Chapter 2

In the dark void, I felt a strange pulling force dragging my floating soul in a specific direction.

Wasn't I dead?

Dazed and confused, I let the force guide me forward.

When my eyes opened again, I found myself looking at Hailey and Ethan.

The two people I knew best in this world. The two people I once believed would love me forever.

Ethan Vance was my first love.

Back in high school, he used to skip meals and survive on cheap bagels just to save up enough money to buy me gifts.

He would pretend my house was on his way home just to walk me back, only to spend an extra hour biking in the opposite direction in the freezing dark.

He used to fight off the boys who harassed me, smiling through his bruised and bloody face as he told me:

"As long as I'm here, I'll never let anyone hurt you!"

So how... how did you become the one hurting me?

Hailey and I had been friends since we were toddlers.

Her mother was our family's housekeeper, and other kids often picked on her.

I had stubbornly insisted on protecting her back then, never dreaming it would end up putting a target on my own back.

Those boys who cornered and harassed me in high school? Hailey was the one who sent them.

That was when I finally learned she had harbored bitter jealousy and hatred toward me for years.

When I was eighteen, my mother and I were thrown out of our house. I fell from an upscale gated community down to a rundown, moldy apartment.

My sudden downfall gave her the chance she had always craved—the power to finally crush me under her heel.

During our senior year, the very first week of the semester,

she casually mentioned to the whole class that my mother had cheated and was dumped by my father.

Then, she abruptly turned to me with fake innocence.

"I'm so sorry, Chloe. I shouldn't have aired your family business like that."

I stared at her in shock. "My mom never cheated on him."

"Huh? Then why didn't she get a single penny in the divorce?"

Her words sounded like irrefutable proof, instantly convincing everyone that my mother was a cheap cheater.

Before long, vile rumors spread like wildfire—from my mom sleeping around to me selling my body to random men every night.

No one listened to my explanations.

After defending myself countless times to deaf ears, I simply learned to keep my mouth shut.

To them, my silence was just an admission of guilt.

Shortly after the rumors started, three boys cornered me on my walk home from school.

"Heard you sell yourself?"

"How much for a night, huh?"

They sneered and pushed me violently onto the dirty pavement.

One of them pinned me down, straddling my chest.

I fought, I screamed—and that was the moment Ethan appeared like a knight in shining armor.