Chapter 1

To save Amanda Harding, I lost my leg in a car crash.

She took care of me for three years.

Then, out of nowhere, she fell in love with soccer.

Every time I woke and she wasn't there, my separation anxiety flared up again, and I swallowed most of a bottle of pills.

It wasn't until she came home that night that I asked, my eyes red.

"You said you'd always be here with me, didn't you?"

Impatience flickered in her eyes.

"You can't play soccer anyway. Just be good and wait for me at home."

"Behave, and next time I'll come back early and bring you a present."

But I was tired of waiting at home.

So I had someone film her at the field and send me the video.

During a break, the guy she played with, her close male friend, asked her.

"Doesn't your boyfriend have separation anxiety?"

"You're okay leaving him home alone to wait?"

Amanda spun the water bottle in her hand and gave a mocking little laugh.

"A cripple with one leg gone. Does he really think faking sick can chain me to him for life?"

"My legs aren't broken. Why would I rot away beside him?"

I gripped the phone with the video still playing.

I had never once wanted to chain her to me for life.

If she'd been sick of me all along, then I'd set her free.

1

The two of them finished their game.

Arms slung around each other, they headed off to get a room.

"Amanda, didn't you say you wanted to be free?"

"Then tonight we go all the way free."

"Change locations and keep working up a sweat."

Amanda didn't refuse. Instead she pinned Elwin Stevens against the wall.

"You little tease, you're the one who came on to me."

"Whoever loses tonight calls the other one daddy."

I knew that hotel.

Three hundred meters east of the soccer field.

That was where Amanda and I had our first time.

Now they were going inside.

And the video cut off right there.

The sudden silence left me a little dizzy.

I looked down at my leg.

Below the knee, my right pant leg hung empty, folded against the footrest of the wheelchair.

The year of the crash I was twenty-four, she was twenty-two.

Afterward, countless people studied and reconstructed the accident scene, over and over.

If I hadn't lunged forward and pulled Amanda back.

If I hadn't taken the hit for her.

The wheel would have crushed her head right there on the spot.

She would have died there. It wouldn't have been as simple as one broken leg.

But after that crash.

The doctor said I would never walk again.

Amanda knelt at my hospital bed and cried the whole night through.

"Win, I'll take care of you for the rest of my life."

Thinking back now, for those three years she really did take care of me down to the smallest thing.

Bringing me water, feeding me, wheeling me out into the sun, carrying me to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

She quit her job and scraped together our living costs with day-to-day odd jobs.

The neighbors all said I was lucky, that I'd landed a girlfriend who'd never leave me.

The pain of losing a leg was beyond words.

But even so, I counted myself fortunate, because Amanda really was a good woman.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a fair trade, one leg for her life.

Well worth it.

Until half a year ago, when she started playing soccer.

That day she said she wanted to get some air, that she'd be right back.

And I felt guilty that caring for me had eaten up most of her time.

"You don't have to check with me. Go on."

When she came back, she was drenched in sweat.

Her eyes bright, like she'd been given a whole new life.

"There's a field down in the neighborhood. I kicked the ball around with a few of the girls."

The "girls" she talked about.

Later turned into "him."

That Elwin Stevens. Short hair, sunny and easygoing.

He'd come up as a college athlete, quick on his feet, eight-pack abs that had a whole crowd of fangirls screaming.

The first time she brought up Elwin Stevens, I was stitching a tear in her jersey.

The needle jabbed into my fingertip, and a bead of blood welled up.

She didn't notice.

She just kept going on about how beautiful Elwin Stevens's bicycle kick had been.

After that day, she went out more and more, from twice a week to once a day.

Out the door at six in the morning, home at ten at night.

But what kind of soccer takes a whole day to play?

Besides soccer, what else were they doing?

I was trapped at home.

But my mind wouldn't stop churning.

Ever since the crash, I'd developed severe separation anxiety.

Only seeing Amanda gave me even a moment's peace.

So that day, to make myself feel a little better.

I swallowed nearly most of the bottle of pills.

My mind went hazy, and I passed out in the wheelchair.

It was the woman delivering milk who noticed something was wrong and called 911 for me.

That night at eleven, Amanda rushed into the hospital with her eyes red, still in her jersey.

"Do you have any idea how badly you scared me?"