Duncan had zero tact. His words were stabbing Zack like a knife.
“By the way, your sister-in-law was in trouble again. Her former mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to the office to find her, and they had a fight. I guess it won’t be easy for your sister-in-law to live the quiet life she wants. Now that the Brown family knows that Mrs. Stone is your sister-in-law’s aunt, I don’t know what kind of mishap they’ll be up to in the future.”
Zack’s voice instantly turned cold. “Serena didn’t tell me a word about that!”
She did not treat him as her family!
Duncan froze. Did he say too much?
“Zack, maybe Serena didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you to worry?”
Duncan felt that he made a mistake and quickly offered an explanation.
However, Zack hung up the phone.
Duncan said to himself, “Damn it. What am I supposed to do if the couple gets into a quarrel because of this?”
Once Zack cared about a person, he would want the other party to put him first. In simpler terms, he was overbearing.
His domineering nature would sometimes let people feel like he cared about them, but other times, it made people feel suffocated as if they could not breathe.
What was worse was that Zack would feel like he was in the wrong. For example, he felt like he fell in love with Serena, so he was willing to do everything for her. However, Serena was independent and would not tell him everything for him to help her with. Thus, Zack would feel that Serena did not trust him and did not treat him as family.
Duncan called Zack again, but it went to the mailbox because the number he dialed was on hold.
“Did he call Serena in the middle of the night to question her?”
Duncan felt at a loss.
He merely said a few words. How did it cause so much trouble?
Josh was usually the one having such a loose mouth, but he never saw Josh get into trouble.
Zack actually called Serena.
The couple had just ended the call not long ago, so he dared to bet that Serena was not yet asleep. Thus, he could not resist calling her.
Serena was still awake. When she heard the phone ring, she reached out of the covers for the phone and quickly retrieved her hand back in.
After turning on the heating for a while, she did not like how dry it was, so she turned it off again. There was no hot water bottle in Zack’s room, and the natural hot water bottle that was Zack himself was on a business trip, so she had to bundle herself up to stay warm.
She saw that it was Zack calling again.
She answered the call. “What’s up? I’m going to sleep.”
“What happened today?”
Zack’s voice was low. Serena had been getting along with him for some time and knew that his mood was different when his tone changed.
She instinctively said, “Nothing happened. I told you, I found out that Mrs. Stone is my aunt. What’s with that tone, Zack? You sound as if you’re interrogating me. I didn’t take advantage of your business trip to eat and go shopping with other men.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me about your sister? Even Duncan knows about it, and you’re not telling me even though I’m asking you about it. Serena, do you not regard me as your family? You didn’t even tell me about something this big.”
Serena was speechless. “My sister and her former mother-in-law have a fight every once in a while. Is that something big to you? We can handle it ourselves, so there’s no need to bother you. Besides, you’re away from home on a business trip. Are you going to fly home and help us fight them even if I were to tell you?
“Mr. Lewis knows about it because he’s the boss of my sister’s company. Those two women went for my sister outside her office building, and Mr. Lewis saw it as he was getting off work. I didn’t tell him deliberately. When I arrived, my sister and them had finished fighting, and police officers had already arrived. I didn’t even have the chance to do anything.”
“I told you to tell me when you encounter difficulties! ”
Serena sat up. ‘Did this man not listen to a single word I said? He’s just laser pointing at the fact that I didn’t tell him about this matter.’
She said patiently, “Zack, I also told you that I will handle stuff that I can handle myself. There’s no need to bother you, and I won’t completely depend on you. Like I said, even if I’ve told you, you can’t come back to help me anyway. Why should I tell you just to worry you?
“If you want to escalate the matter to the point of saying that I don’t regard you as family, then I can’t help it. Either way, can you guarantee that you’ve told me everything? I don’t even know where your hometown is. Doesn’t that mean you don’t regard me as your family either?”
Zack choked.
“Zack York, you’re a six-foot-tall grown-up man. Can you be a little less petty? Don’t get angry because of something trivial and bicker over every single thing with me. I know you’re worried about me, but I’m not the kind of weak person who needs your help 24/7.
“If that is what you want from your wife, then I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”
After witnessing her sister and Hank getting to know each other, falling in love, and then ending up in such an ugly divorce, Serena felt that it was better to rely on herself than on others.
Even if he was someone she shared a bed with, she could not be completely dependent on him.
That was because the person who shared her bed might become a person who shared someone else’s bed at any time.
“Are you calling me narrow-minded?”
Zack’s voice was low and chilly, like the weather in this cold winter month.
He wanted to know everything about her because he cared about her.
However, she did not take the initiative to tell him, saying that he was narrow-minded and that he got angry over trivial matters.
Was this trivial? Even someone like Duncan knew about it, but Zack only found out because Duncan told him.
If Duncan did not tell him and he did not ask, she might have never told him.
He cared about her, but she was not touched. Instead, she felt that it was useless to tell him because he was not home.
“I do think that you’re short-tempered. You’re always so selfcentered. You get angry as soon as people don’t do as you want.”
He had a lot of good points, but he also had flaws.
No one was perfect, and Serena did not ask him to be perfect either. She had a lot of flaws herself too since they were both normal human beings.
She told him about his shortcomings so he could change. If he did not change, then they could only go through rounds of friction. In the end, she either had to learn how to tolerate them or ignore them.
Zack hung up the phone.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.