shock, her feelings in a mess.

Her soul couldn't bear to leave. She stayed by Nathan's side, wanting to understand what was really going on.

Then she watched him take her body away. She watched him arrange a grand funeral for her. She watched him bury her ashes in the biggest cemetery in Regveil.

Later, she followed him back home and saw that his room was filled with her photographs. He even carried one with him wherever he went. At night, even in his sleep, he would call her name.

Later still, from bits of conversation between him and his friends, she finally learned the truth. Nathan had fallen for her the very first time they met, and he had loved her all the way until now.

Back then, the reason he had taken the initiative to ask for a divorce was only because he had overheard Clara telling her friend that she disliked him, that she didn't want to spend her whole life with a dull man like him.

Just to make Clara happy, no matter how unwilling he was, he still chose to let go in the end. After their divorce, he never remarried. He didn't even date anyone. He threw himself into making money and bettering himself.

He had thought that if he became rich enough, interesting enough, then maybe one day in the future, Clara might finally fall in love with him.

But sadly, before that day could come, Clara had already left this world.

All those years, he had been quietly keeping an eye on her from the shadows, doing everything he could to help her without a word.

It just so happened that his company had run into some trouble during that stretch of time. He had worked day and night without stopping, and when he finally got through it, the news waiting for him was that Clara had died of illness.

At that moment, Nathan felt as if his own heart had died with her.

On the seventh day after Clara's death, Nathan killed himself in front of her grave.

Clara had never, not even in her wildest thoughts, imagined that somewhere beyond her sight, there had always been a man who loved her that deeply.

“Ah Gan, I’m sorry. I let you down.”

Clara Caldwell murmured it under her breath, her voice so soft it was almost broken. Two lines of tears slipped slowly from the corners of her eyes.

People always said ghosts had no feelings, that they couldn’t cry. But Clara still cried. She cried because Nathan Caldwell’s love had shaken her to the core.

That hollow place in her heart, the one that had felt empty for so long, seemed to fill up all at once.

The truth was, she had loved him too. She just hadn’t known it then, or maybe she had known and refused to admit it.

She had sworn that if heaven gave her one more chance, she would never fail him again. She would treasure Nathan’s love, love him properly, and stay by his side for the rest of her life.

What she never expected was that right after making that vow, the moment she opened her eyes again, she had really been reborn.

Maybe even the heavens couldn’t bear to see Nathan’s love wasted. Maybe that was why they had sent her back, so she could make it up to him properly.

Only the timing of it was a little terrible. When she came back, this version of her had just twisted her ankle by accident.

In her last life, even though Nathan was strikingly handsome, she didn’t like him then, so she never let him touch her. Naturally, she hadn’t let him put medicine on it either.

In the end, she had gone to sleep alone with that injured foot, and by the next morning it had swollen up like a big white steamed bun.

But now that she was back, how could she bear to ignore him again? She immediately softened her tone and clung to him a little, asking him to help apply the medicine.

Nathan was afraid of hurting her, so every movement of his hand was careful and gentle, light as if he were handling something fragile.

“Husband, are you nervous?”

Clara looked at the beads of sweat gathering on Nathan’s forehead and couldn’t help letting out a soft laugh. “Honestly, I’m nervous too.”

“I... I’m not nervous,” Nathan said, though the sweat on his forehead only grew thicker.

Clara had been raised in comfort since childhood. She was delicate and pretty, with skin so fair and tender she hardly seemed real. She was nothing like him, a rough man tanned by wind and sun day after day.

He even felt that if he touched her a little too hard, the calluses on his hands might scratch her skin, soft as a baby’s.

“You’re lying!” Clara said with a grin, teasing him on purpose. “You’re even stammering, and you still say you’re not nervous?”

At that, Nathan’s ears turned red all at once.

Because he was out in the sun all the time, his skin wasn’t exactly dark, just that healthy wheat tone. If you didn’t look closely, you really couldn’t tell much.

“All done.”

Nathan didn’t know how to pick up what Clara had said, so he could only stiffly change the subject.

The second the words left his mouth, he pulled his hand back at once, got to his feet, and stood off to the side, awkward as anything. “You sleep here tonight. I’ll go sleep in the kitchen.”

Clara hadn’t actually said she wanted to drive him out, but he knew she didn’t like him. So he took the hint on his own and chose to sleep separately.

“What?”

To his surprise, Clara looked at him right away with a pitiful, wounded expression. “Husband, on our wedding night, you’re really going to leave me, your bride, all alone in the room?”

Nathan felt like every soft little “husband” out of her mouth was enough to take his life on the spot.

“That’s not what I meant...”

Afraid she’d get the wrong idea, he hurried to explain.

But Clara didn’t give him the chance. She reached out, caught his arm, and tugged hard, dragging him straight onto the bed. “Then stay here and sleep with me.”