Good At Goodbye

I return to my hometown after becoming the wealthiest person in the world. I stand beside a luxury car I bought for my father and call him—I want him to be surprised when he picks me up. However, this backfires on me. I joke with him and tell him my company has gone bankrupt. My debtors are coming after me, so I'm home to flee from them. I end up standing under the sweltering sun until the sky goes dark and it starts to pour—my father never shows up to see his gift. I brave the rain as I head home. Before I even enter the house, I can sense my sister-in-law's panic. "Listen to me—don't tell that jinx that Dad has just won a million dollars!" My mother says, "I knew having a daughter was a bad decision. It's bad enough that she doesn't have money for us—why is she coming home when she's in trouble? She should just die out there!" My father sneers. "Well, we can sell her off to that cripple in the village. Maybe she'll fetch a good price!"

My mom is critically ill. Before she passes away, she wants to see me married. It takes 27 days of pleading before my boyfriend, Kyle Grayson, says yes. I wait at the city hall until the doors close, but he never shows up. That same day, his childhood sweetheart, Ruby Callahan, posts their marriage certificate online. "Time flies. Three days more and we'll be a month in." Only then does it hit me. The very first day I begged, Kyle was already Ruby's husband. Right then, a text from Kyle lights up my phone. "Holly, Ruby's family was pushing her into marriage. I couldn't stand by and watch her marry just anyone and ruin her life. We'll be divorced in three days. I'll marry you then." Three days later, he shows up at the city hall in a suit. But all he gets is a text from me. "Goodbye for good, Kyle."

On the company's designated monthly day off, Gigi Lott, Donald Hoover's secretary, posted an Instagram story. The caption read, "So what if you're the boss of me when we're at work during the day? At night, I'm the one on top!" In the photo, she was lying atop a water bed covered in rose petals, and the usually stern Donald was kneeling down to massage her feet for her. From his pocket hung a brand new golden necklace. Just that morning, I bought several gold bars and gave them to Donald while beseeching him to make our relationship public. He happily took the locket from me, but when I tried to take a photo of us with our phone, he smacked my phone out of my hands, smashing it into pieces. With a look of pure derision, he declared, "Why don't you take a good look at yourself in the mirror first? You really are a motherless wretch who wasn't raised right. Look at the lengths you'd go to just to ruin me!" Throughout the last five years, I had meekly gone along with his demand that we keep our relationship a secret, claiming it was because office romances were forbidden. But now, I was abruptly hit with the realization of how laughable it all was. The next day, I sent my father a message. "I admit defeat. I'm willing to come home and inherit the family business."

The intern secretly submitted a voluntary pay-cut application on my behalf. As a result, my salary dropped from $10,000 to $2,000. When I found out and confronted him, my boss and colleagues all defended him. "The company is not doing great right now. Oscar was just trying to save costs for us. Do you have to nickel-and-dime over this?" With my salary so low, I couldn't afford the special medication for my chronic migraines, and one day I passed out at my desk during an attack. But the intern snuck a video of me unconscious and posted it on the company's website. He even whipped up a detailed 100-page slideshow breaking down how I was slacking off on the clock and dumping all my work on him. Overnight, I was labeled a workplace bully. My boss gave me the cold shoulder, and my colleagues whispered about me. Even worse, some extreme "anti-workplace-bullying" activists tracked me down to my home, showed up with two cans of gasoline, and burned me and my parents alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that very day when the intern had submitted my pay-cut form. In this second chance at life, I would make sure everyone saw the intern for who he truly was.

Just one week into my new job, I was wrongfully accused of cooking the books, and it cost me five years behind bars. After that, my wife found out she was pregnant. She insisted on having the baby and promised to wait for me to come home. Out of gratitude, I threw myself into work after my release. I did everything I could to give them a good life. It was until one day, I overheard a conversation between my wife and our son. “Mom, don’t let Dad come out with us. It’s embarrassing! Why did you pin Mr. Scott’s crime on him back then?! And now, the girl next door keeps making fun of me, saying my dad’s a criminal!” My wife gently pulled our son close and comforted him, saying, “I promised Mr. Scott I’d help him. Your dad’s so naive. He’ll never find out.” It turned out that my supposed happy life was nothing but lies and betrayal!

After a car crash, I wake up without a scratch, but my girlfriend, Elena Reed, has amnesia. What shocks me the most is that I can hear my late grandma's voice in my head. "That shameless woman is feigning amnesia to trick Rowan! If I were still alive, I'd break her legs myself!" My eyes fly wide in disbelief. Grandma's voice keeps raging in my head. "Rowan, in your past life, Elena ruined you. You had miserable years with her and nearly died of a heart attack while she was out celebrating Miles' birthday! "Your grandpa is about to have you choose a bride. Don't pick Elena. Pick Piper. She's a good woman!" A second later, Grandpa and the elders walk into the hospital room and spread out photos of heiresses from the four great families, asking me to choose a bride. I don't even hesitate. I choose Piper Alden, the one I've been butting heads with for as long as I can remember. I've always listened to Grandma. If she says that Elena doesn't love me, then I don't want her anymore.

Three months after my husband, Josiah Erikson, disappears in a skiing accident, I spot him in a bar. He's laughing freely with an arm slung casually around his "best friend", Monica Jones' shoulders. "Good thing you came up with the idea. I'd almost forgotten what freedom feels like." One after another, his buddies clink glasses with him and ask about when he plans to reappear. He looks down and thinks about it before saying, "In a week. I'll show up once she's gone completely crazy searching for me." Standing in the shadows, I watch him savor his freedom, then call my friend who works at the state vital records office.

On the day we receive our bonus, one of the staff members of the finance department gives me 500 dollars worth of vouchers for the fast food restaurant downstairs. He tells me that my wife, Jillian Dunn, who is also the company's president, specifically ordered him to do so. In utter disbelief, I seek out Jillian and question her. "Didn't we agree that whoever secures the project will get a 50,000-dollar bonus? Stop messing around! I still need to pay for Freya's cochlear implant!" "I'm not messing around with you," Jillian answers seriously. "These vouchers can last you for a whole month. I wouldn't even give them to you if you were anyone else. "Money is tight right now at the company. Besides, Freya has been deaf for more than a decade now. She can survive being deaf for another decade." The next day, Jillian gives one of the interns a sports car that's worth 50,000 dollars. I look at the photo she uploads of her and the intern grinning widely as they sit in the car and give it a like. Jillian must assume that everything is proceeding smoothly since she has signed the contract. However, she misses the additional condition that's printed on the last page of the contract. I dial her rival's number, asking, "Ms. Swan, are you interested in Project Charlie?"

My son was caught in a car accident. My husband said that without a cornea donor, he would be trapped in darkness forever. Heartbroken, I let him sweet-talk me into signing away my corneas. Blind, I overheard my son gloating, "Dad, the plan worked. Mom fell for it, and Rachel's got her sight back. She won't be miserable anymore." "Yeah, now we're a real family with her," replied my husband. The truth gutted me. They'd played me like a fool to save my husband's old flame. When I confronted them, Rachel Huffman shoved me down a staircase, and I died in agony. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of my son's car accident.

I went into labor at the same time as the woman next door. My husband took me to the hospital, but I delivered a stillborn child. Instead of comforting me, he lashed out, "Did you mess around while you were pregnant? Is that why you gave birth to such a monster?" I lost my baby, my name was dragged through the mud, and I was forced to divorce him and leave with nothing. One day, I happened to overhear my husband speaking to the neighbor: "Good thing we swapped your stillborn baby with May's healthy one. If your in‑laws had looked closely, they would have realized the dead baby was actually ours." That was when I finally understood the truth. They had been involved long before. He pushed me on purpose, causing premature labor, just so they could take my healthy baby and give me her dead one. When I confronted them, they held me down in the bathtub and drowned me. Yet when I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day I went into early labor. This time, I'll make sure she gives birth to that stillborn child. This time, I will expose them both for their affair and for what they did to me.