Chapter 3

The cold rain soaked through my clothes in no time.

I put my phone away and walked the last two miles home through the downpour.

The drenched fabric clung to my body, and every step left a trail of water on the floor.

Lucas never called again.

That night, just as I expected, the fever came.

My temperature climbed all the way to a hundred and two point nine.

I didn't dare take anything at random, so I curled up under the blanket and pressed a wet towel to my skin, over and over, trying to bring it down.

Half out of my mind, I called my best friend, Alexis Swanson.

Half an hour later, she showed up with fever patches and a doctor.

When she saw my soaked clothes still heaped by the door, her eyes went red with fury.

"Where's Lucas?"

"He dumped a pregnant woman in a rainstorm so he could go celebrate Bianca Larson's birthday?"

I didn't answer.

Alexis threw the towel hard into the basin of water.

"Pearl, how did you end up like this?"

"Back in college, didn't we swear to each other?"

"The second a man takes a mistress, you divorce him. Anyone who goes back is a fool."

I tugged at my dry, cracked lips.

"Yeah."

Back then we were young, and we thought love was the only thing in a relationship, love or the lack of it.

A senior in our department found out her husband was cheating but wouldn't divorce him, for the sake of the child.

When I heard about it, I was furious, and I ranted:

"Cheating happens either zero times or a thousand times."

"Why would anyone keep a man like that around?"

Later, when it was my own turn, I learned that leaving wasn't as easy as I'd imagined.

The first time I found the flirty messages between him and Bianca, all that came flooding into my head was everything Lucas had once done for me.

Sophomore year, my parents cut off my tuition to force me to drop out and work in a factory.

They said my younger brother needed his tutoring classes, and that no amount of schooling did a girl any good.

The day before the payment deadline, Lucas pressed a wad of crumpled cash into my hands.

That summer, he delivered takeout by day and hauled rebar at a construction site by night.

His hands were covered in blisters, and the skin on his shoulders peeled from the sun.

Crying, I asked him why he was putting himself through all of it for me.

He just folded the payment slip and tucked it carefully into my backpack.

"Pearl, being born into a family like that doesn't mean you don't get a future too."

It wasn't until later that I found out.

He'd also sold the watch his mother left him, just to scrape together the last three thousand for me.

Back then, that three thousand was money he'd only barely managed to earn by hauling rebar all summer and selling the most precious thing he owned.

Now the room full of roses he'd given Bianca was worth over two hundred thousand.

Enough to cover every fee for my entire time in college.

Lucas finally had money.

It was just that the person most worth giving everything to was no longer me.

Alexis tucked the blanket around me, her voice choking up.

"This time, are you still planning to forgive him?"

I shook my head and handed her the chat window with my lawyer.

【The divorce papers are being drawn up.】

Alexis stared at me, stunned.

I looked out the window at the rain that hadn't let up, and my voice was very soft.

"Back then he earned my tuition for me, gave me the chance to choose my own life, and took three blows for me."

"That debt, I've repaid with ten years of love and three pardons."

"Alexis, I'm ready to leave now."