Chapter 3

I'd already thought about killing myself back when my body first started twisting up.

I used to be the school's fitness champion. Now I was a rotten, crooked mess of a person. No one wanted to look at this face anymore.

Too bad my messed-up hands didn't even have the strength to slit my wrists. I ended up getting saved at the hospital.

That beautiful but cold-faced female doctor squeezed my stitched-up wrist, and her words hit me like a truck.

"Dying would only prove one thing: that you really are a waste of space."

Yeah. Pathetic, right?

Other people's mistakes left me stuck in a swamp I couldn't escape, and I chose to drown myself in it.

But what other way out did I have? My own family threw me away.

She looked at the empty space on my medical file where my family's info should have been, bit her lip, and handed me a business card.

"Once you're better, take this to the Dreamlight Hotel. There'll be a job waiting for you that actually fits. As long as you can support yourself, you'll stop thinking about dying."

I ran my finger over the name on the card.

Stella Lane. I gave a quiet, bitter smile.

See? You didn't even recognize me anymore, and yet you were telling me to live.

Back in high school, she was the only girl who didn't lose her mind over my good looks. Other girls would practically throw themselves at me, but she always took the long way around just to avoid the crowd.

I knew she came from some mysterious rich family. Back then I was still stuck in my parents' fake poverty life, so I knew nothing would ever happen between us.

But still. There was something there. Buried deep. A quiet crush that never went anywhere.

Three years of high school passed us by like two parallel lines.

Next time we met, I was a freak who'd tried to off myself, and she was my cold, distant doctor.

Right before I left the hospital, I had the nerve to ask Stella to fake my death certificate and give me a new identity.

She just sighed and said yes.

According to the nurses who had a crush on her, the Dreamlight Hotel was just one of the Lane family's businesses. The richest one in town.

But this spoiled rich girl had to be stubborn about it. She walked away from all that money to become a doctor.

I asked her once why she was helping me. She stared out the window for a second, kind of spaced out.

"Your name is exactly the same as a classmate I had in high school. It's just that..."

I knew what she swallowed back. "He was way better looking."

So she did remember me. And she had no idea that this unwanted freak standing in front of her used to be that ridiculously handsome kid.

Good.

I slurred back at her like the broken patient I was.

"Okay. I'll live. I'll be your success story."

Besides, if I got to see her a few more times before I kicked it, that wouldn't be so bad.

I took her card and went to the hotel. Too bad I ran into the wrong people.

The department manager was shocked and pissed that someone like me got in through the back door. He figured the rich girl just needed some charity case to make her family's business look good. So he never gave me the time of day.

Then word came that Stella had gone overseas to study. Without her looking out for me, I just scraped by.

Still, having a job that kept food in my mouth? Yeah. I didn't want to die anymore.

I just hoped I'd hold on until she came back. So she could at least see that I listened to her.

But now I felt like my last breath was leaving my lungs. Everything was going fuzzy. And Zane still wasn't letting go.

Looked like the six months I'd stolen from the universe were about due.

Then a voice came through. Slurred too. Not exactly steady.

"Let him go! You're killing him!"