After all, he was the one who despised her trailing after him like a lovesick puppy.

He'd even said her love made him sick.

In that moment, though my heart felt like it was being carved open, a strange relief washed over me.

If the wedding was off, at least I didn't have to keep lowering myself to the dust, waiting for him to finally marry me.

My mother was still rambling on about how women who knew how to act sweet always had the best lives. The grievance lodged in my chest suddenly lost its desire for an audience.

"Mom, the wedding's canceled. There's no way I'm marrying him!"

I hung up and called the wedding planning company to cancel tomorrow's ceremony.

The emcee went quiet for a beat before speaking.

"Mr. Rowe already called about this. The thing is, he asked us to keep the decorations and banners in storage for two years. That's going to be tough. Most of those materials are single-use..."

It clicked instantly. He'd picked that fight on purpose, just to make me deal with all the fallout and the questions.

And he actually believed I'd wait for him for two years, like those cheap decorations gathering dust in a warehouse.

"Throw it all out. Even if it weren't disposable, two years in storage would rot it."

Just like his love for me.

It would fade and vanish with time.

After hanging up, I scrolled to my mother-in-law's number and felt a headache coming on.

Philippa Rowe despised Nellie Simmons. If she found out her son had already signed a marriage certificate with that woman, she might keel over from sheer rage.

I took a deep breath and transferred the $88,000 wedding fund back to her, every last cent.

I counted to three in my head.

The phone rang.

"Grace, sweetheart, why did you send the wedding fund back?"

"Mom, Mark and I aren't getting married right now. We'll talk about it in a couple of years."

Philippa was sharp. She caught the wrongness immediately.

"Did Mark do something to hurt you? I'm going over there right now! The wedding tomorrow is happening as planned!"

"Mrs. Rowe, the wedding really can't go forward..."

But Philippa had already hung up.

It was Mark's turn to figure out how to handle his own mother.

And it was my turn to pack and leave.

The apartment was still dressed for a celebration. Every detail reflected the happy married life I'd spent weeks imagining.

Now each one was a blade twisting into my chest.

There wasn't much to take. A single suitcase, and it wasn't even full.

But there was plenty to throw away.

By the time I finished, I noticed Mark had called me several times.

Didn't take a genius to figure out why. He wanted to blame me for not keeping Philippa under control.

I set the key on the entryway table and picked up the last framed wedding portrait on my way to the door.

I walked straight into Mark.

The portrait smashed against the floor, shattering into pieces.

A shard sliced across the top of my foot, and blood welled up instantly.

Mark grabbed Nellie and pulled her behind him, his face tight with irritation.

"Grace, what the hell? Didn't you see Nellie standing there? What if you'd hurt her?"

He didn't see the blood pooling on my foot. Instead, he crouched down and carefully brushed a speck of glass no bigger than a pinhead off Nellie's shoe.

I had no interest in watching him dote on another woman. I grabbed my suitcase and walked past them.

His peripheral vision caught the suitcase. He shot to his feet and seized my arm.

"Grace, where are you going?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but his phone rang.

I saw the caller ID. Philippa.

He answered with barely concealed impatience.

"Fine! I know! It's not canceled! I'll smooth things over with her! Don't worry!"

He hung up and turned to me.

"Grace, my mom says the wedding tomorrow has to go ahead as planned."

"I don't want to upset her, so let's keep everything as is. But could you run away? Flee to France? I'll book the ticket for you myself."

"My mom adores you. If you bolt, she'll definitely send me after you. That way I can keep pretending I'm overseas chasing you down."

I stared, wide-eyed, unable to believe these words had come from the man I'd loved for years.

But then I remembered he'd gone so far as to sign a marriage certificate just to accompany Nellie for her treatment.

And suddenly, nothing he said or did seemed surprising anymore.

I was leaving anyway. Might as well grant him this one last favor.

"Fine."

Maybe it was how easily I complied that finally made Mark stop being blind.

He noticed the shattered wedding photo on the floor. Then his gaze dropped to the blood smeared across the top of my foot.

His eyes went red with panic. He rushed back into the bridal suite to grab the first-aid kit.

The moment he was gone, Nellie lifted her chin, her expression dripping with provocation.

"Grace, you really are pathetic. You already know I'm Mark's wife, and you still wanted to go through with the wedding?"

"So what if his mother doesn't like me? She can fight it all she wants. At the end of the day, Mark still calls me his wife."

"And you? You'll just be the other woman everyone spits on."

"Oh, and don't kid yourself thinking he'll divorce me and marry you in two years, because..."

She tugged her collar aside, revealing a trail of marks along her skin, her smile dripping with satisfaction.

"He told me I'm the first woman who's ever made him feel what ecstasy really means."

"Oh, and in case you didn't know, our first time was the night of your birthday."

I lowered my eyes to hide the tears that surged up without warning.

So Mark had betrayed me long ago.

And he'd played me for a fool, stringing me along for two more years.

My thirtieth birthday was the first time Mark had ever thrown me a real celebration.

Nellie had shamelessly confessed her feelings to him that night.

He'd torn into her in front of everyone, humiliating her so badly she couldn't show her face.

But on the drive home, he'd gotten some urgent call and dumped me on the side of a mountain road.

The next day, he came back full of apologies.

And proposed.

Said he wanted to give me a fairy-tale wedding.

I had waited eight years for that moment.

The joy crushed every ounce of unease I'd been carrying.

But that night, he forgot to lock the bathroom door. When I walked in, I saw the scratches raked down his back.

Fresh scratches. I demanded to know what happened.

He didn't even flinch. Said he'd been scratched by a cat.

Even pulled up his rabies vaccination record as proof.

I forced myself to believe him.

But a woman's intuition is a stubborn thing. Even while I was planning the wedding, none of it felt real.

A voice in the back of my mind kept whispering: He finally agreed to marry me because he'd done something unforgivable, and this was his way of making up for it.

I buried my head in the sand, too afraid to dig for the truth.

But I couldn't let it go, either. So I started following him in secret.

When I discovered that his so-called client meetings were actually trips to Nellie's apartment, I stopped confronting him. I just waited for him to come clean.

That was why I didn't push when he skipped the rehearsal.

When he texted saying he needed to be with Nellie for her treatment, I didn't object.

"Excuse me."

I had no interest in wasting words on Nellie. I just wanted to leave.

But the second Mark stepped out with the first-aid kit, she grabbed my hand and threw herself backward onto the carpet of broken glass.

A sickening crunch.

Blood. On Nellie's lips. On her hands. Everywhere.

She looked up at me, her voice slurred and trembling.

"Grace, I know you don't like me, but why would you push me?"

Mark saw the blood and lunged forward, shoving me to the ground.

"Nellie, don't be scared. I'm taking you to the hospital right now."

He scooped her up and bolted for the door.

Before he left, he turned back. His eyes cut through me, cold as steel.

"Grace, I never thought you could be this vicious. Attacking a sick woman. How could you be so heartless?"

"If anything happens to her, there's no future for us."

I watched his retreating figure and whispered from where I sat among the broken glass.

"There's no future for us anyway."

I raised my hand. Shards of glass studded my palm, embedded deep in the flesh. The pain was blinding.

By the time the clinic downstairs finished bandaging my wounds, cold sweat had soaked through every layer of my clothes.

The suffocating weight in my chest was what finally made me pick up the phone and reach out to several of the company's shareholders.

When they heard I was selling my thirty percent stake, every last one of them expressed interest.

I told them to name their price. Highest bidder wins.

Thirty minutes later, I signed the share transfer agreement with Les Chavez, the CTO.

He was capable. Ambitious. And Mark had always kept him at arm's length.

With my shares in his hands, he'd become the company's largest shareholder.

I hoped Mark would enjoy the wedding gift I'd prepared for him.

But the ink was barely dry when I heard a furious roar behind me.

"Grace!"

I realized then that he'd called me dozens of times.

Looking at the rage contorting his face, my mind flashed involuntarily to the image of Nellie deliberately throwing herself onto the glass and coughing up blood.

Had something actually happened to her?

Or had he found out about the share sale and come to make trouble?

His eyes were bloodshot as he stormed in, seized my arm, and dragged me toward the door.

"Nellie's kidney ruptured because you pushed her. She nearly died. And you're out here having a date with some random guy?"

I struggled, tried to explain.

"I didn't push her. She threw herself down on purpose—"

Mark shoved me into the car.

"She's already seriously ill. She's already down to one kidney. Why would she risk her own life over nothing?"

Then he turned on Les.

"Can't beat me at the office, Chavez, so you go after what's mine?"

I didn't want Les dragged through the mud. So I grabbed the share transfer agreement and threw it in Mark's face.

I expected him to lose it on the spot. To demand I void the deal.

Instead, he just clenched his jaw so hard the muscle twitched, got in the car, and floored it. The whole way to the hospital, the speedometer never dipped.

He forced me to my knees in front of Nellie's hospital bed.

"Apologize to Nellie. And promise you'll donate a kidney to make up for what you did."

My kneecaps hit the freezing tile. Pain and cold radiated through my entire body.

I tried to stand, but Mark's hand pressed down on my shoulder, pinning me in place.

"Cat got your tongue? Apologize to Nellie. Now."

I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and forced out every word.

"I didn't push her. If you don't believe me, go back and get the security footage from the neighbor's door."

The camera mounted outside the neighbor's door would have captured every second of Nellie's little performance.

But he didn't believe me.

"Grace, you have no idea how disappointed I am. Do you understand what your shove did? Nellie almost died. That's attempted murder. You could go to prison for that."

"She's being generous enough not to press charges. All she's asking for is an apology and compensation. What more could you possibly want?"

"You don't want to go to prison? Then give Nellie a kidney. When you do the math, you're coming out ahead. And I'll even let the whole thing slide about you selling off my company's shares behind my back."

Coming out ahead.

And the man who had always put his career above everything else was now ranking Nellie above a thirty percent stake in his own company.

He really did love her that desperately.

A laugh escaped me, wet with tears. In the end, all I said were three quiet words.

"I'm sorry."

Mark released me and pushed a document in front of me to sign.

He was truly absurd. What made him think that my signature on a piece of paper would actually make me donate a kidney to Nellie?

But I needed to get out of there. So I signed.

Only then did Mark pull me to my feet. Something unreadable flickered behind his eyes.

"Just so you don't go running to my mother and cause a scene, I'm going to need you to bear with what comes next."

"Once I'm done with the act tomorrow, you're coming with us overseas for the kidney transplant. You don't set foot back in this country until Nellie's fully recovered."

It wasn't until he tied me up inside an abandoned building that I finally understood what he meant by making it up to me.

While I was locked away, he wheeled Nellie to the hotel to stage the runaway-bride scene in my place.

I pounded on the door, screaming until my throat was raw, until a scavenging woman nearby heard the commotion and let me out.

I checked the time. My flight was about to depart.

I flagged down a cab and raced to the airport.

As I was boarding, Philippa called.

"Grace, where are you? Mark's saying you ran away from the wedding! Something about fleeing from guilt?"

Before I could answer, she caught the sound of a flight attendant announcing departure information in the background.

"Grace, you're really at the airport? What on earth did you do that made you abandon your own wedding?"

"Philippa, he's already Nellie Simmons' husband. He and I have nothing to do with each other anymore."

Philippa didn't even bother hanging up before turning on Mark, demanding to know if he'd been mistreating me.

His response, fueled by rage that I'd escaped to the airport, came out in a hoarse roar:

"Grace Thornton! You cost Nellie a kidney. You owe her one! If you try to run, I'll call the police and have you arrested for attempted murder!"

He actually pulled out his phone to dial 911, trying to stop me from leaving.

But Philippa's palm cracked across his face before he could.

"Have you lost your mind? Nellie Simmons was born with one kidney. If she'd lost another, she'd be dead already!"