Chapter 1
After we broke up, my ex, Ryan Brooks, suddenly got famous.
All these fangirls were jealous of his new girlfriend from outside the industry, and tried to dig up every bit of info about her.
Whenever someone brought it up, Ryan would just throw me under the bus.
And then he'd take all the gifts the shippers sent me for himself.
Finally, on the day Ryan got engaged to his new girlfriend, an extreme fan came for me.
She thought I was his fiancée, stabbed me eighteen times in a row, and then kicked me into the lake.
His current girlfriend saw the whole thing, freaked out, and threw herself into Ryan's arms, sobbing.
She said, "Good thing you gave them her info instead of mine, or I'd be the one dead right now."
Next thing I knew, I time-travelled back to the exact moment when Ryan used me as her shield.
*****
"Could you sign for this one, too?" The delivery guy stood at my door. He was holding a huge stack of packages.
Meanwhile, I was already clutching a pile of fan mail and packages.
Some of it was hair, some was literal trash, and some was letters full of curses.
Barely one out of ten was actually a gift from a shipper.
I glanced at it. It was a pair of matching couple necklaces.
They looked exactly like the ones from my previous life.
"Ma'am?" the delivery guy called out, snapping me out of my daze.
"Sorry, I'm not accepting them," I said firmly.
I stuffed all the hate mail and shippers' gifts right back into the box without a second thought.
"But this really is your address, and your name and phone number are all here," the delivery guy said.
"I didn't order any of this, and I have no clue who sent it. I don't have to sign for stuff I didn't ask for, so please just send them back. I'll cover the shipping for the ones I already signed for," I replied.
"Well..." The delivery guy looked awkward.
Ryan had so many fans that my doorstep was buried under dozens of packages every single day.
The delivery guy already knew me by now, but he was confused about why I was suddenly refusing everything today.
"If it's inconvenient for you, I can contact your department to sort it out. Is that okay?" I said.
"No worries, ma'am. I'll send them back right now," he said.
As the delivery guy started packing up the parcels, I dashed into my bedroom, scribbled a quick note, and slipped it into the package containing the couple's necklaces.
"Could you send this back as well?" I said.
Ryan chatted, "My girlfriend... Seriously, can you guys just drop it?
"She's not living with me.
"But yeah, she's just nearby.
"Yeah, in the building right behind mine. I want to make sure she's safe before we get married.
"We've even got matching door numbers. I set it up that way for her.
"Her name? Her door number? Sorry, I can't share that."
Ryan was doing his usual late-night livestream.
He made it look like he was protecting his non-celebrity girlfriend, and the only thing he ever let slip was that their door numbers matched.
But just recently, a sharp-eyed fan had caught a glimpse of his door number when he picked up his food delivery.
520, that was the number.
My apartment? 520, in the building right behind his.
Like hell he didn't know.
He just didn't want his actual girlfriend getting harassed, so he secretly gave out my info instead, letting everyone think I was the one.
As for the real girlfriend, I had no idea who she was. All I knew was that she lived nowhere near him.
The shippers lost their minds over the whole 520 thing.
Before long, the topic [Ryan Brooks 520] started trending all over the entertainment feeds with hashtags.
He'd pulled this stunt before.
He ended the stream, looking pretty pleased with himself.
Soon enough, there was a knock at my door.
"Hey, burning the midnight oil? Got any shippers' gifts for me?" Ryan grinned.
Back then, he pulled the same stunt. He had me play the girlfriend and handle all the deliveries, then sifted through the pile of hate mail to snag the shippers' gifts for himself.
At first, he didn't plan on throwing me under the bus.
But his fans were snooping into every detail of his dating history, and they actually dug up the fact that I was Ryan's old classmate.
We'd just broken up not long before.
He immediately let everyone run with the idea that I was his non-celebrity girlfriend.
I chewed him out, but he told me his new girlfriend was dealing with depression and couldn't take any drama right now.
With tears in his eyes, he begged me not to set the record straight. He just wanted me to handle the deliveries for him.
Back then, people online only knew I existed. Nobody had a clue who I really was.
Security here was no joke. If you weren't a courier, you weren't getting past the gate.
Since we'd had something real once, I didn't make a fuss about it.
But he took it even further, knowing I never kept up with the gossip. He kept leaking more and more of my info, completely shifting the fans' focus onto me instead of his real girlfriend.
In the end, I was the one who ended up dead at the bottom of the lake, all because I took the hit for his girlfriend.
"No," I replied.
Then I shut the door in his face.