"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."

"Save him?"

What a joke.

I scoffed and spat hard on the ground.

"If it weren't for him, would I have ended up like this?"

"You tell him—"

"Enough, Duncan."

Nanette cut in before Stephen could lose his temper, losing hers first.

"Stephen paid his debt to you. Five years in prison settled it."

"Stop being so relentless! You're making a scene over nothing!"

Without a shred of hesitation, she climbed into the passenger seat.

And left me alone on the side of the road in fifteen-below weather.

I watched the car pull away into the distance. Nanette never once looked back.

The bystanders kept their distance, afraid I'd try to shake them down for help.

I lay there for a long time. Until the sedative wore off. Until the cold seeped into my bones and my body went stiff. Only then did I haul myself back into the wheelchair and open the tracking app on my phone.

Five years ago, Nanette had installed a location-sharing app herself, to prove her sincerity.

I gripped the wheels with both hands, white-knuckled, and pushed forward.

When the road sloped upward and the chair wouldn't move, I got down and crawled.

By the time the sky turned dark, I finally arrived.

It was Stephen's company.

The employees had all gone home, but the lights inside were still on.

On the table, an array of gold and diamond jewelry glittered under the lights, almost blinding.

And sitting beside that table were Nanette's parents.

They'd traveled over a thousand miles from their hometown after the fight between Nanette and me.

These were the same two people who'd once fawned over my status as a world-class racing driver, who'd begged me again and again to meet their daughter. Now they'd slapped me across the face, poured cold water on my open wounds.

They called me a useless cripple, a curse, said I'd destroyed everything their family had built over generations, said I'd abused their daughter.

And these same two people—who had once done everything in their power to keep Nanette away from Stephen because he'd grown up in a group home, who'd even threatened to kill themselves over the relationship—

Were now raising their glasses to him, wagging their tails like dogs.

"Stephen, your aunt and uncle always knew you'd be the one to make something of yourself. So much better than that lunatic."

Stephen took the compliment in stride, smoothly voicing the words already on the tip of their tongues.

"I understand completely. You're just looking out for your daughter. What happened in the past—let's just pretend it never happened. Water under the bridge."

"I can't stand watching Nanette suffer at the hands of that maniac. What we need to figure out now is how to get him to voluntarily file for divorce and let her go."

He narrowed his eyes, swirled his wine glass, and took a slow sip.

"Or, how to make him..."

"Kill."

"Himself."

Nanette, who had been silently drinking with her head down, went still.

"That's enough, Stephen."

"It's late. I should head back. Mom, Dad, I'll drop you off at the hotel."

She stood, but Stephen pressed her back down into her seat.

"Nanette, don't be afraid."

"He's not the rich, powerful racing star he used to be. And I'm not the broke kid with nothing to his name anymore."

"Trust me. I'll handle everything. Just like I did five years ago."

Something flickered behind Nanette's eyes. She wavered.

But she still tried to talk him down. "Stephen, what happened five years ago... that was my fault."

"This is my punishment. Besides, he's already miserable enough. There are some things I don't want to take too far."

Stephen let out a short laugh.

He reached over and stroked her hair, his eyes full of tender pity.

"Nanette, all these years, he's had us all fooled."

"I've gone over it again and again, and I finally figured something out. A professional racing driver—wouldn't he inspect his own car over and over before getting on the track?"

"He told you himself, didn't he? Back-to-back championships, the higher the glory, the greater the pressure."

"The way I see it, he knew he wasn't good enough to keep winning. He staged the crash on purpose. All these years of suffering we've been through? It was his plan all along."