Your Regrets Won't Bring Me Back - Chapter 101: Chapter 101

Sensing his tears, the little girl thought pain had made him cry. She began the Big Bad Wolf story and, imitating an adult, warned, "The Big Bad Wolf loves children who cry. Keep it up and it'll carry you away!"
He laughed through the tears, and that mile-and-a-quarter back to the Bennett house became a beam of light in his life.
Later the Whitmore family fetched him to the hospital, and she chased after to keep him company.
Only seven and fond of play, she nevertheless grabbed a box of paints and began doodling on the plaster cast around his arm.
Simon's gaze dropped to the cast now encasing the top of her foot, dark and fathomless as a black hole.
Sir Whitmore said cheerfully, "Simon, Elena looked after you all that time in the hospital—now it's your turn to repay the favor!"
Simon inclined his head. "Dad, let Brian drive you home first. I can manage things here."
"All right. Elena, I'll come check on you tomorrow," his father said.
"Thank you, Grandpa," she answered politely.
The moment Sir Whitmore left, the temperature in the room seemed to plunge.
Feeling awkward, Elena murmured, "Maybe you should go too... I—"
"You sure about that?" Simon's tone turned frosty.
Even now, she was still trying to push him away.
Meeting his eyes, Elena felt a chill crawl up her spine and fell silent.
She turned her face aside, but he kept staring; the hospital room fell eerily quiet.
At length he asked, "How did you turn into this?"
"Into what?" Elena asked, confused.
"So quiet. So withdrawn."
Elena lowered her lashes. "I like it this way—less chance of my mouth getting me in trouble."
"I miss the way you were that night—when you weren't sober," Simon said in a deep, rumbling voice.
The husky timbre was deliberate provocation, and at once the memory of clinging to him for pleasure flashed through her mind.
Heat flooded her head, and her cheeks burned crimson.
Simon, however, remained perfectly solemn.
A quiet sigh spilled from his throat.
"Wait here a moment," he said, suddenly rising to leave the room.
Before long he returned with a box of colored markers in hand.
Elena looked at him, baffled.
He sat by the bed, uncapped a pen, and began drawing on the plaster cast around her foot.
Elena twitched her foot and stared in disbelief. "What are you doing?"
Simon chuckled. "Turnabout is fair play."
Elena was utterly lost.
While sketching little animals across the cast, he said, "Let me tell you a story—the Big Bad Wolf again."
Elena paused, speechless for a moment.
"Once upon a time there was a brother and sister..." he began.
When the tale ended, the cast was crowded with tiny animals. He looked up; her eyes remained calm and unreadable.
She met his gaze. "Are you trying to cheer me up?"
Simon Whitmore's brows twitched, and a faintly aggrieved shadow slid across his gaze.
Elena Bennett glanced down at her own feet and offered an off-hand critique. "The draft's not bad, but it's childish. Big Bad Wolf stories? I'm not a little girl."
Simon stared at her for a long time, something flickering in his eyes that she could not decipher.
"Elena Bennett, is Victor Whitmore the only man you remember?" Simon asked.
"Huh?" she replied.
Simon's expression grew darker by the second, laced with helpless frustration.
Back then, knowing she liked Victor, he had never dared take even one step toward her.