Chapter 1

On my wedding bed, I found a piece of lingerie that did not belong to me.

White lace, in a very sexy style.

I searched the records on the smart lock of our new home.

At two in the morning yesterday, my fiancé entered the wedding home.

The time he stayed there was six hours and forty-seven minutes.

Standing in the new home, I suddenly felt like the place was as cold as an ice cellar.

I called Ethan Carter.

It rang for a long time before he picked up, and a girl’s sweet, coy laughter came from the background.

I recognized that voice; it was Mia Reed, an intern at his company.

I took a deep breath and asked him, "Where were you last night?"

He paused for two seconds, and his voice was so gentle there was not the slightest flaw.

"At the office, rushing a proposal until dawn, and then I slept there."

Hearing his weak excuse, I suddenly felt like this marriage was a joke.

Ethan Carter, this wedding is off.

Three months ago, I bought this apartment.

Back then, Ethan held me and spun around the unfinished space again and again.

"Clara, this will be our home from now on."

He pointed to the balcony and said we should put a wicker chair there.

"You love the sun, so in winter you can sit there and read while I make you coffee."

My parents paid the down payment for the apartment, and I paid the mortgage myself.

The renovation money also came from the savings I had built up over the years as a designer.

But Ethan said he was a design director, so he had to handle his own wedding home personally.

He drew three versions of the plans, went with me to home improvement stores, and talked to me about lighting, flow, and storage.

During that time, I really thought I was marrying the right person.

Only later did I learn that half of his care for this apartment was not for me.

I opened a social media app and searched Mia Reed’s name.

Her profile picture was a side-profile photo, and she wore a light-colored slip dress with a bracelet on her wrist.

My pupils suddenly shrank.

That bracelet was a gift from my mother.

Last month, Ethan said we needed to shoot a short video with a "legacy"feeling on the wedding day, and he wanted to take the bracelet in advance to match it with the props.

At the time, I did not think much of it.

After all, we were about to get married, and my mom liked him a lot too.

But now, Mia was wearing my bracelet and smiling at the camera in a video.

The caption was: [My boyfriend said our new home should have traces of me in it.]

In the video, she was standing at the entrance of my wedding home.

She wore the slippers I bought, unboxed the dinnerware I ordered, and lit the diffuser I had carried back from overseas.

Someone in the comments asked: [Girl, is this your wedding home? It’s so beautiful!]

She replied: [Yeah, he said every inch of our home will be designed around my tastes.]

My stomach churned.

I kept scrolling down, and the more I looked, the colder I felt.

Two weeks ago, she posted a video of herself testing the mattress.

The bedding that flashed across the camera was the dark green silk set I had chosen.

She lay on the bed and said with a smile, "He said my lower back isn’t good, so he specially changed it to a softer mattress."

That day, my old back injury had flared up, and the pain was so bad I could barely stand straight.

But Ethan said a client needed urgent revisions to a proposal, so he could not take me to the hospital.

I took an Uber to get an X-ray by myself, and the doctor told me to rest in bed.

That night, he came home and brought me a box of pasta that had already gone completely cold.

He said, "Clara, I’m sorry, I was just too busy today."

I even comforted him instead and told him work was important.

So his so-called busyness had been bringing another woman over to test my wedding bed.

I sat on the living room rug in the wedding home and went through nearly half a year of Mia’s posts.

Every single one was like a knife.

She seared steak in my kitchen and took photos wearing my apron.

She called the coffee mugs I bought "couple mugs."

She had even filmed a video with suggestive music, and the camera swept over the master bedroom, bathroom, and walk-in closet.

The title was: [What does it feel like to move into the wedding home your boyfriend prepared in advance?]

When I reached the end, I suddenly laughed out loud.

As I laughed, tears hit my phone screen.

It was not that I had never sensed something was wrong.

Ethan had become busier and busier over the past six months.

In the past, no matter how busy he was, he would answer my calls, but now he often went missing for an entire night and only said the next day that he had drunk too much at a business dinner and slept at a coworker’s place.

In the past, he remembered what foods I avoided, but now he would put things I was allergic to on the table and then frown as he said, "Clara, don’t be so sensitive, life doesn’t have to be that complicated."

It was not that I had not noticed.

It was that I did not dare to believe it.

Seven years of love, from school uniforms to a wedding dress.

I stayed with him as he went from an assistant designer making three thousand a month to a design director at the company.

When he stayed up all night rushing drawings, I sat beside him and made him coffee.

When a client berated him until he broke down, I held him and said, "Ethan Carter, you’re going to make it."

When his startup failed and left him in debt, I took out my savings and paid it back with him little by little.

I once thought that what we had could survive time, poverty, and every storm.

I never thought it would fail to survive a young girl who knew how to act sweet and admire him.