Chapter 1

On the day of the wedding, I wake up at four in the morning, waiting for the stylist and the cars that are supposed to take me to the venue.

But seven o'clock comes, and no one shows up.

Panicking, I call my childhood friend, Heath Zeller.

His laughter comes through the phone.

"Julian, how can you be this careless? We were told last minute that the cars aren't going to pick you up today. Everyone went straight to the hotel instead."

I grab my custom-made wedding suit and rush to the hotel. By the time I arrive, drenched in sweat, the place is completely empty.

Just then, Heath calls again.

"I was just messing with you," he says, barely able to hold back his laughter. "You didn't actually run all the way to the hotel, did you?

"Destination weddings are all the rage now. We moved the wedding to Isla Verde ages ago. Everyone's waiting for you at the airport."

I drag my heavy garment bag from one terminal to another. But no matter how thoroughly I search the departure hall, I can't find a single one of them.

Then Heath sends me a video, laughing so hard he can barely stand.

"You're too slow! We've already left. There was never a destination wedding. We just wanted to spend a week on Isla Verde. We'll throw you the wedding when we get back."

The camera shifts.

My fiancee, Lydia Bennett, is pulling his suitcase for him. My parents stand behind them, grinning even more happily than they did in our family photos.

When Mom sees how pale I look, she frowns instead.

"It's just a joke. Why are you taking it so seriously? Heath is so much more fun than you. You've always been so dull, even as a kid. You take everything too seriously."

Lydia hands Heath his coat before finally turning toward the camera.

"Go home and wait for me, okay?" she says. "I'll marry you when I get back."

Looking at all those smiling faces on the screen, I suddenly realize that even confronting them is pointless.

I'm not angry or heartbroken. I'm simply numb.

I pick up my phone and message the wedding planner to cancel everything.

From this moment on, I'm done playing along with their lies.

Chapter 1

The moment the call ended, an announcement suddenly echoed through the airport. All flights had been canceled due to the hurricane.

Lydia Bennett, Heath Zeller, and my parents emerged from the VIP lounge just as the announcement finished. Their flight to Isla Verde had been canceled too.

As soon as Heath spotted the garment bag hanging from my hand, he doubled over laughing.

"You really brought your wedding suit all the way to the airport? Julian, how are you still this easy to trick?"

Mom and Dad laughed along with him. To them, the fact that I'd gotten up at 4:00 am and rushed between the hotel and the airport with my wedding suit was nothing more than a harmless joke.

Then Heath casually draped an arm around Lydia's shoulders and leaned toward me with a mischievous grin.

"Actually, there's another reason we have to postpone the wedding for a week," he said. "Lydia's pregnant with my kid."

The color drained from my face. A deafening roar filled my head, drowning out everything around me.

Heath beamed and continued, "She's almost three months along."

I looked at Lydia. She didn't deny it. She simply stood there, calm and composed.

Mom even let out a sigh. "What's done is done. Don't blame Heath. The baby's innocent, after all."

My ears were ringing.

"So that's why you canceled the wedding?" I asked, curling my trembling hands into fists. "You're planning to have the two of them get married instead?"

For a moment, no one said anything.

Then Heath suddenly burst out laughing. Lydia couldn't help but smile as well, shaking her head as though she couldn't believe what I'd just said. Even Mom and Dad burst out laughing.

"How did you fall for it again?"

Heath clapped me on the shoulder, laughing so hard he could barely stand.

"I found the ultrasound online. I've never even held Lydia's hand, let alone slept with her. Why would we even have a baby together? Julian, you should've seen your face. You looked like you were about to pass out."

Lydia reached over and lightly smacked Heath's shoulder. "Stop teasing him with things like that."

For a brief moment, something almost like hope stirred in my chest.

But in the next second, she turned to me with a frown.

"And you," she said, her tone reprimanding. "You know how much Heath loves joking around. Why do you fall for it every single time?"

Mom waved her hand impatiently. "Why are you making that face? You always can't take a joke. Everyone's having a good time, but you have to make it look like we've done something terrible to you."

So they knew exactly how much these jokes hurt me. That was why they never bothered to explain and would rather watch me squirm—just as they had done for the past ten years.

The year I took the SAT, Heath lied and told me the exam center had been changed at the last minute.

I rushed across the city through a heavy downpour, only to discover that the exam was still being held at my original school.

In the end, a traffic officer had to escort me back with his siren blaring. I ran into the examination hall with barely a minute to spare.

When the exam was over, everyone gathered around me, laughing at what had happened.

Even Mom tried to smooth things over. "Heath only wanted to help you relax. Don't ruin everyone's fun."

Lydia had done the same thing once, helping Heath trick me with a misleading photo that made it look as though the two of them were kissing. By the time I rushed over in the middle of the night, they'd already set up a phone to record my reaction.

Every single time, I swallowed my humiliation and forced myself to smile, just to prove that I wasn't angry.

Little by little, everyone came to love Heath for being funny and entertaining, while I became the boring one—the party pooper who couldn't take a joke.

I used to think that if I learned to laugh along, I could find a place for myself in all that laughter and noise.

But today, I finally understood. All their happiness had been built on my pain.

Chapter 2

I lowered my head and pressed a hand to my chest. Strangely, it didn't hurt anymore.

Maybe there came a point where disappointment simply ran its course, leaving nothing behind. No anger or sadness remained—just the sudden realization that I'd finally had enough.

A crack of thunder shook the sky outside the airport, and moments later, rain came pouring down.

Lydia pulled the car up to the entrance, and Mom and Dad immediately climbed into the back seat. Heath, carrying his coat, took the passenger seat without hesitation.

I was about to open the rear door when he stopped me.

"Wait."

He took the garment bag from me and carefully laid it across the only remaining space in the back seat.

"This suit is custom-made," he explained. "If it gets ruined, what are you going to wear next week?"

I stared at the suit stretched across the seat.

"I can hold it," I replied.

Heath looked me over, then glanced at the suit with a troubled expression. "But you're covered in sweat. What if you get it dirty?"

Lydia went silent for a few seconds before making the decision for me. "Just get a rideshare."

"I won't be able to get one in this kind of weather," I said, staring at her in disbelief.

"Just pay a little more," she said, frowning. "I'm sure someone will take you. Your parents are getting on in years. We can't leave them here standing in the rain. And Heath's shoes are limited edition—they cost over 1,000 dollars. They're ruined if they get soaked."

She glanced at the garment bag. "And that suit needs to be worn next week. We can't just throw it in the trunk and risk wrinkling it."

She said it all so matter-of-factly that, to her, the arrangement seemed completely reasonable.

"Your recovery has been going well, hasn't it? Getting a little soaked once in a while isn't going to hurt you."

I flashed her a bitter smile.

Two months earlier, Lydia had lost control of her car on the highway. I'd thrown myself in front of her to protect her and ended up with a ruptured left kidney. I'd only recently undergone surgery for it.

The doctor had warned me repeatedly to stay warm and avoid any kind of impact for at least three months.

Lydia knew all of that. Yet to her, my healing injury mattered less than a suit or a pair of Heath's shoes.

Mom leaned toward the window and urged, "Lydia, let's go. Heath said he's getting cold. We don't want him catching a cold."

The door shut in front of me, then Lydia rolled down the window.

"Text me when you get home," she ordered.

With that, the car disappeared into the rain.

I stood outside the airport as the estimated wait time on the rideshare app climbed from ten minutes to half an hour. One driver after another canceled on me.

Before long, I was soaked through.

My hair clung miserably to my face, and every gust of cold wind sent another shiver through me.

An hour dragged by before a cab finally pulled up.

The driver turned up the heat and handed me a packet of tissues from the front. "Here, kid. Dry yourself off."

He glanced at me through the mirror. "Why are you standing outside the airport alone in a storm like this? Didn't anyone come to pick you up?"

I lowered my head and said nothing.

The driver looked at me for a moment but didn't press.

"Don't let it get you down," he said instead. "Storms always pass. Once the skies clear, things will get better."

I started checking my emails on my phone. Two weeks earlier, my company had offered me an overseas assignment.

Back then, I'd been reluctant to leave Lydia, and I couldn't bear to walk away from the wedding we'd spent so long planning. So I kept putting off my answer.

Now, I clicked on the offer, accepted it, then sent my reply.

"Yeah," I replied, looking at the one-way ticket I'd rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

Once the storm passed, the flights would resume. And I'd be on one of them, flying thousands of miles away to start a new life without Lydia.

The wedding she was supposed to have next week would proceed without the groom she'd been waiting for.

Chapter 3

By the time I made it home, I was running a fever and barely conscious.

I didn't know how much time had passed before Lydia hurried through the door. The moment she saw me curled up on the couch, her expression changed.

"Julian?"

She touched my forehead, then immediately reached for the thermometer.

It read 103 degrees.

"I told you to text me when you got home. Why didn't you?" she asked. "I took your parents and Heath home, then went back to the airport to look for you."

A restrained edge of anger tinged her voice, but her hands were gentle as she brought over a dry towel and carefully wiped my hair. Then she crouched beside the couch and began disinfecting the raw blisters on the back of my heels.

The alcohol stung, and I flinched.

Lydia immediately stopped.

"If it hurts, tell me," she said gently. "We took the joke too far today. I've already spoken to the wedding planner. We'll set everything up again for next week. For the next few days, just rest. I'll take care of everything else."

I looked at Lydia as she tended to my wounds, and I suddenly remembered another time she'd taken care of me.

Back in college, I'd come down with a high fever during a heavy storm. Lydia had braved the rain for nearly two miles to get me to the hospital, then stayed by my side all night.

The next morning, Heath had laughed at her. "One little rainstorm and Julian's already burning up. Don't tell me he's pretending to be sick just to get you to stay with him."

Lydia's expression had darkened.

"He's running a 103-degree fever. You think that's funny?" she'd snapped. "Don't ever joke about his health again. I don't want to hear it."

Afterward, she'd tucked the blankets around me and quietly asked if I was still feeling unwell.

Back then, she couldn't even bear to let Heath make an offhand joke about my health. Yet now, she was the one turning my suffering into entertainment for everyone else.

My phone suddenly buzzed.

Heath had posted a new video.

"I Tricked the Groom Three Times on His Wedding Day—and He Fell for It Every Single Time!"

It opened with footage of me sitting alone at home, waiting for everyone to come pick me up for the wedding.

Then came clips of me rushing into the empty hotel with my wedding suit, followed by footage of me running from one airport terminal to another, dragging the garment bag behind me.

The final clip showed the moment Heath told me Lydia was pregnant with his child, capturing the instant all the color drained from my face.

They'd apparently had someone filming me in secret since five that morning.

Every moment of my panic, fear, and humiliation had been turned into carefully edited content for Heath's account.

Less than 30 minutes after he posted it, the video had already racked up more than 100,000 likes.

People were laughing at me in the comments.

"The groom's an idiot. How does he believe everything they tell him?"

"If you can't take a joke, don't hang out with fun people. His face at the end literally looks like his soul had left his body."

"The bride and Heath look so much better together. One's funny, and the other actually gets the joke."

Just minutes earlier, I'd received a message from my company.

The video revealed my name and where I worked, so one of our clients demanded a new project lead. The project I'd spent three years working on had been put on hold.

I slammed my phone down in front of Lydia.

"Make him delete it."

Lydia's face fell, and she immediately called Heath.

There was a long silence on the other end before he finally spoke.

"I didn't think people would actually go after Julian," he said, his voice tinged with anxiety. "But the video has already been sponsored. If I delete it now, I'll have to pay 400,000 dollars in damages, and the platform might bury my account."

Lydia's grip tightened around her phone.

"Don't delete it yet," she finally said after a long silence. "Let me talk to Julian."

Something inside me finally snapped.

"My job's already been affected," I spat, unable to hold back the emotions I'd been bottling up all day. "What is there left to discuss?

"I gave up the wedding for him. I gave up everything—Mom, Dad, and even you. And now you want to sacrifice my career, the only thing I have left, just to protect him?"

"You can always find another job," Lydia cut me off, clearly irritated. "You're always complaining that everyone favors Heath. Why don't you ever stop and ask yourself why everyone likes him but doesn't want to be around you?

"He's fun to be around, but you can't take a joke. You always turn the smallest thing into a problem and ruin everyone's mood."

Then, right there beneath the video, she replied, "Julian isn't angry. We're doing perfectly fine, so please don't blame Heath."

Just like that, she'd defended Heath against the accusations that he'd done it out of malice. And in doing so, she'd forgiven him for everything he'd done to me on my behalf.

I pushed her phone back across the table.

"Get out."

Lydia stared at me in disbelief, her expression turning cold. "Julian, are you seriously asking me to leave over something this trivial?"

She grabbed her coat and stormed toward the door. But before she left, she still placed some fever medicine and a glass of water in front of me.

"Remember to take your medicine. This will all be over by tomorrow."

The door slammed shut behind her.

She still cared about my health, but she didn't care how long it would take me to reclaim the dignity she'd trampled.

She was willing to drive back to the airport for me in the middle of a hurricane, yet she wasn't willing to make Heath delete a viral video built entirely on my humiliation.

Once the door closed behind her, I pulled the suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. I slipped my passport and the rescheduled flight ticket inside.

Lydia said that by tomorrow, everything would be over.

I supposed she was right.

She and these seven years we spent together would both become part of my past.

Chapter 4

At dawn, my bedroom door swung open.

Dad stormed in and slapped me across the face. Mom threw her phone down in front of me.

On the screen was Heath's final video, posted just before he slit his wrist. His face was deadly pale, with a bloodstained box cutter lying beside him.

"Julian leaked my messages with Lydia to those troll accounts," he murmured. "He even paid people to harass me online and report my account. This is all my fault. I shouldn't have kept teasing him or expected him to forgive me."

I had no idea what these supposed messages even were. But after hearing Heath's accusations, everyone had decided that I'd orchestrated the online harassment behind the scenes and driven him over the edge.

"Are you happy now, Julian?" Mom hissed, pointing a finger at me. "Heath slit his wrist last night. He's still fighting for his life in the hospital!"

In the suicide note Heath left behind, he'd filled page after page with apologies to me. He claimed he'd only wanted to have some fun with everyone, but in the process, he'd ruined my wedding.

Since I refused to forgive him, the only thing he could do was pay for what he'd done with his life.

Lydia grabbed my wrist, disgust written all over her face.

"It was just one video, yet you had to force him to delete it and ruin his career," she snarled. "If he dies, you'll never be able to live with yourself!"

Still burning up with a fever, I didn't even have time to explain before they dragged me to the hospital.

What they didn't know was that Heath was already awake.

While Mom, Dad, and Lydia stepped out to speak with the doctor, he opened his eyes and gave me a faint, satisfied smile.

"You were with Lydia for seven years and spent an entire year planning your wedding," he drawled. "But so what? All I had to do was say I wanted to go to Isla Verde, and she was willing to leave her fiance behind to go with me. Even your own parents think I'm more like their son than you are."

My entire body shook with rage. "So you deliberately framed me for those messages and the online harassment too?"

As soon as footsteps sounded outside the room, the smugness vanished from Heath's face.

"Julian, stop! Don't pull out my IV!" he suddenly screamed, grabbing my wrist. "I already apologized to you. Why won't you leave me alone?"

Lydia rushed into the room and yanked me away from him. "Julian, have you lost your mind?"

"It wasn't me. He—"

I tried to explain, but Dad shoved me hard from behind.

"Get out!" he roared. "Stop upsetting Heath!"

I stumbled and crashed to the floor, slamming my left side into the sharp corner of a metal trolley. A familiar, excruciating pain tore through me, and I stopped breathing for a moment.

Two months earlier, after the surgery on my ruptured kidney, the doctor had warned me again and again that it couldn't withstand another blow.

"Lydia, my left side hurts," I pleaded, desperately grabbing the sleeve of her shirt. "The doctor said I can't take another hit. My kidney might—"

A weak whimper suddenly came from the bed, cutting me off.

"Lydia…"

Lydia immediately pulled her hand away and hurried to Heath's side. Mom and Dad gathered around him too.

Even when Mom heard me, she didn't bother to look back. "Heath just woke up. Don't pretend to be sick just to steal everyone's attention!"

As everyone crowded around him, comforting him, my vision slowly faded to black.

I finally collapsed.

When I woke again, the doctor was standing beside my bed, his expression grave.

"The old injury to your left kidney was aggravated by the impact. It ruptured again, causing severe internal bleeding," he explained. "You were brought in too late, so we couldn't repair it. To save your life, we had no choice but to remove the kidney."

I stared at him blankly, unable to process what he'd just said.

It wasn't until he left that I slowly raised a hand and touched the thick bandages covering my side.

Two months ago, I'd thrown myself in front of Lydia during that car accident and fought to save the kidney I'd injured protecting her.

I'd endured two months of pain because I wanted to make it to our wedding on schedule, stand beside her, and say those two words myself—"I do."

But the wedding never happened.

And the kidney I'd sacrificed for her had ultimately been lost because of the indifference of the very people who were supposed to care about me.

I lay staring at the ceiling for a long time.

At last, the final thread tying me to them snapped.

No one ever came to visit me. Mom and Dad were busy with Heath, and Lydia never came looking for me either.

The only message on my phone was one she'd sent half an hour earlier.

"Heath's awake. When you're feeling better, come over and apologize to him."

I stayed in the hospital for seven days, and not once did a single member of my family ask how my surgery had gone.

On the eighth day, I signed my discharge papers, returned to the home Lydia and I had prepared for our marriage, and collected my things.

Before leaving, I placed my surgical report and the wedding cancellation confirmation side by side on the dining table.

Then I headed straight for the airport.

…

13 hours later, my plane landed.

Around the same time, after seeing Heath home from the hospital, Lydia finally realized that I hadn't replied to a single message in seven days.

At first, she assumed I was simply sulking. But after a dozen unanswered calls, that inexplicable unease finally turned into panic.

When she returned to our home, no one was there. The only things she found were two sheets of paper on the dining table.

One was the confirmation that the wedding had been canceled. The other was my surgical report.

"Pre-existing left kidney injury. Secondary rupture and severe bleeding caused by external trauma. Left nephrectomy performed."