Chapter 417: Chapter 417: Intimate Relationship
Seeing that Nathaniel looked ready to settle the score, Vera felt an inexplicable pang of guilt and instinctively avoided his gaze. "I didnât mean to hide it from you. I just... since youâre a soldier, I was afraid..."
Her words trailed off as she remembered his various tactics. She cleared her throat and said, "What gives you the right to say I hid things from you? You were hiding things from me too when you did all that!"
"Thatâs because you lied first." Nathaniel reached out and stroked her hair. "From the day we got married, I made a decision: I would never let anyone bully you. But itâs a shame you still donât trust me."
His voice held a hint of helplessness and sorrow.
Hearing the tone of his voice, Vera felt a pang of guilt. She said softly, "I just want to protect myself in my own way. Nathaniel, I know youâre very capable, but you canât be by my side all the time. I need to become stronger so I donât hold you back."
Nathaniel saw the stubbornness in her eyes. He knew that, fundamentally, her reasoning wasnât wrong.
But in his eyes, they were the closest two people in the world; she shouldnât hide anything from him, no matter what.
He looked at her and asked, "Vera Xavier, Iâm going to ask you one last time. When youâre gambling on stones, how exactly do you tell if thereâs jade inside?"
He finished, his voice deepening. "And donât give me that same line you feed everyone else about âjust being lucky.â Youâve already tried that on me once, and I didnât buy it then."
Vera bit her lip. When sheâd run into him at the office last night, she knew that while she might be able to fool others about this, she could never fool Nathaniel.
She had gone to such great lengths to placate him last night, hoping he would drop the matter. She never thought sheâd be unable to avoid it.
She sighed inwardly, knowing there was no way she could bluff her way through this time.
She had already decided to spend the rest of her life with him, yet she wasnât sure if she could tell him this secret. She worried he would see her as a freak if she told him; after all, it was utterly unbelievable.
After wrestling with her thoughts for a long time, she finally decided to tell him. He was, after all, the only person in this world she could truly trust. If he ended up betraying her in this life, it would only prove how terribly unlucky she was.
So, she glanced at him and said, "Your underwear today is multi-colored."
The moment the words left her mouth, her face flushed red, and she silently turned to look away.
âFine, this was the downside of having X-ray vision. If you stared at one place for too long, you were bound to see things other people couldnâtâlike their private business...â
Nathaniel hadnât rushed Vera while she was thinking; he was willing to give her time. But when he heard what she said, he was still taken aback.
Although he occasionally acted like a rogue around her, he wasnât the type of man who liked to show off his body. That was why he had changed his clothes in the bathroom that day.
A thought suddenly struck Nathaniel. He stared at her intently and said, "Donât tell me... you can..."
Vera pressed her lips together. "Yes," she said. "My eyes can see through the surface of an object to whatâs inside."
Nathaniel had his suspicions before about her incredibly high success rate with jade gambling. His leading theory had been that she was using some sort of tool. He never imagined that her eyes themselves possessed such an ability.