Chapter 2

2: 2

2

I stared blankly at the medicine sitting by his hand.

Reuben seemed to catch how harsh his tone had been, and softened it.

"Marcy isn't feeling well. Buying her medicine was the only excuse I had to slip away and see you. I have to head back soon, or she'll start crying again."

Hearing the pet name roll off his tongue for Marcella, I felt every drop of blood drain out of me.

He and I were the ones who were actually together, out in the open, by every right.

And now we were the ones who couldn't see the light of day.

"Reuben. You've fallen for her, haven't you?"

He thought I was still throwing a tantrum, and his patience finally ran dry.

"Madeline, don't think I can't see through you. All that scheming for a retirement livestream, it's just so you can expose our secret relationship."

"I've gone against my own conscience for you, putting on an act in front of Marcy every single day. And what do you do? Just sulk and get jealous."

"On that, you don't hold a candle to Marcy."

I clenched my fist, nails digging into my palm.

So this was what he really thought.

From start to finish, all Reuben had ever cared about was Marcella finding out about the three years we'd shared.

In his heart, I didn't measure up to her.

I gave the corner of my mouth a faint tug.

"In that case, let's break up."

His expression changed.

"Madeline, do you really have to make a scene with me!"

I laughed. "You're the one marrying her. I'm letting you two have your happiness. Aren't you glad?"

He gritted his teeth, his face uglier than I'd ever seen it.

"You're only saying this to spite me because you know I love you. I still haven't signed the papers with her, and it's all so I can give the marriage to you instead, yet you spend every day imagining things!"

"This time, I'm not going to indulge you."

He was furious when he left.

We rarely fought, and even when we did, I was always the one who chased after him first to smooth things over.

This time, I didn't chase. I didn't smooth anything over.

Not long after Reuben got back, he posted something new.

A photo of two people holding hands.

The ring on his finger was the birthday gift I'd given him two years ago.

Engraved with both our initials.

Now it was clasped around another woman's hand.

And the three years of love I'd guarded so carefully came down to one last text.

"Ning, all you have to do is apologize to Marcy on the livestream, and I can pretend none of this ever happened. Once it's over, I'll make it up to you properly. This is the most I can do for you. If you won't take it, then there'll be nothing left at all."

For a moment, a bleak emptiness washed through me.

If I really did apologize, the first thing to hound me to death would be public opinion.

There'd be no place left for me in this industry.

Something that simple, how could Reuben not understand it.

He just didn't care about me.

But still.

Reuben, of all the people you could have loved, why did it have to be Marcella?

Back in high school, my brother had his hand and leg tendons cut by the kidnappers, all to save Marcella when she'd been taken.

And Marcella turned around and threw him away for being a cripple, breaking up with him the very next day after it happened.

She deleted his contact information without a second thought.

My brother, who should have been the rising star of the surgical world, became a man who couldn't so much as lift a pair of chopsticks.

After that he only wanted to die, hurting himself day after day.

My mother went to beg Marcella to show a little mercy, to help talk him into staying alive, and had an accident on the way there.

Marcella happened to be driving right past and could have saved her. Instead she cast one disgusted glance at my mother lying in a pool of blood, muttered something about bad luck, and drove off.

In the end my mother missed the window for rescue, and drew her last breath before she ever reached the hospital.

I'd once told Reuben all of this, holding nothing back, and he had held me with such tenderness in his eyes.

"Ning, it's all in the past. From now on you have me."

When he said that, I believed him without a shred of doubt.

Now he was telling me he and Marcella had known each other all along.

And he wanted me to apologize to her?

Looking at that laughable message, the bitterness in my chest nearly rose to the tip of my tongue.

After a long while, I replied.

"I won't apologize."