I Was His Wife, Then His Widow, Then No One's But My Own novel Chapter 226

Nora had forced herself to step forward. Xavier practically dragged her to the front of the desk, forcing her to look closely as his dry, calloused hand clamped down on her shoulder.

His voice turned gravely serious. "Look at it carefully. Spit out every single thought in your head. Pitch your theories. Nobody's going to string you up for it. It doesn't matter if you're wrong—everybody starts out wrong before they get it right."

Bolstered by his gruff encouragement, Nora had finally mustered the courage to offer her meager observations, her voice barely a whisper.

Xavier had listened, giving a solemn nod. He then turned to look at her, his eyes magnified by his thick lenses, gleaming with utter confusion.

"What are you so terrified of? Am I going to eat you? Next time, just say it. Stop acting like a beaten dog in my lab. If a researcher is too cowardly to defend their own thesis, they shouldn't be in research at all."

Nora still remembered how violently she had flinched at those words.

But as time passed, she quickly realized that the terrifying old man wasn't nearly as vicious as he pretended to be.

Whenever she worked through lunch, he would have Zelda bring her takeout, grumbling that if she starved, he'd have no one to run his diagnostics. Yet the container always held her absolute favorite—BBQ ribs.

When she published her first major paper, he acted like he didn't care. But days later, Zelda would mention how her mentor had been strutting around the institute, bragging to anyone who would listen that his protégé had been featured in a tier-one journal.

He was just terrible with emotions, burying all his profound pride and affection beneath an abrasive, thorny exterior.

So, when Nora announced she was quitting the trial to become a full-time housewife for the Fletchers, Xavier went absolutely nuclear.

He had slammed his fists onto his desk so violently that even Zelda couldn't intervene.

He screamed that she was torching her own future, threatening that if she walked out that door, she was dead to him. He raved about how his brightest student was being poached by a family of corporate vultures, and that she had turned his name into an absolute laughingstock.

Nora remembered sobbing as she bowed deeply in apology before turning her back on him. After that, they didn't speak a single word to each other for years.

Even when she finally returned to the institute recently, Xavier went out of his way to dodge her in the halls, or he'd hide behind a newspaper to pretend she didn't exist.

Xavier's pen froze. He didn't say a word. Very slowly, he pulled off his reading glasses, folded the arms, and placed them deliberately into their case.

He turned his chair to face Nora directly. Those eyes, only sharpened by age, pinned her down for a long moment before he finally asked, "What's your take?"

Nora took a deep breath and laid out the comparative analytics she had been agonizing over for days, detail by grueling detail.

She broke down the pros and cons of the alternative hospitals, explained definitively why Fletcher Medical Center was the undisputed frontrunner, and explicitly stated that her personal history played zero role in her professional judgment.

By the time she finished, the tremor in her voice had vanished entirely. It felt exactly like that afternoon years ago, when he had forced her to stand at this very desk and aggressively defend her own thesis.

The only difference was that back then, she had feared him. Now, she simply revered him.

After absorbing her flawless presentation, Xavier leaned back in his chair. He stared at the woman who had been his greatest triumph, his most devastating disappointment, and now his renewed hope. And then, he smiled.