Chapter 1
I'd been married for seven years.
My husband had a childhood sweetheart he kept hidden in his heart.
To everyone else, they were close friends, but in secret, she gave birth to his son.
He took the wedding dress I never got the chance to wear, eager to use it for his wedding with his true love.
I died the night before their wedding day.
*****
I was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer.
I was in the middle of a heated argument with Edward Grant when I got the message from the hospital.
The reason was that he'd given away the wedding dress design I'd kept for years to another woman.
He always claimed to treat her like his own sister.
That design was something I'd cherished for years, meant for my own wedding.
Edward and I had been married for seven years, but we never had a real wedding.
And now, he'd given away my wedding dress design.
He looked impatient.
"Emily loves collecting wedding dresses. It's not like you'd use it, so I'll get it tailored for her and give it to her," he said.
I'd never met anyone who was into collecting wedding dresses that belonged to other people.
I snapped, "That's mine."
Edward's lawyer immediately started explaining the legal side to me.
"Mrs. Grant, this design was created by Mr. Grant himself.
"Since it was made before your marriage, it counts as his personal property," he said.
I stared at Edward in disbelief. For a second, I thought he wouldn't argue with me over something so petty.
He met my gaze. "Is that a problem?"
I laughed. "Fine. If she wants it so badly, she can have it. It's not like I care anyway."
He stood up. "Good. You should start thinking about the divorce, too. It's best for both of us if we get it done sooner."
He tossed a divorce agreement onto the table and walked out.
I watched him leave with the wedding dress design.
After all these years, I'd nearly forgotten.
He once pulled an all-nighter to create the design for me.
He used to say that only something he made himself was good enough for me.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Death was around the corner for me.
*****
I met Edward when I was eighteen.
We got together when I was nineteen.
Edward was born into a powerful family, and he was their only heir.
At first, his family barely noticed me.
They figured he was a young guy, probably fooling around.
They thought he'd get bored in a while and break up.
But he never left me.
When I was twenty-one, I graduated from college.
We took our graduation photos in the morning, and by the afternoon, he sweet-talked me into getting our marriage license.
His mom was furious. That night, she cornered me outside the apartment building and started screaming at me.
I still remembered her words. "You can't have a baby, and your whole family's cursed with cancer.
"As long as I'm alive, Edward will never marry you."
My family wasn't anything special, and my parents had both passed away.
Besides, I was born without a uterus, so having kids was never an option for me.
When Edward showed up, I was pinned to the ground by his mom's bodyguards.
His mom's face was twisted with rage, and she was about to slap me, wanting to teach me a lesson.
Edward had a huge fight with his family and moved out to start a new life with me from scratch.
I remembered him holding me, his eyes rimmed with tears.
He said, "Sally, I promise I'll never let anyone hurt you again."
He was afraid I'd be hurt, so he didn't take a single cent from his family.
He drank so much for business that he ended up in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer.
He slipped home from the hospital at night and apologized, lying to me that he'd been out for a friend's birthday.
He'd been pampered by his family, but he moved into a cramped apartment with me, which was barely 500 square feet.
He learned to cook and make soup, and got up early to hit the market with the neighbors.
Even when he was overwhelmed with work, he pulled all-nighters sketching wedding dresses, promising to make me the most gorgeous dress and give me the perfect wedding.
He was amazing back then.
Eventually, things started looking up.
But when did we start arguing so much?
It was a little over a year ago.
At that time, his dad had a sudden heart attack, and the hospital said he might not make it.
His dad pulled through, and Edward told me he wanted to go back to his home.
He said he had to go home eventually. His family and the company needed him, and he couldn't keep avoiding them forever.
He suggested we adopt a child together.
That way, his parents might finally let me be part of the Grant family.
We had a huge fight that day, and in the end, he still didn't go back.
But we kept coming back to that topic.
For the past year, we were always at each other's throats.
He refused to believe his family couldn't accept me, insisting it wasn't because I couldn't have kids.
He never knew his mom had gone to see my grandma.
That incident hit my grandma so hard that she had a sudden brain hemorrhage and became a vegetable.
I never told him about it. I didn't want to make things harder for him, knowing he was already struggling.