His Eighteen-Year-Old Self

She had thought time had finally returned the eighteen-year-old Adrian Whitmore who had once loved her.

It wasn’t until she had finally let go of the past and begun clearing out the surveillance devices she’d once used to monitor him that she accidentally opened an archived recording she had long since forgotten.

On the screen, one of Adrian’s friends asked in confusion, “Are you seriously planning to keep up this act for the rest of your life? Evelyn Hart is a lunatic. Why not have her committed and be done with it? Why go to all this trouble?”

In the corner of the footage, Adrian was slumped on a couch. The lighting made the exhaustion etched across his face unmistakable.

“She can’t be kept locked up. The doctors assessed her, and forcing her into confinement would only make her worse.

“If we let her keep losing control, she’ll do whatever it takes to kill Vanessa.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, his voice heavy with the exhaustion of a man pushed to his limits.

“It’s only a matter of pretending for the rest of my life. As long as she leaves Vanessa alone, I’ll keep doing it.”

The resigned look on his face left Evelyn frozen in place, feeling like a complete clown.

So there had never been any return to his eighteen-year-old self.

More than a thousand days and nights of tenderness had been nothing but an act he’d endured out of disgust, all to protect another woman.

Evelyn clenched her fists and was about to stand when her phone began vibrating.

A message popped up.

“Adrian, wasn’t that old house Evelyn inherited from her mother? I turned it into a public restroom. Do you think she’ll be upset?”

The sender was Vanessa Sinclair.

The message was withdrawn almost immediately, but its words struck Evelyn so hard that she began to tremble.

She hardly dared to think about what Vanessa meant. With shaking hands, she opened the social media feed she’d blocked Vanessa from appearing in, desperately searching for clues that might explain the message she’d just seen.

The very first video sent her heart plummeting.

The place where she’d grown up had been transformed beyond recognition.

In the bedroom where she’d once lived with her mother, an entire row of men’s urinals had been installed along the wall. Directly above them hung a framed family portrait.

Vanessa slowly panned her phone around the room, her voice brimming with pride.

“My latest design is all about creating a warm, family-friendly atmosphere. Do you think I could win an award for it?”

Adrian’s low chuckle came from behind the camera.

“That’s pretty creative.”

That very evening, he had held Evelyn in his arms and knelt before her mother’s grave, solemnly promising to take good care of her.

How dare he turn her family home into a filthy public restroom for strangers to desecrate, then kneel before her mother’s grave and pretend to be devoted?

A violent wave of nausea rose in Evelyn’s stomach. Trembling, she scrolled further.

She came across a thick notebook.

“Thanks to a certain someone for experimenting on my period cramps. And thanks to that ridiculously hard-to-kill old woman!”

The entries documented Vanessa’s menstrual cycle. Every time the formula for her pain relief was updated, Adrian had filled the margins with meticulous notes.

Evelyn stared at the dates, feeling the blood drain from her body one degree at a time.

They matched the dates of her own menstrual cramps.

She was used as an experiment for Vanessa's medicine.

The truth was so absurd that she almost laughed.

She kept scrolling until she reached the day she’d set fire to the house Adrian had bought for Vanessa.

Vanessa had posted a picture of a necklace blackened by smoke.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget your necklace.”

When someone asked where it had come from, Vanessa replied shyly:

“The day the house burned down, he rushed inside several times before he finally managed to retrieve our special necklace.”

One commenter sounded shocked.

“Wasn’t he in there to save his wife?”

Vanessa responded with a giggling, hand-over-mouth emoji but did not explain.

That mocking little gesture felt like a vicious slap across Evelyn’s face.

She lowered her head, unconsciously resting a hand on her abdomen.

Her baby was barely a month along. On the day she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d foolishly hidden the pregnancy test, planning to surprise Adrian on their wedding anniversary.

Now, the thought seemed laughable.

Whether his child existed or not, the father would have no interest in knowing.

Aside from Evelyn herself, no one cared about this tiny life growing inside her.

She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.

Eight years of a marriage filled with hysterical fights. Three years of lies so seamless she’d never suspected a thing.

Fighting so desperately to hold on to something had exhausted her.

This time, she didn’t want to gamble another innocent life on the hope that he might finally come back to her.

Evelyn picked up her phone and called a friend.

“Do I need to make an appointment for an abortion at your clinic?”