Chapter 1 Two Rings

As I gazed at the sparkling diamond rings nestled inside the exquisite velvet box, a bitter feeling crept into my heart. The rings were customized according to Winona's preferences.

Chris seemed to have forgotten that we'd once spent countless late nights curled up together on the sofa, browsing through different ring designs. However, the one in front of me had never been among them.

I didn't take the ring.

He was still kneeling, and his hand was already starting to shake. Winona glanced for a moment and knelt as well. They looked like star-crossed lovers right there and then.

She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. She then spoke with a soft, hurt voice, as if she would cry right away. "Are you angry at me, Liliana?"

I hadn't even said a word, but Winona had already blinked, and a drop of tear slid down her cheek.

She looked like a damsel in distress. "It's all my fault. I grew up in the sticks and have never had anything nice. I thought the ring looked nice, so I said it out loud. That's really it.

"I've never seen anything so beautiful. Don't think badly about Chris just because of what I did, please. I don't want the ring anymore!"

The more she spoke, the more urgent she sounded, and the more tears she shed. The girl was starting to hyperventilate at the end. She was on the ground, breathing heavily as her face slowly turned pale.

Seeing this, Chris panicked. He forgot all about the rings and pulled Winona into his arms. Like coaxing a scared infant, he patted her back gently, and he was cooing when he spoke to her. "It's alright. I'm here, Winona. I'm here."

When Winona finally calmed down, he turned his eyes back to me and frowned. Before he spoke, he pulled Winona behind him.

"You're taking it too far, Liliana. You know she's young and naive. Why are you being so hard on a child? I'm the one who came up with the idea of two rings. She grew up in suffering and couldn't even say she liked something, but I noticed the look in her eyes, so I got one for her.

"You know she's very insecure. When she first arrived, she had nightmares every single night. It took a lot of hard work for her to liven up a little. She just thinks the ring looks nice. Can't you be the bigger person here? You weren't like this. If you hate it so much, I can get a new one for you. You don't have to take things so far."

He let out a silent sigh and finally softened up, as if I was a tantrum-throwing child that needed a little gentle parenting to behave. "Wear the ring. Everyone's watching."

I looked into Chris' eyes, trying to glean some information. We'd been dating for six years.

My mother remarried when I was eighteen. My stepsister tossed my suitcase out of their house during a rainstorm just to show me where I stood on the hierarchy.

I crouched on the sidewalk, holding my drenched bag. After going through my contacts, I eventually called Chris. The drive from the north to south took him nearly twelve hours, and he had to do it during nighttime, all to take me home.

I started working at nineteen, and my job ended up blistering my palms all over. Chris cried harder than I did and blamed himself for being a failure.

He gained success when I was twenty. The first thing he did was give me a villa with an ocean view. Under the stars, he swore to the moon he would love, respect, and protect me forever.

Everything changed when he came back from the sticks with Winona. He no longer remembered to spend time taking parsley out of my food, even if his own food went cold in the process.

Instead, he remembered that Winona wasn't great with spicy food, and he would rather make everything from scratch than back off.

He stopped making warm milk for me during late nights, but he would tell her bedtime stories in the dead of the night when she had nightmares.

Winona's presence made the relationship I used to have feel like a dream. Time to wake up, then. I didn't say it out loud, of course.

I looked at the rings but wore none. Instead, I clenched them tightly. The metal's cold sensation seeped through my palm's callus.

Then, I bent down and helped Chris to his feet. "Get up. Everyone's watching."