This Isn’t Giving Up,It’s Choosing Myself

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Five years ago, someone slipped something into my drink. Russ Matthews came charging in to save me, and a pack of thugs shattered the bones in his hand.

After he left the hospital, he turned volatile, quick to rage.

Drowning in guilt, I endured every torment the Matthews family threw at me and took care of him for five years.

The day I found out I was pregnant, I pushed open the door of the racing club, my whole heart light with joy.

And then I heard him talking to his best friend.

"Russ, you're really going through with marrying Lily Henson? Everyone knows the one you've never gotten over is that ballet-dancer sister of hers."

Russ let out a low scoff, his voice thick with a bitterness and self-mockery he couldn't shake.

"I'm a cripple now, a man who can't even hold a steering wheel. How could I ever deserve someone as dazzling as Daniela?"

"Lily doesn't hold a candle to her sister. But the only way I get to watch her sister for the rest of my life is by marrying her into the family."

I clutched that ultrasound so hard my whole body shook.

But inside, the conversation kept going:

"That night the private room was too dark. I thought Daniela was the one who'd been drugged. That's why I threw myself in there like a madman."

"By the time the lights came on I realized I'd gotten the wrong person. And by then my hand was already ruined."

Russ, I've paid back what I owed you.

From this moment on, neither of us owes the other anything.

...

"How long have you been standing at the door? Eavesdropping out here, what does that look like?" Russ yanked the door open, his brow drawn tight.

He came forward, picked up the coat off the sofa without a second thought, and draped it over my trembling shoulders.

"Why didn't you put on another layer? Your hands are freezing."

He took my cold hand in his, easy and natural, but I pulled it back on reflex. His hand froze in midair, and his face darkened at once.

"Lily, what are you sulking about now?"

"So you heard all of it? Fine. If you're going to marry me, better you know exactly where you stand."

He looked at me, righteous, without a flicker of guilt.

"I charged into that room for Daniela. But this hand of mine, that really was ruined because of you."

Frederick Barnes, sensing the mood had gone wrong, cut in like a man trying to smooth things over.

"Come on, the wedding's practically here. Why hold on to all this? You're marrying the man. What's the point?"

"What young guy doesn't have a girl he wanted and couldn't have?"

I didn't look at Frederick. I only stared, without blinking, at Russ. At the face I had loved for five years.

That night five years ago, thugs had marked me and drugged me, and I'd huddled in a corner, out of hope.

It was Russ who kicked the door in like a man gone mad, rushing in with a bottle in his hand.

They brought that bottle down hard on his right hand.

Back then he was brilliant, high-spirited, with the whole world ahead of him.

And because of me, he gave up on himself.

For five years, so I could help his hand recover, I stayed up learning pressure-point massage until my own hands were rubbed raw and swollen.

I swallowed Marjorie's sneers and took on every filthy, backbreaking chore in the Matthews house.

I told myself this was gratitude. And love.

But now he'd told me to my face that the person he'd risked his life to save wasn't me at all.

"So you married me only so you'd have a proper reason to keep looking at my sister?" I heard my own voice, hoarse in a way that frightened me.

Russ frowned, as if my digging into it grated on him.

"Lily, what's the point of tying yourself in knots over this?"

"The wedding next month goes ahead as planned. I've given you the name of Mrs. Matthews. What more do you want?"

He paused, and a note of warning crept into his voice.

"Tomorrow is Daniela's lead ballet tour. You'd better behave and not go make a scene there."

"She's been under a lot of pressure lately. She can't take any provoking."

"If you dare do anything to upset her, I will not let it go."

I lowered my head and looked at my flat stomach.

A tiny life had just taken root there.

Half an hour ago, I'd still been thinking, my heart full, that this child would surely make up for the racing he could never do again.

That we could finally have a whole family.

But now this child, one who hadn't even had the chance to see the light, had become a joke from beginning to end.

I slid the ultrasound into my coat pocket. No hysterical shouting, none of the breakdown I might have expected.

I looked at Russ and spoke, calm.

"Call off the wedding, Russ. I don't owe you anything."