Chapter 1

As soon as Landon Ross' words fell, all the surrounding hustle and bustle dissolved into a dead silence.

Carissa Evensong snatched her phone back and immediately ended the call. The blood drained from her face, and she had absolutely no idea how to explain herself.

The very next second, her phone rang again. As if terrified that something terrible had happened to her, the person on the other end of the line wouldn't stop trying to get through to her.

My blood ran cold, and I looked up stiffly. "Are you going to answer it yourself, or should I answer it for you?"

Sensing the shift in the room, the others hastily stepped in to defuse the tension.

"This has to be some kind of misunderstanding!"

"Everyone knows Carissa's your closest friend. I mean, she literally took a knife for you!"

We were childhood friends who grew up to be everything to each other. When I was cornered and nearly assaulted by a group of thugs, Carissa had come to my rescue all on her own. Not only had she been stabbed 11 times, but she'd also been nearly paralyzed and left in a vegetative state.

When my eyes welled with tears of overwhelming guilt, she'd wrapped her arms gently around me, without the slightest hint of regret.

She had said, "You're my best friend. I'll never let anyone hurt you!"

Our friendship used to be as solid as gold. Carissa was my ride or die. Yet, it was crumbling to pieces right before my eyes.

At everyone's insistence, Carissa had no choice but to answer the call. However, the familiar voice on the other end hadn't changed one bit. If anything, it carried an urgency I had never once heard directed at me.

"Honey, what happened? Why did you hang up without saying a word? Where are you? I'll come pick you up right now!"

The room fell silent in an instant. Not a single person stepped forward to her defense now.

Pitiful looks rained down on me from all directions, weighing me down so heavily that I could barely breathe.

I bolted out of the room and braced myself against the wall as a violent wave of nausea overtook me. As my tears began to spill and crash against the ground, a familiar figure suddenly entered my field of vision.

Landon Ross—the man who told me he was studying abroad—was standing right in front of me. He froze for a fraction of a second, but his expression barely shifted. It was as if I were nothing more than a total stranger to him.

Carissa rushed out behind me. However, the words died in her throat the moment she witnessed this scene.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

Landon took off his coat and gently draped it over her shoulders. His movements were as natural as those of a couple who had been happily married for years. "I was worried about you, so I followed your phone's GPS tracker here."

I burst into laughter. My eyes were filled with pure irony.

Back when I was in that horrific car accident, my phone had automatically sent him my location, alerting him that my life was in danger. Yet, he hadn't blinked an eye.

He had completely vanished from my life, leaving behind nothing but a hollow promise. "Once I'm back from studying abroad, I'll marry you."

Thus, throughout the three years I had spent battling depression, he had never once shown his face. He had only wired me money on schedule, as though it could somehow make up for the void he had left behind.

It dawned on me that those three years he spent away from me weren't spent alone abroad but in the arms of my best friend. He had vanished from my life, yet he had also saturated it.

Every year on her anniversary, Carissa would drop her son, Leon Ross, off at my place. The boy was young, so he couldn't keep a secret and always babbled about his parents.

"Daddy's so good to Mommy! So long as she tells him she misses him, he'll catch a red-eye flight back that night.

"When she's sick, he'll stay by her side to take care of her until she's better. He'll even shed a tear when he thinks no one's looking! Even when I go to school, Daddy doesn't want Mommy to wake up early, so he drives me to kindergarten himself!"

I always saw Landon in his innocent face. Hence, I would stealthily wipe my tears away and murmur with envy, "That's nice. I envy your mommy for always having someone by her side."

Now, the irony of it all was suffocating. My best friend, who had stayed with me through my days in the hospital while I struggled with depression, was the same person who slept beside the man I loved at night.