Three years together, and Timothy Summers remembered every holiday. The gifts he'd bought me filled an entire cabinet.
No matter how busy work got, he always made time for me, took me on a trip every month.
But fate had a cruel sense of humor. Timothy and I had set a wedding date seven days out, and I'd just been diagnosed with gastric cancer.
I didn't know how to tell him. He wouldn't be able to handle it.
I locked myself away for two days and two nights, and I made my decision. I would be the villain. I'd humiliate him at the wedding so that after I was gone, he could move on.
I hired an actor to crash the ceremony and claim me, even forged a pregnancy test to sell the lie.
I cried through every second of the planning. But for Timothy's future, I had to do it.
On the day of the wedding, the car never came.
“Myrtle James, look.” My best friend April Fletcher held out her phone. “Timothy isn't marrying you.”
One of Timothy's buddies had posted a video. Timothy, carrying a bride into the wedding car.
Then a text from Timothy came through.
【Myrtle, I'll explain】
——
I sat there. Couldn't move. April was saying something, but the words didn't reach me.
I just kept watching the video of Timothy carrying Jemima Fox into that car. Over and over.
How?
I had already decided to bow out, to give Timothy his future.
But he had never planned to give me one.
I had mapped out every detail of my final days. The actor who would crash the wedding today. The fake pregnancy.
All of it, so Timothy would hate me.
Then the actor would abandon me, and I'd play the desperate woman chasing after him, sign over every last share I owned to Timothy.
After that, I'd disappear. Somewhere he'd never find me. And quietly leave this world.
For him, I was willing to become the woman everyone pointed at and called a traitor.
And in the end …… he'd never intended to make me his wife at all.
“Myrtle, pull yourself together. We're going over there right now and getting answers.” April shook my shoulders, dragging me out of the grief and back into the room.
I looked at her. “Do you think maybe Timothy ran into some kind of problem he couldn't solve?”
“He loves me so much. He wouldn't do this. Right?”
“Myrtle, wake up!” April pulled me into her arms, crying. “He's scum. Pure, absolute scum.”
“We're going to find him and make him pay.”
Make him pay?
“Pay for what?”
I looked at April. “He and I were dating. That's all. We weren't married.”
“He's free to marry whoever he wants. Just let it go.”
“Myrtle, what happened to you?”
“Since when are you this weak?”
“Where's that edge you bring to every negotiation table?”
“How can you just let this go? Have you forgotten? You saved his life. You ran into that fire. Without you, he'd be a charred corpse. He got on his knees and swore he'd never marry anyone else.”
“Have you forgotten? When his business failed, you gave him everything you had to help him rebuild.”
“You drank yourself into a stomach hemorrhage just to land a deal for him.”
“You pulled all-nighters for weeks to develop better products. Your hair was falling out in clumps. You can't forget that.”
“And that animal sure as hell can't forget it either. He owes you.”
“April, just drop it. Please. I don't want to fight. I'm tired. Can you let me be alone for a while?”
My life was already counting down. I really didn't want to make a scene.
I reached over and wiped April's tears. “He's just a man. The world keeps spinning without him, doesn't it?”
“I'm not even crying. Why are you? Come on, smile for me.”
