Chapter 2

“I’ll marry her.”

His voice was calm, almost careless, but it landed on me with crushing weight.

Inside the room, his friends immediately started whistling.

“See? I told you. Ten years together. You can’t just throw that away.”

“Lily, don’t think too much. Vivian is just the official choice. You know Damian likes you best.”

Damian said nothing more.

But his silence made one thing clear.

When it came to me, there was nothing worth explaining.

In his eyes, I was only an obligation.

A burden.

The consequence of a promise he had never wanted to keep.

For a moment, I saw the fire from ten years ago again.

Flames clawing into the sky. My mother shoving Damian and Ethan out while a burning beam crashed down and trapped her underneath.

That fire had given me a place in the Grant family.

It had also taken my mother’s life.

“Those strawberries look so good.”

Lily’s sweet voice sounded again.

I saw her pick up a strawberry, then set it back down.

Damian’s friends started teasing her.

“If you want one, just eat it.”

But Lily frowned and pushed it away, then looked at Damian with a spoiled little smile.

“No. They’re not clean. I want Damian to wash them for me.”

I had already turned to leave, but that sentence stopped me cold.

Since we were children, Damian had never lifted a finger for anything. I had always been the one to wash and cut the fruit before placing it beside his hand.

I looked at him, hoping to see even the smallest trace of annoyance.

There was none.

“I’ll wash them.”

Damian set down his glass and actually stood up.

Then he turned and pushed open the private room door.

The moment our eyes met, the air froze.

The softness in his expression vanished instantly. Surprise flashed through his eyes first, then impatience, then a disgust so familiar it almost felt like home.

“What are you doing here?”

I didn’t answer.

I only looked at him, my voice oddly calm and faintly mocking.

“Damian, why is the tie clip I gave you on another woman?”

He didn’t hear the edge in my voice. Instead, after my words landed, he looked at me as if I were some hysterical woman causing a scene in public.

“Vivian, don’t embarrass yourself here.”

“Embarrass myself?”

I laughed, but the tears came first.

“We’re supposed to get married tomorrow, and you’re here drinking with another woman. Which one of us is embarrassing?”

At that moment, Lily peeked out from behind him. She slipped her arm through his with easy familiarity and looked at me with open smugness.

“Damian, who is she? She’s scary.”

As she spoke, her fingers brushed the tie clip on her chest, deliberately or not.

Damian’s face darkened completely.

He glanced at my thin clothing, then took off his suit jacket as if completing an obligation and moved to drape it over my shoulders.

“Stop making a scene. Go home. Don’t ruin tomorrow’s wedding.”

His tone was commanding and condescending, more reprimand than concern.

In that instant, ten years of memories rushed through me at once. They passed in a blur, yet each one was painfully clear.

Then all of them collapsed into the single word he had spoken in that room.

Marry.

It wasn’t love.

It was not the heart I had imagined I might one day warm.

It was reluctant charity, wrapped in disgust and duty.

So I didn’t want it anymore.

“Damian, cancel the wedding.”

I gently pushed his jacket away.

His hand froze in midair. Shock flickered in his eyes before hardening into ice.

“What kind of stunt are you pulling now?”

“I’m not pulling a stunt.”

I looked at him and said every word clearly.

“Damian, I just don’t want you anymore.”

The moment I finished speaking, Damian looked as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world. He scoffed.

“Vivian, do you really think you could survive without me?”

After that, he didn’t look at me again.

He turned, wrapped an arm around Lily’s shoulders, and said coldly to the security guard nearby, “Take her somewhere to calm down. Don’t let her come back in and bother us.”

In the next second, a hard grip seized my arm and dragged me backward.

I stumbled, and my back slammed into the cold wall with a painful thud.

The private room door shut in my face.

Leaning against the wall, I slowly slid down to the floor.

Ten years.

This one-sided performance should have ended long ago.

I took out my phone and deleted everything related to Damian.

The next second, the screen lit up.

The caller ID read Ethan Cole.

Half an hour later, Ethan pushed a cup of hot cocoa toward me.

“Are you okay? I remember your mother’s death anniversary is coming up.”

My eyes stung.

I looked at Ethan and realized he might be the only person who still remembered my mother.

I had just opened my mouth when a sharp, sour taste rose in my throat.

“Ugh...”

I clapped a hand over my mouth, turned away, and dry heaved violently.

Ethan’s expression changed at once. He immediately stood and gently patted my back.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

I pulled out a tissue and pressed it to the corner of my mouth, forcing down the bitterness in my throat.

“I’m just pregnant.”

Ethan’s hand froze in midair.

Then he stared at my stomach in disbelief, his voice shaking so badly it barely sounded like him.

“Wait... didn’t Damian find out years ago that he couldn’t have children?”