Stephenie subconsciously tightened her grip on the glass of juice as she heard Alan. It never occurred to her that she had moaned so loudly the night before. Not to mention that John didn't recognize her voice, which she found odd.

With that in mind, Stephenie turned to Alan and asked, "Was John drunk last night?"

Alan, who was a seat separated from her due to John and wearing glasses, smiled politely and replied, "No, he wasn't. Don't worry, Stephenie. I'll look after him for you."

John leaned closer into Stephenie's ear and whispered, "Baby, I really did what you told me last night."

Meanwhile, the rest continued to tease Edward. Eason nudged Edward slightly and chaffed, "Good job, bro! You told us you'd go back to make up for some sleep, but you just actually wanted to have fun right a day after you came back."

Edward's grandfather had sent Edward to Australia for some reason two years ago, and he had just returned to Woodlake City the other day.

"It was boring, and she was difficult to deal with," he said slowly, his slender fingers playing with glass and staring at it.

His every word heavily fell on Stephenie's ears, and her brows twitched. But she wasn't sure if he simply didn't care about her presence or if he said it on purpose for her to hear.

Last night, Stephenie thought she did a good job pretending it wasn't her first time, but it turned out that he easily saw through her trick.

"But you still went on it?" Eason pried, which was unusual as he wouldn't take such a topic seriously, thinking that taking one's first time only brought trouble. Furthermore, he believed that even though virgins were like fresh, pure flowers, they lacked experience, resulting in unsatisfactory performance and pleasure. However, with Edward's words, the girl appeared to be a virgin, with whom Edward had impossibly tangled, so Eason's interest was suddenly aroused.

But before Edward could respond, John suddenly interjected, "Hey, Stephenie is here. Drop the topic, please."

Not wanting to tarnish his reputation in front of the ladies, he quickly dropped the subject, smiled at Stephenie, and defended himself. "Don't get me wrong, Stephenie; John and I are strictly controlled by our wives; it's only Edward who likes to play around. But we're now advising him to settle down."

Hearing how the latter attempted to clean up his name and tainted his, Edward cast a sidelong glance at Eason, sneered, and challenged, "Try if you can. Introduce someone who can control me."

"Didn't your family set you up with..." Eason uttered, but soon zipped his mouth when Edward threw a dagger-like glare at him.

After brunch, they went to pick up the bride. Upon arriving at the place, the bridesmaids were also present, so as agreed upon, Eason introduced them to Edward and let him freely choose who he wanted to be his partner.

Earlier, after Edward told Eason his preference, the latter advised the former to first establish a relationship with the bridesmaid. But Eason's efforts were not needed because the moment Edward appeared, he had already captured the attention of every bridesmaid. Well, it wasn't surprising, given that Edward stood out among the five groomsmen, despite the fact that they were all wearing the same suits.

Stephenie couldn't deny that fact as well, but as far as she remembered, when John and Edward were chosen as the "Dashing Duo" by schoolgirls in Woodlake, John had gained more fans by then. But now, Edward had clearly and quietly surpassed John.

"What's the matter with your shirt?" John queried upon noticing Edward's shirt.

The groomsmen's attire was unified, with a suit and a shirt inside. But Edward was not wearing that shirt.

Looking at his shirt, Edward remembered the last night and implicitly answered, "A thief stole it."

Stephenie was close enough to hear their conversation that when Edward said the word "thief," she knew he was referring to her, making her face flush instantly. Indeed, taking something without the owner's permission was no different than stealing, so technically, she was a thief. But it was not her intention; Stephenie just couldn't bring herself to face him after sharing that intimate scene with him, so she randomly grabbed one of his shirts and flew away before he got out of the bathroom. As such, she didn't notice that it was for the wedding ceremony; besides, he had too many clothes in his cabinet for her to notice.

"What?" asked John, perplexed.

Luckily, the bridesmaids were asking something, and Edward noticed it, so he tilted his head in their direction, motioning John to attend to their needs.

Meanwhile, Eason had to complete a series of 'challenging tasks' before he could pick his bride up from the suite and bring her to the hall for the wedding ceremony. The first task was to get through a door full of trickery games devised by the bridesmaids.

As a good friend, John bravely and actively participated in every game to help Eason rescue his bride so he could marry her. The first game he participated in was push-ups, in which he was assisted by Alan. However, he quickly became exhausted and collapsed into Alan's arms. Then it was followed by a chocolate-eating contest, in which Alan was once again his partner. In that game, their hands were tied behind their backs, and the chocolate was hanging in the air by a thread. Their goal was to consume the entire chocolate bar using only their mouth. But because the chocolate was only hung by a thread, it occasionally swayed, making it hard for them to eat it. As a result, their lips sometimes landed on each other's, causing everyone to burst out laughing and cheering. However, Stephenie, who was watching the game, couldn't stomach the scenes and immediately left the area.

She'd be one of the laughing and cheering crowd now if she hadn't seen John's explicit chat records and intimate photos with Alan on his phone. But her eyes were now wide open with the truth—her boyfriend's true identity. And seeing John and Alan hooked up together in the name of friendship now, she couldn't help but feel miserable.

Nowadays, men cheat on their girlfriends with other women or, in some cases, men.

After five minutes of sitting on the toilet cover and calming herself down, Stephenie finally went out of the cubicle and washed her hands. Unexpectedly, she ran into Edward as she exited the restroom.

Edward leaned against the railings on the balcony next to the bathroom, facing inside. His towering stature was enhanced by his dark suit. He was wearing a silver stainless steel watch in his left hand, clipping a cigarette between his index and middle fingers, and swiping his phone screen with his right.

Against the grey and gloomy sky in the background, he seemed melancholy, as if he was in a bad mood.

Hearing a door creak, Edward automatically raised his head in its direction. Doing so, his adam apple protruded, adding to the sexiness of his appearance.

For a brief moment, his emotionless, indifferent eyes met Stephenie's, but he quickly returned to his phone and continued to browse as if nothing had happened.

As Stephenie was ashamed of what had happened the night before, she wanted to walk away quietly, but she suddenly remembered something. "I'm the one who took your shirt. I didn't have time to wash it today, so I'll just send it to the laundry tomorrow and return it to you afterward."

With what she said, Edward returned his gaze to her again and put his cigarette into his mouth, causing the thin white smoke slowly puff out of his thin lips. His eyes then boldly scanned her body and commented, "The skirt is good. It's better than the one last night."

Stephenie instinctively looked at her skirt. It had a slit at the side as its style. Seeing this, she soon realized he preferred implicit sexiness.

But she couldn't fathom why he suddenly commented on his skirt. So, she just ignored it and pulled the topic back. "How can I return your shirt? By delivery, or..." Stephenie asked, but she was abruptly cut off by Edward.

"I don't lend things for free," he stated calmly and restrainedly.

After a few seconds, she understood what he meant and found him ridiculous. Hence, she scoffed, repeating what he had said earlier, "Didn't you say it was 'boring' and I'm 'hard to deal with'?"

Using his words against him, Edward's eyebrow shot heavenward and remarked, "What a sharp hearing you have."

"Thank you," Stephenie sarcastically replied. Then she bluntly added, "And you're annoying, by the way."

Edward squinted at her. "No matter how boring it is, it at least solved our crying needs," he snapped as the cigarette between his fingers burned quietly.

After all, Stephenie initiated it, so she had no choice but to accept all of his comments without questioning or refuting him.

Unable to snap back at him, she soon turned around to walk away. Suddenly, she heard John's voice faintly, calling her name and looking for her. But before Stephenie could respond, Edward's arm snaked around her waist from behind and dragged her into the bathroom. After they had entered, he pinned her to the wall and looked down at her. With a distance of only two fingers, he chuckled and asked, "Do you want to play?"

Stephenie hitched her breath when her back hit the cold wall. Their stare-down lasted about a minute until they heard a knock on the bathroom door, followed by a voice.

"Stephenie, are you in there?" John asked, knocking repeatedly.

In the cramped space of the bathroom, Stephenie pursed her lips and propped her arm on the sink countertop. She expected to feel no tension because she was prepared for it, but she was mistaken.

That feeling was heightened when Edward pinched her waist with his large hand.

In contrast to his aggressive hand, his face appeared so calm that his voice didn't waver as he uttered a watertight lie. "It's me," he said loudly enough for John, who was standing outside, to hear.

"Edward?" John asked, leaning even more to the door to confirm if he was right. But he didn't wait for Edward to respond and hurriedly fired another question. "Are you in the bathroom alone?"

"And if I say no, will you believe me when I say I'm here with a chick?" Edward teased, smirking while looking straight at Stephenie's eyes.

Stephenie was at a loss for words about how shameless Edward was. Vexed, she grabbed Edward's collar, ready to curse him.

Meanwhile, thinking that Edward was just fooling around, John only chuckled and replied, "You nasty man."

"Did you see Stephenie, by any chance?" This time, it was Alan, who was with John, asked.

Edward leaned over Stephenie, their chests touching, and kissed her nape before he lied again. "Nope."

Stephenie froze in place as his warm breath touched her bare skin, and the hair on her arms stood on end.

After a long time, Edward finally returned to his friends, but he was welcomed by Eason with his long face.

"Where the hell did you go and slack off? The bridesmaids were waiting, and I couldn't find you anywhere; I was so embarrassed in front of my wife!" Eason complained, looking stressed.

Edward creased his forehead and pointed to John and Alan as he asked, "They didn't tell you I was constipated?"

Eason was dumbstruck by the latter's reasoning, but he couldn't bring himself to refute it because he didn't know whether his friend was telling the truth since neither John nor Alan denied it.

While Eason was busy bandying words with Edward, John kept trying to connect with Stephenie's phone when his gaze fell on Edward's disheveled collar. His brow furrowed as his thoughts began to wander, but the phone was patched through, and Stephenie's voice came in, saying, "John, sorry, my phone was in silent mode. I just saw your calls."

"Where are you?" John asked worriedly.

"Shopping," Stephenie answered sparingly.

John was skeptical of her response but brushed it off because he was certain his girlfriend would never lie to him.

Five minutes later, Stephenie finally arrived at the event hall, where the wedding ceremony had just begun.

Naturally, the groomsmen and the bridesmaids sat at the same table, but since Stephenie was John's girlfriend, she was also there, and Edward, who sat diagonally across from her, chatted happily with several bridesmaids throughout the party.

When the party ended around 9:30 pm, John noticed Stephenie's strange walking posture, so he concernedly asked her, "Is there something wrong? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine; it's just that I've been wearing high heels for too long," Stephenie reasoned, then secretly glanced at the culprit, who Eason instructed to send the bridesmaids home.

The wild scenes from earlier flashed through her mind, how Edward rough was to her. Due to that frenetic activity, her legs were still sore up until now, and she couldn't walk properly.

Alan, on the other hand, was more observant than John as he noticed her socks. "Stephenie, did you change your socks? The color appears to be different," Alan observed.

Stephenie licked her lips unconsciously, tucked her hair behind her ears, and lied through her teeth, "Well, it had a stain on it, so I asked the hotel waitress for a new one."

She clearly reminded Edward to be careful, but he didn't listen and tore her socks in the end. Fortunately, the skirt she was wearing matched the one she had worn earlier.

Stephenie leaned into John's ear and whispered, "My menstruation came earlier than expected. I have to buy tampons."

John bought her reason and sweetly scolded her. "You're careless; you've even drunk a cold wine earlier."

As always, he was like an ideal boyfriend, which was why Stephenie had been ultimately duped in the past.

"Sorry, darling, I forgot," she sweetly apologized as she wrapped her arms around John's neck and secretly glanced at Alan.

John was slightly stunned by her sudden embrace, for she rarely took the initiative to have intimate behavior with him in public, but when he noticed the change in Alan's expression, he immediately but gently pulled away from Stephenie's hug and said, "You should go back now for you to have a rest, okay?"

With that, Stephenie excused herself and said goodbye to Eason and his wife. Afterward, she left the hotel with John and Alan.

Just like before, John would drop Stephenie off at her place first. They weren't under the same roof. They had their own apartments. But Stephenie usually paid John a visit on the weekends. The reason for their set-up was that their workplaces were far apart, so staying in the same place together was not a wise decision. She used to believe that before, but now Stephenie knew that the real reason was for John to have private space with Alan.

John sent her door to door and was being considerate as usual. After confirming that John had already left, Stephenie went to a nearby pharmacy to buy contraception.

Upon returning to her place, she immediately took the pill and went to the bathroom to take a bath. When she finished cleaning herself up and exited the bathroom, her eyes were drawn to Edward's shirt in the laundry basket. She then picked it up as well as her phone and typed a message on Whatsapp.

She and Edward became Whatsapp friends an hour before she arrived at the hotel last night, but there was nothing special about their conversation.

To cut to the chase, Stephenie did not greet him and directly sent the message, [Netflix and chill?]

Five minutes had already passed, so she thought Edward had no plan to reply to her and was about to put her phone down on the bedside table when her phone vibrated. She opened the messenger right away, only to see a hotel room number, which was obviously Edward's hotel room number.

As such, they shared the same heat for the third time.

The intense, long night rendered Stephenie exhausted, causing her to wake up late and arrive late for work.

She had just graduated from Woodlake University with a master's degree in architecture last year and had just joined a famous local architecture firm named Margin.

Since Stephenie didn't graduate from a well-known architectural school, she was not qualified enough to be an official architectural designer. She was only hired as a junior assistant architect, whose daily work was doing clerical tasks and outlining the craft design.

When Stephenie arrived at the office, the routine Monday morning meeting had already ended, and she could only participate in the group A meeting of the design department, where she belonged.

After the group meeting, Monica Robles, her supervisor, summoned her to the office.

Thinking it was about her being late, Stephenie quickly apologized as soon as she stepped into the office. "Sorry, Miss Monica. I overslept. Last night's weather made me snuggle in my bed more."

However, that was not the reason for calling her. Monica had only wanted to inform Stephenie of something. "No, that's not why I called you. I just wanted to let you know that Vanloon Property's residential project has a new project manager. So, pause your work in the meantime as you'll be attending the meeting with the new project leader in the afternoon, but you can resume it after discussing the necessary modifications."

Stephenie was not bothered by pausing her work but with the new project manager instead. In that case, the modification would be that simple because she was certain that the entire design scheme would be revamped and they would begin from scratch.

That said, Stephenie only replied, "I see." Feeling helpless and stressed, she excused herself and was about to leave when Monica suddenly spoke up.

"Do you want to cover your nape?" the latter asked, prompting Stephenie to turn around and face her.

Having a slight idea of what her supervisor was referring to, she dashed to the bathroom to confirm her suspicion. When she looked in the mirror and turned her head sideways, she discovered a salacious pink hickey on her nape that Edward had left yesterday.

Well, she had a coat on when she arrived, but because the weather was sultry, she took it off. However, she forgot about her hickey and was wearing a round-neck blouse today, so her entire neck and her hickey were exposed!

To hide it, Stephenie applied powder to lighten its color before covering it with a band-aid so no one else could see it.

Afterward, she returned to her cubicle to start some of her tasks even though her supervisor had told her she could pause them. She was in her seat when Rita Ruschel, a colleague next to her cubicle, slid over to her and teased her, "Quite an intense battle last night, huh?"

Stephenie's hand automatically flew to her nape, and she whispered, "You saw it, too?"

Waving her index finger, Rita answered with a playful smile, "Nope, everyone in the group actually, and now almost the entire institute knows why you're late."

To extreme shame, Stephenie wished the earth would just swallow her whole right at that moment.

The construction employees were busy, but the designers, to whom she belonged, were even busier. So, it was challenging to find time to develop a serious relationship in this industry, leaving many people in that industry single. As such, if one found his/her love who worked in the same industry as him/her, he/she would try his/her best to work that relationship out for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not to slip away.

But in Stephenie's case, it was not rare to come as she resembled a goddess. In fact, when she entered the firm, she had already won the hearts of several co-workers even after she had posted a selfie with John on her social media on her first day of work. The latter even always came to pick her up from work, but the number of her admirers didn't cut down a bit.

They were probably under the impression that Stephenie and John were still dating and had not yet married. Furthermore, even married couples got divorced from time to time, so they thought they still had a chance.

Today, her hickey was a bombshell in the entire firm, so Rita couldn't help but be intrigued and asked her privately, "I didn't know that you two are such a lovely couple. So, when do you plan to get married? Haven't you both survived the seven-year itch smoothly and are now entering your eighth year?"

While the latter was speaking, Stephenie's gaze was drawn to the picture resting next to the pen holder. The photo was taken at her graduation ceremony last July, where she was wearing a degree suit and holding a huge bunch of red roses that John had given her in one arm and John's arm in the other. In the photo, she was grinning from ear to ear as if she were the luckiest person in the whole wide world.

"So? Do you want to see me step into the grave of love?" Stephenie jested, then took the framed picture and stuffed it into her table drawer.

The meeting Monica had mentioned earlier had finally arrived, and Stephenie and her supervisor arrived at Vanloon Property at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. However, because the new project manager was not yet present, they waited in the conference room for about ten minutes.

Afterward, a few people finally entered the room, and the secretary introduced the new project manager, "Hello, everyone! I'd like you to meet Mr. Smith Junior of Vanloon Property. He will be responsible for managing this project."

"Hello, Miss Robles. Nice to meet you," Edward greeted after stepping forward, reaching out his hand, and politely shaking hands with Monica.

Meanwhile, Stephenie, who was standing behind her supervisor, felt her feet root on the ground in great surprise.