Chapter 1

After trying on the wedding dress, Ethan gently pulled the seatbelt over and fastened it for me.

"Babe, I've seen you in the wedding dress. I won't be attending the wedding."

I froze in shock. "What do you mean?"

He smiled and kissed my forehead.

"I've fallen for a younger woman. She has a temper and refuses to be a mistress. I got a marriage certificate with her this morning."

"I'm someone else's husband now. If I go through with our wedding ceremony, my wife will be heartbroken."

My mind buzzed, my voice shaking uncontrollably. "Why?"

His tone was apologetic yet innocent. "Babe, you're the one I love most, but men... we're always drawn to eighteen-year-old girls."

"If you still want a wedding, find a man to pretend to be the groom. Don't shortchange yourself—it breaks my heart."

I pressed the pregnancy test result deeper into my pocket.

He was right.

I shouldn't shortchange myself.

Ethan acted like nothing had happened, habitually ruffling my hair.

"She's incredibly stubborn. If I didn't get the marriage certificate with her, she wouldn't let me touch her at all."

"I pursued her for nearly half a year. She only gave me her first time yesterday."

I stared at him as if someone had their hands around my throat, my limbs turning cold.

But he smiled deeply. "Right in the seat you're sitting in. Like a little wildcat—scratching and clawing, then melting into softness."

Following his lingering, reminiscing gaze, I looked at the windshield.

Palm prints, large and small, overlapping. Not yet faded.

A wave of nausea surged up my throat.

I gripped the seatbelt so hard my eyes reddened.

He cupped my bloodless face, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Why are you crying? You're still Mrs. Walker."

In Ethan's seductive eyes, there was still that impossibly thick affection.

As if he wasn't the one who'd just casually mentioned getting a certificate with another woman, or the one with that intoxicated look while describing passionate entanglement in my seat.

The absurd sense of disconnection swept through my entire body.

I couldn't breathe.

He sighed helplessly. "I know you're uncomfortable, but she's sensitive. If I attend the wedding, she'll definitely cry. She's different from other women—pure and virtuous, wanting only devoted love. I pursued her for half a year before she gave herself to me. I have to take responsibility. You've always been understanding and considerate. You'll understand, right?"

Half a year.

We'd been planning our wedding for half a year too.

So while he personally handled every detail of the wedding I wanted—the style, the venue, the flowers, the invitations—

He was also working tirelessly in places I couldn't see, doing everything in his power to sleep with another woman.

I curled my frozen fingers, numbly closing my eyes.

"Since you've married someone else, let's end this."

He paused for two seconds, then laughed. "Don't say things you don't mean."

"You've been with me since you were eighteen. You've had two abortions. If you leave me, what man out there would want you?"

I stared at him.

My heart felt like red-hot coals were rolling across it.

Ten years. We'd lived under bridges, shared single bowls of instant noodles. In the hardest times, we could only drink water to fill our stomachs.

Because we had no money, we couldn't afford birth control or proper abortions.

In the freezing cold, I deliberately exposed myself, climbed stairs and threw myself down them.

Through the pain, crying until I was exhausted, I lost two children.

Ethan had knelt by my hospital bed, stabbing himself twice.

With bloody hands trembling, he covered my eyes, speaking word by word in my ear: "Peyton, I'll make sure you live a good life. If I ever wrong you, may I die a terrible death."

That promise was heavy. I believed it for half my life.

But now, it was easily defeated by a woman he'd known for six months.

I didn't understand how someone who loved me so much could suddenly turn rotten.

His phone rang with a special ringtone.

One that had appeared many times at night. Ethan always said it was clients.

Because I trusted him so much, I never doubted.

Now I realized how stupid I'd been.

He didn't answer immediately, his voice calm like he was pacifying an unreasonable child.

"Why make trouble over a plaything? We have ten years together. Are you really going to give up over a piece of paper?"

"You're not young anymore, Peyton. No parents, no mother, no job. Only I'll take care of you. Keep making a scene and it won't end well."

He pulled the car to the roadside. "Take a taxi home yourself. I'm picking her up. Think carefully about what I said."

The car door closed like a heavy slap.

Watching the speeding car disappear, I bent over the roadside, vomiting until my face was covered in tears.

Ethan was wrong. No one gets a marriage certificate with a toy.

That certificate I'd waited ten years for and never received.

True love never changes—it just transfers.

I looked up at the gloomy sky, my heart hollow and drafty.

After a long while, I picked up my phone and made a call.