Love Slave to My Devil CEO Boss R18

“I guess…” I replied vaguely before smiling a little.

“What should we do? Should we let her rest up here for a couple of days?” Ace suggested.

“No, that’s not necessary. I’m fine now. I’ve had enough rest,” I quickly replied before the doctor could.

There is no way that I’m going to be stuck in his hospital bed for the next couple of days. I didn’t feel 100% fine, but I wasn’t sick enough to be bedridden in the hospital for days either.

“I think she’s fine. Maybe resting here for the day would be better just to be on the safe side,” the doctor said before smiling kindly at me.

“Are you sure about that? What if she gets sick again?” Ace asked the doctor.

“I’m fine…” I repeated again.

I appreciated that Ace was worried, but I really didn’t want to spend the night at the hospital. The storyline was also incomplete, and I wanted to work on that along with collecting more data on our trip.

“She should be able to leave the hospital without any issues. Of course, if she has a fever again or if she feels unwell, she can return here for treatment,” the doctor replied calmly.

“You heard him. Stop trying to keep me here. We should be out collecting information to help with our project instead,” I suggested.

The doctor smiled at us before the nurse told him that he was being called. With a polite farewell to us, the doctor left the room.

“Stop talking about work and focus on your recovery,” Ace snapped at me.

“Thanks for your concern but I’m not as sick as you think I am,” I replied stubbornly.

“You had a high fever. You wouldn’t even wake up no matter how many times I called your name. You have no idea…” Ace began complaining before trailing off.

I had no idea what?

“What were you going to say?” I asked in wonder.

“Nevermind…” Ace muttered before turning away from me.

In the end, Ace didn’t let me leave the hospital until the morning after. Despite the doctor’s approval for me to leave, Ace kept me at the hospital for one more night to make sure that I was alright. Surprisingly, Ace refused to go back to the hotel and ended up sleeping on the sofa in my hospital room. That was how we spent a strange night at the hospital together on our trip.

…

Right after returning from our trip, I focused all my efforts on completing the storyboard based on Ace’s idea. Tomorrow, we had a team meeting, and the various mini teams are going to present their own version of the storyline and draft storyboard. I had no idea if our storyboard would be chosen but I was sure that we had a good angle that would be beneficial to the team. Now all I had to do is focus on finishing this.

Apparently, taking the trip with me took a toll on Ace when he came back. I should have known that he was pushing aside some of his other responsibilities to go on that trip with me. As a result, I have seen very little of Ace since we returned to the office. I could tell from his calendar that I had synced on my phone that he was swamped with meetings from early in the morning to late in the evening. Conference calls with business partners in other time zones did not help his case at all.

Since I had work to work on as part of Project Alpha, I could no longer attend all his meetings with him. It came as a relief to me when Ace told me that I could skip on the meetings to focus on completing the storyboard and sharpening up the message of our storyline. Apparently, Ace no longer had a lot of time to devote to project Alpha.

After a few days of not seeing much of him since we came back, I began worrying and thinking of him more often. I would wonder what he was up to now and how he was doing. Although I knew exactly where he was having his meetings and who he was meeting with, I just couldn’t help but worry about him. The relationship between the new colleagues in my team and myself had not really improved. Thankfully, I still had friends from my own department who I could have lunch with.

“Thank you for inviting me out to lunch today, girls. It’s great to catch up,” I thanked them wholeheartedly.

We were walking back to the office building after eating at a nearby restaurant that was popular for their lunch set. The weather was nice, and I wished that I would get to come eat out more often. If only I could make friends with the other people in the CEO’s office, life would be better and lunch breaks would be less lonely. I had not realized it, but I had gotten used to eating lunch and sometimes dinner with Ace. Now that he wasn’t free to join me anymore, I felt quite lonely without him. Of course, I didn’t want to admit this to anyone and not even to myself.

“Anytime. We thought you were too busy now after you’ve moved over to the new team, so we were afraid to ask you out for lunch. It must be tough over there but do your best,” my college told me with a smile.

“Thanks…” I replied before returning her smile.

She had no idea how tough it was on all fronts: work, colleagues, and most of all, dealing with Ace and our twisted relationship. I didn’t want to explain that to her or anyone else, though.

We parted ways at the lobby of the office and just when I turned to head to the elevator, I ran into the one person that I dreaded seeing the most.

“Rina…”

My body froze when I heard a familiar voice calling my name. Kyle stood right in front of me, and my body froze in place.

--To be continued…