Chapter 1

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

He took care of me for three years.

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

Every time I woke and he wasn't there, my separation anxiety came roaring back, and I swallowed more than half a bottle of pills.

I didn't ask until he came home that night, my eyes red.

"Didn't you say you'd always stay with me?"

Impatience flickered in his eyes.

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

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

But I was tired of waiting at home.

I paid someone to film him playing and send me the video.

During a break, one of the girls playing with him asked.

"Doesn't your girlfriend have separation anxiety?"

"You're really okay leaving her home alone to wait?"

Chester spun the water bottle in his hand and gave a mocking little laugh.

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

"My legs work fine. Why would I rot away stuck with her?"

I held the video, still playing, in my hand.

I had never once wanted to chain him for life.

If he'd been sick of me all along, then I'd just set him free.

1

The two of them finished their game.

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

"Didn't you want to be free?"

"Then let's be completely free today."

"Move somewhere else and keep working up a sweat."

Chester didn't refuse. He pinned Catherine Stevens against the wall.

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

"Whoever loses tonight has to call the other one daddy."

I knew that hotel.

Three hundred meters east of the soccer field.

That was where Chester took my first time.

Now they were going inside.

And the video cut off right there.

The sudden quiet left me dizzy.

I looked down at my legs.

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

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

Later, countless people surveyed and reconstructed that crash scene over and over.

If I hadn't lunged forward and yanked Chester back.

If I hadn't taken the hit for him.

The wheel would have crushed Chester's head on the spot.

His life would have ended right there. It wouldn't have been as simple as losing one leg.

But after that crash.

The doctor said I would never stand again.

Chester knelt at my bedside and cried all night.

"Pammy, I'll take care of you for the rest of your life."

Looking back now, those three years, he really did care for me in every little way.

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

He quit his job and scraped together our living from daily-pay odd jobs.

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

Even though the pain of the amputated leg was beyond words.

Still, I felt lucky. It took a disaster like this to see that Chester really was a good man.

The more I thought about it, the more it felt like trading one leg for his life.

Worth it.

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

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

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

"You don't have to run it by me. Go on, hurry."

When he came back, he was drenched in sweat.

His eyes were bright, like he'd been given a new life.

"There's a field down in the neighborhood. I kicked the ball around with a few guys for a while."

The "guys" he mentioned.

Later turned into "her."

That Catherine Stevens. Short hair, sunny and easygoing.

She'd trained as an athlete, her footwork slicker than any man's.

The muscle on her was more beautifully cut than a man's, too.

The first time he brought up Catherine Stevens, I was stitching a hole in his jersey.

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

He didn't see it.

He just kept going on about how gorgeous Catherine's bicycle-kick shot had been.

After that day, he went from going out twice a week to once a day.

Out at six in the morning, back at ten at night.

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

Besides soccer, what else were they doing?

I was trapped at home.

But my mind wouldn't stop spinning out.

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

Only seeing Chester gave me a moment's peace.

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

I swallowed nearly the whole bottle of pills.

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

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

At eleven that night, Chester rushed to the hospital with red eyes, still in his jersey.

"You scared me half to death, you know that?"