Chapter 2

Pain wracked my whole body, mixed with cold sweat, and every breath hurt.

Just like when I was a child, I tried to curl myself up on the bed.

Still, I couldn't help thinking back to before.

George pursued me for half a year.

He remembered I loved sweets, and he'd take me to try every trending dessert.

I was afraid of thunder, so on stormy nights he'd wait downstairs outside my building all night.

In a crowd, I was always the first person his eyes went to.

On the day he confessed, he stood in the middle of heart-shaped candles, holding roses, waiting for me.

"Nellie, will you be my girlfriend?"

He knelt on the ground and reached out his hand to me.

But it turned out that the man who once knelt on one knee and swore to be my knight for life...

Had abandoned me long ago.

Tears slid down into my hair, cold enough to chill me all over.

"Hello! Is this the place that called 911?"

The knock at the door and my phone rang at the same time.

My awareness was almost giving out, and my hand shook as I answered the call.

"It's here. The door lock code is 1012."

"That code doesn't work. Did you remember it wrong?"

Wrong?

George said that once we got married, he'd change the code to our wedding anniversary.

October 12th, a day I would remember all my life.

How could it be wrong?

The paramedic entered it again.

Still wrong.

I struggled to prop myself up, trying to get out of bed and open the door, but I suddenly crashed to the floor.

The fall left my vision black, and all I could do was sprawl there on the ground.

I tried to crawl toward the door, but I couldn't find the strength.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?"

The paramedic's anxious voice came from the door.

I gritted my teeth, gathered my strength, turned to reach my phone, and called George.

On the fifteenth call, he finally picked up.

George's lazy voice came through.

"What is it, my princess?"

"What did you change the door lock code to?"

I asked through gritted teeth.

George laughed. "October 13th. The day Lucretia and I slept together for the first time."

As if that weren't enough, he added one more line.

"Oh, and our place? We've done it everywhere in it a long time ago."

My breathing suddenly turned ragged, my phone dropped to the floor with a thud, and everything in front of me went dark.

So many things from memory suddenly became clear.

The tissues that turned up on the bed weren't proof that he'd taken care of himself out of love for me.

The sewing needle that suddenly appeared inside the pillow wasn't the seller's oversight.

The stains that inexplicably showed up on my underwear weren't from not washing properly.

He'd known all along.

But he only ever said I was overthinking it.

He indulged Lucretia and kept me blind.

So the strange taste in the milk before bed was real.

The moans I heard from next door, half asleep, half awake, were real too.

Only his love for me was the lie.

My world sank completely into darkness.