Chapter 1

Lucas Bennett had chased after me for three whole years, proposing to me a whopping sixty-six times.

The day I finally agreed, Lucas literally fell to his knees and burst into tears.

Everyone said I was the treasure he held closest to his heart.

Then I saw him sharing his umbrella with a freshman in the pouring rain.

The two of them were locked in a passionate kiss, completely unable to pull away from each other.

I quietly filmed the whole thing and blasted the video to everyone on campus.

Then I wiped my account and disappeared overseas.

Lucas went crazy searching for me, camping out on my doorstep and crouching there for three days and nights.

"Forgive me," he said. "I just made a mistake that any man could make."

Later, I showed up in front of him, arm in arm with my new boyfriend.

Lucas's eyes were red as he asked, "Then why did you accept my engagement ring in the first place?"

I smiled as I twisted the diamond ring on my finger. "Oh, that ring? I threw it away."

So, my mom was right all along.

*****

My mom always said that rich boys like Lucas didn't know what real love was. All they would care about was the thrill of conquest and chasing after something new.

To him, a family like mine and a face like mine are nothing more than a respectable, manageable stepping stone.

The story of Lucas and me was practically a legend at Capital University.

Lucas, the Bennett Family's second son, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was the guy everyone worshipped, the one nobody dared to cross.

Me? Olivia Grant. I was just a regular girl from an ordinary family. Other than a pretty enough face and a transcript perpetually perched at the top of the ranks, there really wasn't much else to say about me.

He pursued me hard. And he made sure everyone knew it.

Every single day, he'd bring me breakfast, save me a seat, and shower my dorm room with gifts like they were free.

Every time I turned him down, he came back even harder the next day.

"Olivia, just give in already," he'd say, with that cocky grin, blocking my path after class.

It went on for three years.

He got into fights for me, stayed up all night helping me with my classes, and on my birthday, he took over all the LED screens in the building just to flash "Olivia, marry me."

All in all, he proposed to me sixty-six times.

On the sixty-sixth try, he knelt by the fountain in Century Square, soaking wet, clutching a diamond ring that he claimed was custom-made by some famous designer. His eyes were red as a rabbit's. "Olivia, I'll die without you."

Around us, the crowd was screaming, "Say yes. Say yes."

In that moment, the lights reflected in his eyes like shattered stars.

I thought, maybe this was what love would feel like. So I finally nodded.

He spun me around, laughing and crying like a little kid, asking over and over, "You really mean it? Olivia, you're going to be my wife."

Back then, he really was happy.

And he really did treat me like something precious.

That's why, when our mutual friends saw the post I put up on my private social media, the whole circle exploded. The video was crystal clear, shot from a perfect angle, capturing every raindrop on Lucas's eyelashes, along with a few continuous snapshots.

Less than a minute after I posted it, my phone blew up like a beehive on steroids, vibrating so hard it almost jumped out of my hand.

Messages flooded the screen.

[Holy crap. Olivia, is this for real? Lucas has lost his mind. I thought he was crazy about you.]

[Olivia, where are you? Pick up. I need the tea.]

[I always thought Lucas was weird with Sophie Carter. His eyes were all over her at every party.]

[Olivia, are you okay? He's not worth it.]

[LMAO, Lucas just screwed himself. This is gonna be Capital U's headline of the year.]

It went on and on.

One after another, they exploded in my DMs like boiling water, or like a bunch of gossip-hungry raccoons tearing through a trash can.

I could picture them on the other side of the screen, shocked, nosy, gloating, or offering fake sympathy.

So much noise.

All those congratulations and envy that once felt so real, now they just tasted like mockery and pity.

I didn't reply to a single one.

I just opened my contacts, found Lucas's number, and blocked it.

I blocked him on WhatsApp too.

Every single social connection we had was deleted with one tap.

Then I started scrubbing every trace of him from my digital life.

Thousands of photos in my album, from awkward beginnings to intimate moments, all gone with a single tap.

Chat history, all those goodnight messages and sweet nothings that used to make my heart race, was wiped clean.

I also scrubbed every sign of him from my socials.

It was like cutting out a piece of rotten flesh with a scalpel, cold, precise, without a second thought.

Outside, the sky was starting to lighten. The rain that had poured all night finally stopped, leaving behind that crisp, clean-but-fake smell in the air.

I zipped up my last suitcase and looked around the apartment that once held so many of my fantasies and tender moments.

Everything about it, the furniture, the decorations, even the lingering scent of his cologne in the air, felt suffocating.

My phone kept buzzing nonstop. A strange number flashed on the screen.

I didn't need to guess who it was.

I turned the phone off, popped out the SIM card, snapped it in half, and tossed it in the trash.

Then I picked up that engagement ring sitting on the table. It felt cold against my fingers. I weighed it for a second, then tossed it into a box of scrap paper.

After that, I grabbed my suitcase, opened the door, and walked out.

I didn't look back.

The elevator went down, numbers ticking past.

In the lobby, the TV was playing the morning news. The anchor's polished voice felt like it belonged to a completely different world.

At the airport, international departures, I checked in and handed my passport and ticket to the customs officer.

"Ma'am, are you traveling to Brighton for tourism, or..." he asked.

"Settling," I replied.

He stamped my passport and let me through.

I walked down the jet bridge, leaving behind the city I'd lived in for over twenty years and the man I once thought I'd spend the rest of my life with.

As the plane shot into the sky, a slight weightlessness hit me.

I watched the city shrink below, like I was looking at a model that had nothing to do with me anymore.

The storm that had torn through my heart had gone strangely quiet.

What Lucas treasured so much, I threw away like garbage.

And me? I was done.