A fist slammed into his face.

"You son of a bitch, you wanna die?!"

Max Lambert went down hard.

Alden looked like a man possessed, breath ragged, throwing punch after punch.

Everyone panicked. They shoved me forward to stop him.

I grabbed his arm. Alden threw me off. "Get off me!"

I crashed into the corner of the table, and the kettle of boiling water tipped over the back of my hand. The pain ripped a gasp out of me.

"Stop it!" Louisa choked on a sob and wrapped herself around him. "I don't want to drag you down with me!"

Alden froze for a second, then pushed her away, his face blank and cold.

"This has nothing to do with you. I did it for Grace."

The restaurant manager rushed in with the officers and hauled them both out.

Before he left, Alden gently smoothed a hand over my hair.

"Grace, don't come after me. I don't want you seeing any of this. Go home and wait for me."

Eyes red, Louisa stumbled out after him.

The private room fell dead silent. Someone murmured under their breath.

"Was Alden really losing it for Grace's sake? Because it kind of felt like it was for Louisa…"

I stared at the table, expressionless. At that full bowl of peeled shrimp.

I have a severe seafood allergy. Severe enough to kill me.

Alden knew that. And he hadn't noticed at all.

The same way he hadn't noticed the back of my hand, scalded red and raw.

Because his mind, from start to finish,

was on Louisa.

I lifted my head slowly. Through the glass of the private room,

I caught the scene at the restaurant entrance.

Louisa's strap was torn off, and she was crying, shaking, a wreck.

Alden stood there in silence, head bowed, tearing off his own jacket and draping it over her with the gentlest hands.

The next second she threw herself into his arms, and his arms closed around her.

Stroking her hair, over and over.

I stood up and left.

In the cab to the hospital, my phone chimed without stopping.

Louisa's post had a new update.

The post was blowing up, the comments multiplying.

"That's not pursuit, that's harassment! I checked the rest of this poster's page about her 'dream guy,' and she's just a clingy mistress. Her dream guy already has a girlfriend. She's exhausting."

"Why didn't you change his application to a top state university nearby? Why did you have to switch it to a vocational school? Are you trying to ruin him on purpose?"

Louisa replied earnestly underneath.

"He's too brilliant. I was scared that at a good college he'd meet other, better girls, and then he wouldn't choose me anymore."

"Only when he falls, when he sinks down to a vocational school where nobody fights over him, will he understand that I'm the only one who won't look down on him, the only one who'll stay by his side for life."

A few people with twisted morals cheered her on.

"True love conquers all. These days you have to claw your way to the top. We support you, OP!"

Louisa liked the comments backing her up, then fired back at the ones cursing her out.

"He doesn't actually love his girlfriend. He's just trapped by the fact that her parents once saved his life."

"It's not harassment, it's mutual! Just now someone made a dirty joke about me, and he came down on that guy with everything he had. His girlfriend got hurt and he didn't even care."

"And this wasn't the first time. Before the SATs, some thugs from the trade school were harassing me, and I called him for help. He dropped his girlfriend on the spot to come save me."

"After he taught those thugs a lesson, they went to the school for revenge and roughed up his girlfriend. She called him for help over and over. He didn't pick up a single time. All because I said I was hurt, and he was frantic to get me to the hospital to check on me."

"The truth is I wasn't hurt at all. I'm the one who sent those thugs to the school to settle the score with his girlfriend. I just wanted to see who he'd really choose. Me, or her."

"And after that, his girlfriend got beaten bloody by those thugs, and it cost her the SATs. But he still never blamed me. Doesn't that prove I matter more to him?"

I dug my nails into my palm, my body shaking and refusing to stop.

Every night, Alden and I studied at school until nine.

When we finished, he'd ride me home on his bike, all the way to my door.

A month before, Alden had been walking me through a problem when his phone suddenly rang.

One glance and his face changed. He tossed out a single line:

"Let me step out and take a call. Wait here for me."

I waited for him at the school, all the way to ten. He never came back, and his phone wouldn't connect.

The building had long emptied out when those thugs kicked the door open and stormed in.

As they pinned me to the floor, their mouths kept up a filthy, leering taunt:

"Damn, knew that little bitch was right, you really were waiting up here! Can't touch them, but I sure as hell can deal with you!"

They tore at my clothes, grinning like animals. I screamed, sobbed, fought with everything I had,

and they slapped me across the face more than a dozen times until my eardrums bled.

If a patrolling security guard hadn't heard the noise and called the police to save me, I might have been finished that night.

Alden rushed to the hospital and held me, his eyes red. He said:

"I'm sorry. My mom suddenly took ill, so I ran home. I never thought those thugs would... I'm sorry... Grace..."

"Thank God you're okay. Otherwise I'd never have forgiven myself, not for the rest of my life!"

Alden and Aunt Camila James had only ever had each other. I knew how much she meant to him.

So I just told myself it was bad luck, a senseless disaster that had landed on me.

My eardrums were permanently damaged. The SAT listening section, once my strongest subject, fell apart in my hands.

When the test ended, I crouched at the school gate, crying so hard I could barely stand.

Three full years I'd fought for the elite university, only to lose at the final moment to an accident like this.

In front of every parent and reporter there, Alden made his promise, word by word:

"Don't be scared! If you retake the year, I'll retake it with you!"

"And if you don't want to retake it, whatever school you go to, I'll go there with you!"

When Aunt Camila found out, she landed in the hospital from sheer rage, forcing him to cut me off, refusing to let me drag down his future.

But Alden said, firm and unshaken:

"Mom, I'm sorry. But I choose Grace."

Aunt Camila wept and raged, came to my door and threw herself down screaming, forcing me to break it off with Alden.

She even hung a banner under my apartment and cursed me out for being shameless, for seducing her son!

It didn't stop until I talked Alden out of doing anything rash for my sake.

I was genuinely curious. Alden had merely floated an idea, and Aunt Camila could make a scene like that.

So if Alden truly got dragged off to vocational school by Louisa, how far would Aunt Camila go then?

Alden's beating of that boy blew up after all.

The male classmate was badly hurt, and his parents went straight to the police.

I was getting my burn treated at the hospital when Aunt Camila's calls came flooding in.

The second I picked up, hysterical sobbing tore through the line:

"Alden is about to be a student at the elite university! Do you have any idea a record like this will ruin his whole life?!"

"Why didn't you stop him?! Why did you have to make him fight someone over you?!"

"You jinx, you killed your own parents, and now you're ruining my son! You little slut! I'll make you pay for hurting my son!"

Aunt Camila had lost it completely. She came to my home, splashed gasoline, and tried to light it to burn me alive,

After someone stopped her, she screamed and sobbed, demanding to call the Department of Education to report that I'd cheated on the SATs, that I had a rotten character, that they should cancel my scores.

After the education officials set her straight, she only grew more unhinged. She went after my dead parents, posting that they'd killed her husband, that they were criminals, that I was the offspring of criminals and had no right to my SAT results.

I stared at the lies she'd manufactured online, shaking from head to toe.

Years ago, Uncle Alfred James had been driving late at night, exhausted, when his car burst through the guardrail.

My parents happened to be passing. They risked their lives to get out and help.

Then the car exploded a second time. A steel rod drove straight through my father's chest. He died on the spot.

My mother shoved a young Alden clear of the blast and was burned alive.

And now Camila was weeping all over the internet:

“They were the ones who flagged my husband down for a ride, and that's what distracted him and caused the crash!”

“Then they got themselves killed and pinned it on the James family!”

The videos went off like a bomb. Someone livestreamed themselves dispensing "justice," tearing through my parents' grave plot.

My parents' headstone had already been smashed. Their portrait was trampled to pieces.

Red paint was splashed across the stone, and someone had scrawled:

【A life for a life】.

Shaking, I called Alden.

He was silent for a few seconds. Then, low and coaxing:

“Grace, I know this isn't fair to you.”

“But my mom's too worked up right now. Don't take it to heart.”

“The people online are just piling on. It'll blow over in a few days.”

My voice trembled.

“But they smashed my parents' grave!”

Alden said quietly,

“Later on, I'll help you rebuild it.”

Louisa's voice came through from his end. He cupped his hand over the phone fast and said,

“I've got something important going on right now. I'll come be with you once I'm done. Don't be scared, Grace.”

My hand shook as I looked at the post Louisa had just put up.

“I told him I wanted something to remember it by, so he canceled everything to come take graduation photos with me. He does have me in his heart.”

Then Louisa sent me a voice clip. A conversation between her and Alden.

Her voice came through thick with tears.

“Alden, were you this reckless tonight for Grace, or for me? You clearly have feelings for me!”

“If you say it was for Grace, then leave me alone! Go on, leave! Let Max take me away and have me, fine! You don't care about me anyway!”

Alden was silent for a few seconds. Then, like a man who'd given up resisting:

“For you.”

Eyes burning, I screen-recorded it and sent it to Camila.

“He didn't do it for me! Retract everything right now, or I'm calling the police! You don't want your son to have a mother behind bars, do you?”

A minute later, the videos were all gone, and Camila posted a long apology statement.

The next day.

The class group chat blew up. They said Camila had stormed into Louisa's home.

Word was she'd smashed their TV.

Then grabbed Louisa by the hair and dragged her out into the stairwell, calling her a homewrecking slut.

Louisa's forehead was split open and bleeding. Crying, she called Alden.

Alden tore over like a madman and, for the first time, shoved his mother hard away.

Camila hit the floor and stared at her son in disbelief.

“Alden... you'd push me for this little tramp?!”

Alden's face was white, but he still planted himself in front of Louisa.

“Mom, that's enough!”

That night, Alden called me.

“Grace, why did you have to tell my mom I got into that fight for Louisa? How could you frame Louisa just to protect yourself?!”