Chapter 4

So disgusting.

I pressed down on Barbara's leg.

From the moment she saw that photo, she'd grabbed the wine bottle.

"Tucker, that's... that's!"

"Don't rush."

I smiled at Barbara.

Her eyes were flashing with tears from anger as she cursed incoherently about idiots and bitches.

The atmosphere in the private room suddenly fell into suffocating silence.

"Is Miss Scott finished? Then next round."

I calmly spun the bottle on the table again.

"I want to choose April 2, 2025."

"Want to play together?"

Muniz lost his composure for the first time tonight. He suddenly put his arm around my shoulder.

"Tucker, my head hurts a bit."

"I just remembered I took antibiotics tonight. I can't drink."

"Let's go to the hospital, okay?"

I removed his hand bit by bit and smiled.

"No."

I opened my phone first. The screen showed the pale walls of a hospital room.

Post-miscarriage care instructions photos.

Medical advice in my notes.

A chat screenshot I'd sent to my mom.

[The doctor said I might never be able to have children again.]

[Mom, they still haven't found the hit-and-run driver.]

[Let's postpone the marriage registration.]

April 2, 2025, was the fifth day after the accident.

On the day Muniz and I were supposed to register our marriage.

A woman suddenly rushed in front of our car. There was still some distance—emergency braking could have worked.

Muniz had even raced cars before.

But he was so nervous at that moment that he jerked the steering wheel hard.

The entire passenger side crashed into the guardrail beside us.

The child who had just begun to have a heartbeat was gone.

I was severely injured and lay in the ICU for three days.

When I woke up, I saw Muniz kneeling by the hospital bed, having lost a lot of weight.

He said he could do without children, but no matter what, he had to spend this lifetime with me.

"Let's not look anymore, Tucker."

At this moment, Muniz gripped my hand, his eyes full of undisguised panic.

"I really don't feel well. Let's go, okay?"

Scott hesitantly tried to put away her phone, but Barbara snatched it first.

She viciously scrolled to that day. It was a photo of Scott posing in lingerie in front of a mirror.

And a video with a shaky camera pointed at a messy, filthy floor.

Amid chaotic panting, I heard Scott crying.

"Didn't you say you hated me, that you never wanted to see me again for the rest of your life? Why did you come?"

She was pressed down and kissed.

"I really want to destroy you!"

The man gritted his teeth, then comforted her in a hoarse voice. "Scott, that was my child. Do you know she might never be able to get pregnant again?"

"I can give birth for you!"

Scott's voice sounded so aggrieved.

"If you want to compensate her, just give her our child."

Muniz seemed to sigh.

"I love you so much. How could I bear for you to lose a child?"

"Just consider it... something she and I owe you."

I finished watching this farce, drank the last sip of wine, and set down my glass.

As if also setting down thirty years of entanglement.

"Muniz, let's break up."