Your First Love is Pregnant? I'm Done Being Mrs. Hawthorne!

### Chapter 57: He Never Liked Her

All morning, Grandma Pemberton had been comforting Grandpa Pemberton while also keeping an eye on Nina.

After Nina’s bleeding stopped, she felt much more clear-headed. Grandma Pemberton sat by the bed and asked in a low voice, "What on earth happened with Adrian? Everything was fine, so how can he suddenly be unable to perform surgery?"

She remembered how Nina had asked her about a wrist injury that morning. It turned out it was Adrian who had gotten into trouble.

"I’m not sure either. I couldn’t get in touch with him the day I got here, and his phone has been off ever since. I had to ask someone to look for him, and they told me he was found in an abandoned building," Nina answered honestly.

Grandma Pemberton sighed deeply. "I was a doctor of Western medicine in my youth. I performed an operation but failed to save the patient. Afterward... his family came after me, causing a huge scene. I was young and hot-headed, and after being subjected to their endless verbal abuse, I got so angry I ended up fighting with them. My medical license was revoked, and I could never practice again... I thought he would carry on my legacy, but I never expected he’d end up on the same path as me."

But Nina knew this wasn’t retaliation from a patient’s family.

They had forced him to reveal whether she was pregnant and claimed to be Zachary Hawthorne’s enemies... but Nina suspected it was Caleb Ford and his cronies.

Before, she’d only had a slight suspicion, but she had dismissed the idea for lack of evidence. Now, however, she no longer thought she was just imagining things.

Caleb Ford and Talia Talbot were more vicious than she had ever imagined; they would even go after the elderly.

They knew full well that Adrian’s hand was injured and that telling his grandparents could be a fatal shock, yet they didn’t care.

In their eyes, the lives of ordinary people were nothing more than tools for getting revenge on her.

All because she had married Zachary and "stolen" Luna Sterling’s man, they hounded her relentlessly, coming up with all sorts of ways to torment and bully her.

People like that were rotten to the core.

But Nina was powerless against them.

She had thought about asking Catherine Grant for help, but she was afraid of getting her friend implicated, which might anger Zachary and bring trouble upon the entire Grant Family.

Nina had been thinking all day but couldn’t come up with a foolproof plan.

She was just filled with guilt. She suspected the people who’d harmed Adrian were right under her nose, yet she lacked the courage to investigate them.

Nina hated herself for being so useless.

"Maybe he never should have gone into this profession... What’s so great about it, anyway?" Grandma Pemberton’s voice was tinged with regret. "It’s probably for the best. Now that he can’t perform surgery, he can finally leave this field and go home. He won’t have any more excuses to stay here."

"Grandma Pemberton..." A lump formed in Nina’s throat, and she didn’t know what to say.

’If he goes back, won’t his family blame him? It’s not easy for an ordinary family to put a child through university. Plus, he became a top surgeon at such a young age and had a boundless future. His family must have had such high hopes for him.’ 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"You don’t have to worry about him," Grandma Pemberton said. "I know what those bastards were saying this morning. They just wanted us to take our anger out on you. But we’re reasonable people. We won’t be swayed by the words of a few young punks."

Nina’s heart was still filled with guilt. She desperately wanted to tell Grandma Pemberton that Adrian’s injury was most likely her fault...

"But you need to take good care of yourself. You can’t take much more of this turmoil. Don’t let their baseless accusations get to you. If you take the bait, you’ll lose everything," Grandma Pemberton told her earnestly.

Nina nodded. "I know. I won’t let it happen again."

Grandma Pemberton helped her wash the bloodstained bedding and clothes before taking her back to her room in the afternoon.

Zachary Hawthorne hadn’t left.

He was sitting on the couch. When he saw her walk in, her face still pale and bloodless, his brow furrowed. "What on earth is wrong with you?"

He had been thinking about it all day, even wondering if she had cancer. ’Is she refusing to tell me, waiting until the day she’s terminally ill to finally let me know? Is this her way of getting revenge on me?’

"It’s nothing. I’m not dying, so you can relax," Nina replied, her expression calm.

"Nina, we’re married. If there’s something wrong with your health, why won’t you tell me? Why won’t you let me take you to the hospital instead of hiding here?" Being pushed away by her when she was so fragile had left Zachary feeling terrible all day.

That was when she should have needed someone to protect her most.

But she chose to push him away.

For the first time, he had a visceral sense that Nina’s feelings for him had truly changed for the worse.

She no longer needed him. Her compliance was born only of fear of his status.

"You’re too busy," Nina said, her gaze as still and unreadable as the water in a deep well.

Zachary knew what she meant.

He was too busy—juggling her and Luna Sterling.

"I’ve told you time and again, the situation with Luna is completely separate from what’s between us. Why do you have to obsess over it? You’re making yourself sick with worry," Zachary said, looking at her with a sense of helplessness.

Nina found his words laughable.

’Here we go again.’

’My worrying, my caring—in his eyes, that’s not allowed either.’

’In his mind, I should be like a machine, numb and unfeeling. I should just accept it when he goes to another woman in the middle of the night, or when he’s out carousing with his friends and doesn’t come home. I should just be understanding and tolerant.’

Nina was so angry it felt like a heavy stone had once again lodged in her chest, and a wave of suffocation washed over her.

Her heart ached with a profound sense of being wronged.

’It was only because she loved him so deeply that she cared, that she couldn’t let it go.’

’But Zachary thought she shouldn’t care.’

’So this was it. He had never understood what it felt like to like someone... Or perhaps, the person he liked was never her to begin with. That’s why he expected her to be sensible and tolerant of him.’

Nina laughed. "Zachary, you want me to stop caring about all this, right? Fine. From now on, I won’t care about a single thing you do. You can go out carousing all night and not come home. You can take calls from that precious old flame of yours in the dead of night. I won’t get jealous anymore. I’ll do my best to be a wife who understands you and tolerates your every action. How does that sound?"

"That’s not what I meant." Zachary knew he shouldn’t have criticized her for being jealous.

"Nina, you’re only jealous because you like me. I shouldn’t have criticized you. Please don’t be angry. Your health is more important." Zachary walked over and took her hand.

"I don’t want to see your friends. Either we go somewhere else, or they leave. And another thing—you are not to make things difficult for the Pembertons. Adrian and I are just friends. If you don’t like me having any connection to him, I can delete all his contact information. Is that what you want?" Everything Nina was doing now was for the sake of the child in her womb.

’She couldn’t get angry anymore.’

’Otherwise, she would lose the baby for sure.’

’She didn’t want the small life inside her to just disappear. No matter how disappointed she became, she couldn’t keep dwelling on Zachary.’

’He wasn’t worth all this pain and sorrow.’

"Let’s go home. I won’t let them near you, okay?" Zachary still wanted her by his side, where he could see her the moment he came home.

His work was demanding; taking a few days off to be with her was already the most he could manage.