Chapter 3

Eliza stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, lost in thought.

I suddenly remembered that this was exactly how I first met her.

I had gone looking for her, utterly determined to punch her and vent my fury, only to end up drenched to the bone by a sudden downpour.

But Eliza was battered and bleeding, huddled in a corner. She had timidly offered me her jacket before shrinking back into the shadows.

Our parents' sins shouldn't have been ours to bear.

Driven by guilt and a desperate need to make amends, Eliza treated me extremely well.

She would slip warm breakfast into my desk drawer and wait in line for two hours just to save me the best spot in the library. And when Mom had a psychotic episode and lashed out, Eliza threw herself in front of me, taking the blows meant for me.

I thought she was a hero. She was so incredibly brave.

Despite her pain, Eliza would still reach out to wipe my tears.

Her eyes would shine as she carried the weight of everything with a smile. "Silly. I'll protect you from now on."

Teenage feelings were always a tangled, dormant thing, but by senior year, I finally realized what was hidden beneath that bravery.

Eliza had been walking toward me the entire time. I wanted to be brave for once and ask her to be mine.

I wrote draft after draft, leaving the floor buried under a sea of colorful papers.

But I never anticipated that Ryder would go through everyone's bags during the parent-teacher meeting that afternoon.

From there, everything spun violently out of control. I was quoted calling Eliza the daughter of a homewrecker, trash with inferior genes who would never amount to anything.

The shock and heartbreak landed Eliza's mother in the hospital. The doctors issued three critical condition notices before she finally slipped away.

Dad locked me inside the house, refusing to let me out to embarrass the family further.

I broke out through the window, desperate to find Eliza and explain. But when I saw her, her gaze was ice, and she was looking at me like I was her worst enemy.

"Falling for you was my mistake—my own stupidity. But what did my mom have to do with any of this? My dad ruined yours, and now you've ruined my mom. We're even now."

She slammed a beautifully wrapped bouquet of roses at my feet. The graduation wishes on the card had blurred into a smudge.

I waited outside Eliza's house until dark, begging on my knees, but she never came to the door.

On my way back, I was dragged into a pitch-black alleyway.

They wanted money, and I handed it over. But when they tossed the wallet Eliza had handmade for me into the dirt like trash, I snapped and fought back.

Outnumbered, they overpowered me. They forced pills down my throat and rained blows down on me with whatever weapons they had.

I struggled to unlock my phone and called my most recent contact. It was Eliza.

"Eliza, please… Help me… Someone's attacking me…"

Her voice cut through the receiver, crystal clear and utterly biting. "Well, congratulations. Didn't you hate people like me the most? Now you're finally down in the mud too. You should be thrilled."

A few sharp beeps followed, and she blocked me.

My desperate plea for survival vanished into a void.

The only things I remembered from that night were the click of the disconnected line and the scent of rotting roses in the air.

By the time I was found, my hand was shattered, and my vocal cords were ruined.

Driven mad by the stress, Dad's mental state deteriorated to the point where he had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

On the day of the exam, out of all the students, only Eliza and I had no parents there to see us off.

That was the last time I ever saw her.

The next time I heard her name, she had been accepted into Javerton University.

I had botched my exams, barely scraping into a low-tier college. I didn't repeat the year, nor did I attend college.

Dad was getting worse, and I needed money—a lot of it.

By my third year working in a sweatshop, my health broke down.

That was when Ryder tracked me down. He explained everything that had truly happened back then and offered to sponsor my return to school.

I just shook my head quietly. "I'm sick. I just want to live. That's all I want."

But by the second round of chemo, my will to survive began to crumble.

Curled up in the hospital bed, I didn't even have the strength to cry.

Meanwhile, Eliza was on television, eloquently sharing her entrepreneurial story.

At the end of the interview, she flashed her engagement ring to the camera and announced she was getting married.

I turned to Ryder and told him I wanted to stop treatment.

Everyone had abandoned me, so I chose to abandon myself too.

I just wanted freedom. I wanted peace.

In my final days, I tried my best to keep my dignity and look normal. I prayed to God to let me see Eliza just one more time. I didn't want to leave this world carrying a lifetime of misunderstandings.

My prayers were answered, and Eliza was brought to my side.

She came to the hospital for a charity event, standing just on the other side of my privacy curtain.

I tried to call her name, but a sudden surge of blood choked the words back down my throat.

Nurses rushed in to resuscitate me, but I could only feel my body growing lighter and lighter.

Eliza seemed to hear me calling her name. She turned around in a hurry, brushing past me as I lay covered by a white sheet.