After I nearly bled to death giving birth, my fiancé Giles Simmons came back from the dead.
He bounced the baby in his arms, his tone breezy, almost amused.
“Surprise, babe. Happy anniversary. Like your gift?”
“The car accident was fake, by the way. The whole thing was staged.”
I held myself upright by sheer will, my body still wrecked from labor, and thought of the ten months of agony I'd survived alone. My voice shook when I spoke：
“Why? Why would you do this?”
Giles didn't even glance up：
“You were a nightmare while you were pregnant. Complaining nonstop, demanding a huge wedding settlement before you'd marry me. I had to teach you a lesson somehow.”
“So here's the deal. Two options. Either we go to the courthouse with no settlement, or we break up. You've got a history of mental illness. Any judge would give me full custody.”
The grief nearly split me in half, but I couldn't bring myself to throw away eight years and my own child. So I stayed.
I had no idea that was only the beginning.
After the wedding, I worked five jobs a day to pay off his gambling debts while his parents found new ways to torment me every waking hour. I was diagnosed with breast cancer before I turned thirty. I didn't survive it.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Giles faked his death. This time, I turned around and walked straight into the OB-GYN clinic.
“Hi. I'd like to terminate my pregnancy.”
——
“Scarlett Perez, sweetheart, that baby is the only piece of Giles we have left. It's the only hope his father and I have in this world. Please, we're begging you, carry the baby to term.”
That familiar wailing hit my ears like a shockwave, and a chill crawled up from the pit of my stomach.
Not grief. Recognition. The cold, sick clarity of knowing you've been played.
This was the same day as last time.
In my previous life, Giles had been on his way to meet me and discuss wedding details when the accident happened. The car was totaled, the driver pronounced dead at the scene.
I'd just found out I was one week pregnant. When I got the news, I blacked out.
I woke up in the hospital to find his parents, Evan Simmons and Tracey Simmons, sobbing at my bedside.
“There was a fire at the crash site. The police said the body had already been burned beyond recognition.”
Two gray-haired old people dropped to their knees right in front of me, pleading：
“Giles was our only son. We poured everything we had into raising that boy, and now he's gone. The baby you're carrying is the last of our family line.”
They clasped my hands and promised me, word by word.
“We know pregnancy is hard. We will never let you go through this alone. After the baby's born, if you truly don't want to raise it, we'll take full responsibility, even if it kills us.”
Hearing that, something inside me ached in a way I couldn't name.
Giles and I had been together for five years. None of it had come easy.
Just the night before, he'd pressed his ear to my belly, listening for the baby.
“Thank you for carrying our child. I swear I'm going to be a husband and father worth having.”
Looking at those two devastated old people, I couldn't harden my heart. I agreed to keep the baby.
Over the next ten months, morning sickness left me unable to eat. I lost over twenty pounds. Most nights I lay awake crying until dawn, my body and mind worn down to nothing.
Whenever I felt like I couldn't go on, I'd pull out the photo album Giles and I had made together and turn through it page by page, holding on to every memory.
The day I went into labor, I hemorrhaged. Even then, I grabbed the doctor's hand and wouldn't let go.
“Save my baby. No matter what, save my baby.”
I spent three days in the ICU afterward. When Giles appeared at my bedside, I thought the grief had finally broken my mind.
But he was holding our baby, smiling, and he asked me：
“Happy anniversary, babe. Like your gift?”
He confessed everything. The car accident was a lie. He'd gotten sick of me being difficult during the pregnancy, sick of me insisting on a proper wedding settlement, so he'd staged the whole thing to break me into submission.
And his parents had known from the very beginning. Every tear, every kneel, every desperate plea had been part of the act.
Just like that, ten months of suffering collapsed into a punchline.
