Chapter 1

After Jared Shaw failed his SATs, he chose to marry me.

For more than twenty years we clung to each other through hard times, and then, on our wedding anniversary, he slapped me across the face.

"Ivy already told me. I never failed back then. I got into a university in the capital."

"You knew that if you'd gotten in, I'd have called off the engagement. So you burned your acceptance letter."

He didn't wait for me to explain.

Ivy Pruitt, who hadn't been in touch for years, walked through the door like she owned the place.

She pulled out a small scrap of scorched paper, and on it you could just make out two words. Acceptance letter.

"I kept quiet all this time because I felt sorry for you. But my child with Jared is getting married now, and I can't let him be called a bastard any longer."

All I felt was sick.

So it turned out that while I was drowning in the grief of losing my baby, their child was being born.

And it was entirely possible that losing my baby had been part of their plan too.

Cold to the bone, I asked for a divorce. But Jared said he'd only ever be widowed, never divorced.

In the shoving and struggle, all I could do was drag him down with me, both of us falling from the building.

Then my eyes opened again.

Jared Shaw, more than twenty years younger, stood in front of me.

"This time I'm not going to settle. I'm calling off the engagement and marrying Ivy. And I'm going to college and changing my life."

I froze for a moment, then quickly decided to let him have it.

Because the name written on that burned acceptance letter was mine.

One:

"I know you've been planning all along to marry me once you finished college. But the truth is, I never once wanted to marry you."

"All these years I let myself be called your fiancé only because you threw yourself at me hard enough. Anyone with eyes could see the one I love is your cousin, Ivy Pruitt."

Jared held tight to Ivy's hand, as if he were afraid I wouldn't agree to break it off.

So he made his words as ugly as they could get, and when he worked himself up he waved his arms about, and he'd even called in every man and boy in the village to come watch the show.

At twenty, hearing this, my head spun and I wished I could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.

But the next second, a whole flood of memories poured into my head.

To be precise.

Memories from my twenty years married to Jared Shaw.

Every incident, one after another, flickered past me like frames of a color film.

The first to surface was the second year of our marriage, when I was pregnant and Jared said he had a craving for fish, and because of it I broke through the ice by accident and my whole leg went under.

When I woke, the baby was gone, and my leg was crippled. I was heartbroken, and instead of comfort my in-laws screamed at me that I was a murderer, while Jared only said I'd been too greedy for a taste of fish, never once telling them the truth.

To make something of myself, I rode the tide of the times and worked myself half to death to build up some businesses, and then Jared said a woman belonged at home enjoying an easy life, and used that to take my businesses straight from me and force me to stay home waiting on his parents.

I stayed home caring for two paralyzed old people, while Jared started staying out all night, and even when he came home he'd use the excuse of not wanting to wake me and sleep in the guest room, leaving me alone with my eyes open until dawn.

I thought all married couples were like this.

But on the day I died, I saw Ivy Pruitt, well-kept and untouched by hardship, and only then did I understand that I had been the sacrifice for their love all along.

At the thought, I forced the tears back and stopped my parents before they could try to smooth things over.

Looking at their clasped hands, I spoke calmly.

"I'm willing to call off the engagement. But it has to be done by the rules."