How Does 'After I Returned The Rung' End?

I gave him nine years. Nine years of stretching every coin, raising our son alone, sleeping on my side of the bed because I could not bring myself to take his. Nine years of telling Dave his father was working hard so they could have a better life. I believed it myself. Until I saw him on a public street with his hand on another woman’s waist, looking at her the way I spent nine years waiting for him to look at me. When he crossed the pavement it was not to apologise. It was to tell me she was his wife. Six months married. He told me to keep things calm, walked back to her, and introduced me as his cousin. The divorce papers came that same night. I needed a job immediately. For my son. For the bills that would not wait for me to finish falling apart. So I pulled myself together the way I always do and kept moving. I did not expect Mac Harlow. I did not expect him to run three blocks to return my dropped folder or offer me a job despite his sister’s calls to have me removed. I did not expect his daughter to find my son within ten minutes and decide they were already family. I did not expect to discover that the man I was starting to trust was connected to everything I was trying to leave behind. He did not know. I believe that. But Marshall knows now that someone else sees what he threw away. And he wants it back. He is nine years too late. Mac is looking at me like I am worth staying for. Not fixing. Not managing. Staying for. I spent nine years being someone’s afterthought. Never again.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The cocktail hour had just ended when I picked up a video call in the bridal suite. It was Ethan, three years from now. By then, time‑travel tech had matured enough to let him contact me three years into the past. After enough specific details, I finally believed it. The man on the screen really was Ethan, three years older. I rubbed my aching ankle and pouted at him through the screen. "Ethan, smiling at all these guests is exhausting. But the second I remember I actually married you today, I'm happy all over again." "We're still happy three years from now, right?" He was leaning back against a headboard, and he didn't answer. His face was flat and unreadable. Then I heard it: a woman's voice from his end, low and breathy, asking to be kissed. I froze for a second, then covered my mouth and laughed. "Is that future me? In broad daylight? Get a room." Ethan turned the camera into the bed. My maid of honor was lying there, naked, sprawled across his chest. Her body was covered in hickeys. He looked straight at me as I started to break, and his voice didn't shift at all. "As soon as the reception ended, I told you I had a client meeting. I went to her room instead." "Jo, now you know what's coming. The guests haven't gone home yet. If you want a divorce tonight, you can have one. Up to you."

In Hollow Creek, there was an old custom: if you turned thirty and still were not married, the community chair would arrange for you to come home and meet potential matches. When I told Marcus about it, he laughed coldly. “What kind of backwoods tradition is that supposed to be? “Constance, I said I would marry you, and I will. But pressuring me is something else.” Then he took out the ring and casually handed it to Hannah. She accepted it with a blush. “I was going to propose,” he said. “But since you want to act like this, maybe we should cool off for a while.” The ring I had waited years for was handed to someone else like it meant nothing. For a moment, I just stood there, stunned. Marcus walked out of my office with an easy confidence, the corner of his mouth lifted in a victorious smile. Hannah held the ring out to me. I did not take it. “Keep it,” I said. “Wasn’t it meant for you anyway? “You wear it. It suits you.” Her face went pale. I showed her to the door. Before closing it, I said, “Tell Mr. Vale that he and I are done.”

I hated my husband most in the moment he died for me, swallowed by the flames. Right before he took his last breath, he tore our marriage certificate in half, his eyes burning red. "If there's another life," he said, "I'd rather we never met." My whole body went rigid. Only then did I understand—he blamed me. Ten years ago, his childhood sweetheart and her family had been exiled. She had begged him for help. But that day, he'd gone with me on a trip and missed the chance to save her. And for ten long years, he held that grudge against me. After my husband's death, the world turned on me. Even my in-laws, who had always cared for me, looked at me with pure disgust. "If not for you, Russ wouldn't be dead. We wish you'd never been born!" I couldn't bear it anymore. I ended my life. I never expected that when I opened my eyes again, I would be back on the day Russ Williams came to propose. This time, I would do exactly as he wished. I would give everyone what they wanted.

After five years in a marriage without intimacy, I finally called my wife, Suzanna Jones, the youngest commander in the military, and asked her to spend the night with me. Five hundred and twenty times. That was how many times we had been interrupted over the years. Every time we came close to being together, an urgent call from her widowed brother‑in‑law, Eric Gibson, pulled her away before anything could happen. Then, on our wedding anniversary, Suzanna promised she would finally give me the perfect wedding night we never had. I held her by the waist and was about to cross the final line between us when Eric’s ringtone shattered the moment. “Suzanna… I was injured in an explosion down there. What if I am crippled for life…?” Panic filled her face. She pushed me aside and rushed for the door. I grabbed her wrist and tried to stop her. “Send him to the military hospital first.” She turned on me with anger and slapped me across the face. “Shane! Eric is seriously hurt! How can you be this heartless?” She pulled on her dress and ran out. When I caught up with her, the sight in front of me stopped me cold. The woman who once promised to give me her first night was wrapped around Eric in a position far more intimate than anything she had ever shared with me. When I asked for an explanation, she looked calm and unbothered. “Eric is in critical condition. Was I supposed to stand there and do nothing? It is not that important. If it bothers you that much, I can fix it later.” Something inside me went numb. For five years, I had been the only one trying to hold our marriage together. At that moment, I realized I was exhausted from fighting for something that had ended long ago.

I jump off the seventh floor on my wedding day. Why? Because everyone has abandoned me to pick up a fake heiress from the airport, my fiancé included. I expect to see them riddled with heartbreak and regret after my death. However, my father merely shakes his head stoically and looks at my body while saying I was too willful. My mother bites her lip and sighs in relief. My fiancé, Magnus Gilmore, shields the fake heiress. He's afraid she'll see the horrible state of my body. The fake heiress is scared to tears at this, and everyone crowds around her to console her. No one cares whether I'm still breathing while lying in a pool of blood. I'm stunned when I see this, but I soon laugh self-deprecatingly. When I open my eyes again, I've been brought back seven years in the past. It's the day I've just stepped foot at home.