The night before the international race, Nanette Swanson lost a round of truth or dare at her final bachelorette party.

The crowd egged her on: either force three drinks on her childhood sweetheart, Stephen Walker, or cut the brake lines on my race car.

She chose the latter.

The next day, I crashed.

The car spun out of control, flipping across the track, killing three drivers and two spectators. A steel rod ripped loose and punched through my body. The rear wheels rolled over my lower back.

Both my legs were permanently paralyzed. I'd spend the rest of my life with a colostomy bag.

My parents, who'd been in the stands cheering me on, suffered fatal heart attacks on the spot.

Nanette, barely sobered up, knelt outside the operating room begging for my forgiveness. She swore she'd take care of me for the rest of her life.

She liquidated her entire family fortune to compensate the victims, then gave Stephen Walker a sum of money to take the fall and go to prison in her place.

Five years later, Stephen got out. He'd used that money to build a small company. Done well enough for himself.

We ran into each other again in the alley outside my apartment.

Nanette was pushing my wheelchair, quietly asking a vegetable vendor if he could knock a few cents off the price.

Stephen's car pulled up behind us with the precision of something long planned.

The window slid down. Their eyes met by accident.

Both of them went red around the rims.

Stephen spoke first, his voice hoarse.

"Nanette. All these years... you've suffered."

...

Nanette's grip on the wheelchair handles trembled.

She said nothing. She fumbled through the fanny pack at her waist, then lowered her head.

"Never mind. I don't need the vegetables."

She grabbed the handles and tried to leave.

Before she could take a single step, I'd already unscrewed the hot water bottle in my lap and hurled it through Stephen's car window.

White steam erupted across his suit.

He clearly hadn't expected it. He scrambled to his feet, cracked his head against the roof of the car, and hissed in pain.

"You—!"

That voice. The voice that had haunted my nightmares for years. It hit me again like a live wire, jolting every cell in my body.

"You piece of filth!"

"How come you didn't die in prison? I'll kill you!"

I was screaming, flailing, grabbing for anything within reach. My fingers closed around an oversized potato.

Nanette panicked.

She yanked a syringe from her pocket and jabbed it into my thigh, hard.

Ice-cold liquid shot through my veins and straight to my brain.

My arm went limp in the same instant the potato left my hand, sailing toward Stephen.

But it struck Nanette square in the forehead as she turned to shield him.

She wiped the blood away with the back of her hand, then grabbed the wheelchair handles without missing a beat.

"Duncan Henson, it's time for your medication. Let's go home."

A gust of wind swept across us, blowing Nanette's hair aside and exposing the mottled bruises along her neck. Purple and red.

Stephen couldn't hold himself back any longer.

He got out of the car in one fluid motion, caught up, and clamped his hand around Nanette's wrist.

"He did that to you, didn't he?"

"Five years. Even if this is penance, there has to be an end."

"What, you're going to throw away your whole life for him?"

I wanted to argue. Wanted to reach out and put my fist through his face.

But my body sagged like a wrung-out rag. All I could do was hang my head and curse, pathetic and impotent.

"Five years?"

"Even five hundred years wouldn't be enough to pay back what you two owe me!"

Stephen bit down on his lip, ready to say more.

Nanette cut him off.

"Enough."

She stared him down, enunciating every word.

"Sir, I don't know you."

"If you come near my husband again, if you upset him one more time, I will call the police."

After that day, Nanette swore to me that she and Stephen Walker were finished. That she would never see him again as long as she lived.

Her resolve seemed absolute. Stephen watched her walk away, the loss written all over his face. He didn't follow.

I kept my head down, watching her footsteps quicken beneath me, and couldn't help but sneer.

"What's the matter—afraid you won't be able to stop yourself from regretting it?"

"Nanette, I've told you before. If you dare leave me, I'll drag us both to hell."

Nanette said nothing.

She simply parked the wheelchair by the side of the road, bent down, and with practiced hands tugged my shirt lower, covering the drainage bag that had already gone cold against my skin.

Her voice came out soft, barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry. I didn't know he was coming."

Those two words were like a spike driven straight through my heart.

I locked onto her eyes, jaw clenched so tight it ached.

"Sorry?"

"Fine. If you're really sorry, then go kill him."

After the accident, Nanette Swanson—once the pampered only daughter of a prominent Creston City family—had every last shred of pride stripped from her forever.

She knelt outside the operating room doors like a hollow shell.

Head bowed, murmuring the same words over and over.

"I'm sorry. I was going to call you beforehand. I didn't expect to black out."

I was drowning in agony so raw it felt like my chest was being torn open. I wanted to grab her by the throat and demand answers, but I couldn't even sit up straight.

I wanted to end it all. My fingertips finally brushed the fruit knife on the bedside table, but when I looked up, I saw the victims' families crowded outside the ward, sobbing, pounding on the door. I had no choice but to follow Nanette's arrangements and face them.

After the Swanson family lost everything overnight, we went ahead and got our marriage license on schedule.

Because they had nothing left, her parents had no choice but to move back to a crumbling house in their ancestral village.

Even so, Nanette found grueling part-time work and insisted on keeping me in the city.

It was a basement apartment, but it had air conditioning.

We ate the cheapest groceries, rationed down to the last portion, but the expensive specialty medications that kept my body functioning never ran out.

No matter how late Nanette came home, she would wash me down and massage my limbs without fail.

I believed she was spending her love, spending her entire life, atoning for what she'd done to me.

Until the night I jolted awake from a nightmare earlier than usual and found Nanette sitting at the edge of the bed, hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

On her phone screen, a video from that night's party was playing.

Nanette had lost at a dice game. Someone next to her asked with a nasty grin, "After you got with Duncan, did you still sleep with Stephen? You gave yourself to him the night you turned eighteen. Don't think we don't know."

Nanette's face went scarlet in an instant.

She shoved the person away and didn't answer. Instead, she chose the dare.

And in that dare—the one that destroyed my family and ruined my life—she made her choice without a second's hesitation.

A crisp snap. The brake line severed.

The group let out a collective gasp, their eyes bouncing between Nanette and Stephen with leering amusement.

"I knew it. Duncan's just the decoy you use to get your mom off your back about marriage. Your real love was always Stephen."

The more Nanette refused to answer, the wilder they got.

They kept forcing Stephen to drink, and Nanette intercepted every glass, downing them one after another.

Because Stephen had a mild alcohol allergy.

And Nanette couldn't bear to let him suffer even the discomfort of an itchy rash.

Eventually, Nanette was too drunk to stand. They shoved and jostled the two of them into a hotel room.

The door hadn't even closed before Stephen kissed her like a man possessed.

He pinned her against the wall, sucking hard on her lips, fingers working her buttons with practiced ease.

His voice was raw when he asked, "Don't marry him. Please."

"I'll lose my mind."

Nanette kissed him back through her tears, desperate and burning.

"I... can't break my mother's heart."

"Even if I marry him, we can still have this forever. My heart will always be yours..."

The two of them lost themselves in each other until they collapsed from exhaustion, the severed brake line long forgotten.

And at that very moment, I was lying in bed, happily imagining what kind of dream wedding I'd throw for Nanette once I won the prize money from the race.

After learning that every tragedy in my life had been born from calculated manipulation and betrayal, every cell in my body felt like it had been doused in acid, burning me to the edge of madness.

"You filthy bastards! Why? Why would you do this to me?!"

I screamed like a man possessed, bracing my hands against the mattress to push myself up, only to topple straight off the bed.

The catheter bag was crushed beneath me and split open. Fluid seeped into my wounds, mixing with blood until the floor was slick with it.

Nanette was terrified.

She didn't even think to turn off her phone. She crouched down in a panic, trying to lift me, trying to clean the wounds.

I grabbed a fistful of her hair. I closed my fingers around her throat. My open palm struck her face over and over, fast as rain.

She kept her head bowed through all of it, expression blank, enduring every blow.

All she murmured was, "I'm sorry. I didn't know you'd wake up at this hour."

She didn't deny a single thing.

She just changed her phone password.

Bang.

The violent slam of a door dragged me out of the memory.

Nanette had shut me outside.

Five years.

On the very day Stephen Walker reappeared, Nanette's composure finally cracked.

Through the door, she snarled at me in a low, harsh voice.

"Duncan, stop this. Just stop."

"I'm a person too. I get tired too."

The wheelchair's brakes had been broken for a long time.

The door struck my knees.

The chair lurched out of control.

It rolled down the slope and slammed straight into the wall of the building across the road.

I was thrown from the chair.

My forehead hit the concrete and split open, blood pouring down my face in a warm sheet.

At least the catheter bag didn't rupture, thanks to all the layers I was wearing. It preserved the last scrap of dignity I had left.

A passing car screeched to a halt, brakes shrieking. The driver rolled down his window and started cursing.

"Trying to scam me, you piece of shit? You want me to call the cops on you?!"

The front door flew open.

Nanette came out with tear tracks still wet on her face, bowing again and again toward the driver's seat.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my husband didn't mean to, he didn't—"

After the driver peeled off, still swearing, Nanette rushed to my side.

She pulled off her coat and draped it over me, then dug out the roll of gauze she always carried and began wiping the blood from my wound.

I wanted to push her away, but even lifting a finger felt like too much.

All I could manage was refusing to look at her. One last act of defiance.

"Get away from me."

"Don't touch me."

Nanette said nothing.

She just sniffled and kept wiping, over and over.

But the car accident had left me with a severe clotting disorder. Even after she applied the medicine, the bleeding only got worse.

My lips turned white. My eyelids grew heavy.

"No. No, no, no—"

Nanette fumbled for the emergency medication, twisted off the cap.

Empty.

She pulled out another bottle. Also empty.

She ran back inside and tore through the house at a frantic pace, searching every drawer, every shelf. Not half a pill anywhere.

Nanette broke.

She collapsed onto me, clutching my shoulders, and wailed.

"Duncan, I don't have any money left. I can't even afford a single pill."

"I'm so tired. I'm so, so tired."

"If we're all going to suffer like this, let's just die together. Let's just die. Okay?"

She slapped herself, hard, again and again. She raked her nails down her own face. She bit down on her tongue.

Then she grabbed a rock from the ground and swung it at her own head.

At the last second, another car pulled up behind us.

The driver got out and stopped her just in time.

He produced a fresh bottle of the medication, pressed the pills past my lips, and stanched the bleeding from my wound.

Then he went to the trunk and unloaded several crates of fresh vegetables and fruit, setting them by the front door.

The man looked at me and bowed deeply.

"Mr. Henson, this is all arranged by Mr. Walker."

"He asked me to pass along a message. He saved your life today. In return, he'd like to borrow your wife for two hours."