Sold Out by the Woman I Was Going to Marry

I rubbed at my eyes, raw from crying, and stared at the white sheet covering my mom's body on the hospital bed. I could only force out a bitter smile as I listened to my girlfriend, Joanna Quill, spin the same empty promises yet again.

"No need," I said hoarsely. "Because my mom is already—"

Dead. With Mom gone, there was no reason for Joanna and me to get married anymore.

But before I could finish, Joanna cut me off, her voice ice-cold. "What are you throwing a fit for this time, Callum? It's just a wedding. Do you really have to make such a big deal out of it?

"I only married Larry so his parents would get off his back. What, was I supposed to just stand by and watch him get forced into some nightmare marriage? It was a tiny favor. Do you need to drag your mom into this to threaten me?

"Besides, I already told you to push our wedding back. You're the one who wouldn't listen and insisted on rushing into it, and now we've both made fools of ourselves. It's your own fault that your mom got so worked up she collapsed!"

My throat tightened, and my heart slowly went cold. I never imagined Joanna would dump all the blame on me.

We'd been together for five years. To test whether I truly loved her, she'd insisted I fulfill a hundred wishes before she'd agree to marry me.

Her first wish had been for me to quit my stable, high-paying job and start a business with her from scratch. I'd done it.

Her third wish had been for me to collect 9,999 handwritten blessings from strangers. I'd done that, too.

Her fifth wish had come not long after a new hire, Larry Johnson, joined the company and screwed something up. She'd said a rookie shouldn't start their career with a stain on their record and wanted me to take the fall for him. I'd agreed to that as well.

Over those five years, I'd checked off 99 of her wishes, one by one. Yesterday, after I finally completed the 100th, she'd at last relented and agreed to marry me.

I never expected that to be the beginning of a nightmare.

First, Larry crashed the wedding and walked onto the stage with a marriage certificate proving he and Joanna were already married, turning me into the joke of the century.

Right after that, Mom collapsed from rage and had to be rushed to the hospital, where she died because I couldn't pull together enough money for her surgery.

I'd been screwed over, but somehow Joanna was pinning everything on me.

For a moment, despair, grief, and humiliation surged through me at once, leaving my chest tight and aching. I said, "Joanna, you're right. This is on me. I shouldn't have tried to force you into marrying me. It's all my fault."