I watched her retreating figure, sitting amid the broken glass.
"You and me," I murmured. "There hasn't been a future for us in a long time."
I raised my hand. Shards of glass studded my palm, embedded deep in the flesh. The pain was blinding.
By the time the clinic downstairs finished bandaging my wounds, cold sweat had soaked through every layer of clothing I wore.
The suffocating weight pressing against my chest drove me to a decision. I reached out to the company's shareholders.
When they heard I was selling my thirty percent stake, every one of them expressed interest.
I told them to make their offers. Highest bidder wins.
Half an hour later, I signed the equity transfer agreement with Lisa Chavez, the technical director.
She was capable. Ambitious. And Andrea had always kept her on a tight leash.
With my shares in her hands, she'd become the company's largest shareholder.
I hoped Andrea would enjoy the wedding gift I'd prepared for her.
But the moment I said goodbye to Lisa, a furious voice erupted behind me.
"Ethan!"
Only then did I realize Andrea had called me countless times.
Watching her storm toward me, face twisted with rage, I couldn't help but picture Reuben deliberately throwing himself onto the broken glass, coughing up blood on cue.
Had something actually happened to him?
Or had she found out about the share sale and come to make my life hell?
Her eyes were bloodshot. She slammed her fist into my chest.
"Reuben's kidney ruptured because you pushed him. He nearly died. And you're out here on a date?"
I struggled, tried to explain. "I didn't push him. He threw himself down on purpose—"
Andrea shoved me into the car. "Reuben is already seriously ill. Now he's lost a kidney. You think he'd gamble with his own life?"
She spun around and turned on Lisa. "Can't beat me in the boardroom, so you go after my man instead?"
I wasn't about to let Lisa take the blame for something that had nothing to do with her. I grabbed the equity transfer agreement and threw it in Andrea's face.
I expected her to lose it on the spot. To demand I reverse the deal.
Instead, she just bit down hard on her lower lip, got in the car, and floored the gas. She drove like a maniac all the way to the hospital.
She forced me to my knees at the foot of Reuben's hospital bed.
"Apologize to Reuben. And promise you'll give him one of your kidneys to make up for it."
My kneecaps hit the freezing tile floor. Pain and cold radiated through my entire body.
I tried to stand, but Andrea's hand clamped down on my shoulder and held me in place.
"Lost your voice? Apologize to Reuben. Now."
I fought through the discomfort and forced the words out, one by one. "I didn't push him. If you don't believe me, go back and get the security footage from the neighbor's camera."
The camera mounted above the neighbor's door would have captured every second of Reuben's little performance.
But she didn't believe me.
"Ethan, you are such a disappointment. Do you have any idea what your shove did? Reuben almost died. That's attempted murder. You could go to prison for this."
"He's being generous enough not to press charges. All he's asking for is an apology and compensation. What more do you want?"
"If you don't want to end up behind bars, you should be grateful to donate a kidney. When you do the math, you're coming out ahead. And I won't even go after you for selling off company shares behind my back."
Coming out ahead.
What a thing to say.
And Andrea, the woman who had always put her career above everything, had just ranked thirty percent of her company below Reuben Simmons.
She truly was head over heels for him.
I laughed until tears blurred my vision. Then, quietly, I said three words.
"I'm sorry."
Andrea released her grip and had me sign a document.
She was delusional. What made her think that signing a piece of paper would actually make me donate a kidney to Reuben?
But I needed to get out of there. So I signed.
Only then did Andrea help me to my feet. Something complicated flickered behind her eyes.
"Just in case you go running to my mother to make a scene, I'm going to need you to play along for a bit."
"Once I'm done with the act tomorrow, you'll come abroad with us for the kidney transplant. Reuben doesn't make a full recovery, you don't come home."
I didn't understand what Andrea meant by "making things difficult for me" until I was tied up inside an abandoned building.
While I was locked away, she was wheeling Reuben to the hotel to stage the whole runaway-groom act.
I pounded on the door and screamed until a woman scavenging for recyclables nearby heard the commotion and let me out.
I checked the time. My flight was about to leave.
I flagged down a cab and raced to the airport.
As I was boarding, Mrs. Rowe called.
"Ethan, where are you? Andrea's saying you ran off from the wedding! Something about fleeing the scene of a crime?"
Before I could answer, she caught the sound of a flight attendant announcing boarding information in the background.
"Ethan, you're really at the airport? What on earth did you do that was bad enough to abandon your own wedding?"
"Mrs. Rowe, she's already Reuben Simmons' wife. There's nothing left between us."
She didn't even bother hanging up before turning to interrogate Andrea about whether she'd been mistreating me.
But Andrea, furious that I'd escaped to the airport, screamed with tears brimming in her eyes:
"Ethan Calloway! You cost Reuben a kidney, and you owe him one! If you try to run, I'll call the police and have you arrested for attempted murder!"
She actually pulled out her phone to dial 911, trying to stop me from leaving.
She never saw it coming. Mrs. Rowe slapped the phone right out of her hand.
"That's nonsense! Reuben Simmons was born with only one kidney. If he'd lost another one, he'd be dead already!"
