After Ryan Spencer cheated on me again with his secretary, I completely lost it.

When my mind started to spiral, I grabbed the fruit knife off the table. I just wanted it to end.

“Why are you hurting yourself again? He doesn’t love you anymore?”

I looked up.

The sixteen-year-old Ryan was walking toward me, heartbreak written all over his face. His voice was gentle.

“Tell me who he is. I’ll make him pay.”

I stared into the bright, earnest eyes of the boy standing in front of me.

I didn’t say a word.

I simply lifted my hand and pointed at his face.

Later, Ryan was the one who had me admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

When the sedative began to wear off, the teenage boy appeared again, sitting by my bed.

He stared at the man outside who looked just like him. The light in his eyes faded little by little.

Then he spoke, his voice strained.

“I don’t care who he is. I’ll kill him.”

The sixteen-year-old Ryan never lied to me.

When he said something, he meant it.

When Ryan Spencer walked in, the scent that followed him was Wendy Henderson’s signature perfume.

His eyes fell on the fresh bandage wrapped around my wrist. He frowned.

“Jane, I was only gone for a minute. Why do you always have to make things harder for me?”

Before I could answer, he reached for the gauze. There was no concern in the gesture. Just impatience. Irritation.

I pulled my hand back instinctively and held it against my chest.

“It’s already been taken care of,” I said quietly.

His hand hung in the air for a second before dropping. The look he gave me slowly turned tired.

At first, when I said someone was protecting me, he thought my condition was getting worse. He used to hold me tightly, eyes red, like he could keep the world away if he tried hard enough.

Now, my pain had become something he couldn’t shake off. A weight he was done carrying.

“There is no one,” he said flatly. “Jane Nelson, how long are you going to keep lying to me?”

He didn’t wait for my reply. He grabbed my wrist.

My hand was shaking, but that didn’t soften him. If anything, his grip tightened.

He tore the bandage off. The dried blood stuck to the gauze pulled at my skin as it came away.

Cold sweat broke out across my back. Still, I lifted my wrist toward him.

“I didn’t lie to you,” I said, my voice trembling. “Not since I was fifteen. You know that.”

Something flickered across his face. Then he looked away.

“What about you?” I asked, staring at his back. My nose stung. “Have you lied to me?”

He froze.

He didn’t turn around. He didn’t answer.

The sixteen-year-old Ryan didn’t know how to lie.

The thirty-year-old Ryan had learned that silence said enough.

A few seconds later, he called out coldly toward the hallway.

“Maria, get every knife out of this room. Throw them away.

“If I ever see her holding something like that again, you can pack your things too.”

The housekeeper came in. She gathered the knives while muttering under her breath.

“When will Mrs. Spencer get better? Mr. Spencer has it so hard.”

Hard?

I stared at the thin line of blood trailing down my wrist. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Ryan, you don’t love me anymore.

So why won’t you let me go? Why keep dragging this out?

Before I could think any further, Wendy had walked in.

She moved through the house like she belonged there, lifting a hand to smooth Ryan’s crooked tie. Even with blood on the floor, her expression stayed calm. Soft. Proper.

“Mrs. Spencer,” she said gently, “if you’re clear-headed at all, you should let him go. It hurts to watch.”

She stepped closer, pretending concern.

The faint perfume Ryan had brought in now felt overwhelming. It filled the room. My stomach churned.

I bent over and gagged.

Through blurred vision, I reached for the hem of Ryan’s pants.

My fingers had just brushed the fabric when Wendy suddenly pressed a hand to her stomach and swayed.

Ryan saw me near him and shoved me away without thinking.

I hit the floor hard. My wrist scraped against the rough carpet. Fresh blood spread quickly.

“Are you dizzy? Is it low blood sugar?” he asked her urgently. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

They left together, holding onto each other.

Just before the door closed, Ryan glanced back at me.

I couldn’t see his face against the light, but I understood the look in his eyes.

Relief.

Like someone who had finally slipped free of heavy chains.

Our love had ended.

His had just begun.

Maybe the housekeeper was right. Maybe being with me had been too much for him.

As that thought settled in, the boy in a school uniform appeared again.

He looked at me, tears falling one by one. He wanted to reach out, but he didn’t dare. His fingers trembled in midair.

“Jane,” he whispered, “you’re the best girl I’ve ever known. Leave him.”

I lifted my hand and gently covered his eyes.

My palm met nothing but cool air.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

As the suffocating weight closed in, I felt like I was falling into someone’s arms.

Only there.

Only with the sixteen-year-old Ryan.

The one who would always love me.

Being loved by Ryan Spencer used to feel like my superpower.

When I was fifteen, the Nelson family went bankrupt. My parents died not long after.

The rich boys who once had crushes on me cornered me at the school gate. Laughing, they cut up my uniform like it was a joke.

It was the sixteen-year-old Ryan who charged in like a trapped animal, fighting them off until he was covered in blood.

That evening, the sunset was red as blood.

He shouted at me until his voice cracked.

“Run!

“Jane! Don’t look back! Just run!”

When I finally went back for him, his proud, cocky face was bruised and swollen.

But the way he looked at me burned.

“Jane, don’t be scared. You’ve still got me.”

He brushed the tears from the corner of my eye. His breath was warm against my face.

So warm it made my chest ache.

“Jane, in this lifetime, I will never lie to you. I’ll always be loyal to you.”

The way he said it was firm. Certain. It made my heart tremble.

What I didn’t know back then was this: promises are only real in the moment they’re spoken.

By the second year of our marriage, love had been drained dry by the Nelson family’s bottomless debt.

He had almost emptied his own fortune trying to save us.

The heat in his eyes faded. All that was left was a deep, endless exhaustion.

After that long rush of memories, my mind felt strangely clear.

Today was our fifth wedding anniversary.

I put on the white dress he liked best. I waited from sunset until well past midnight.

No flowers. No hug.

Just a silent house and the noise from a live stream of the Spencer Group’s gala playing on my phone.

Out of that sea of people, I spotted him immediately.

He was smiling gently, carefully fastening a necklace around Wendy’s neck.

The camera zoomed in.

It was a star-and-moon pendant.

Tiny diamonds formed a ring of stars, cradling a silver crescent in the center.

My breathing stopped.

I had sketched that design when I was fifteen, in the corner of my old sketchbook.

The day Ryan confessed to me, he had pointed at that drawing, his voice shaking.

“Jane, one day when I have money, I’ll make this for you.

“Stars always stay beside the moon.

“Just like I’ll never break my promise to you.”

Now he had finally made it.

He just put it on someone else.

On screen, Wendy touched the pendant at her collarbone and smiled shyly.

“Thank you, Mr. Spencer. This is the most special gift I’ve ever received.”

Ryan didn’t say anything.

But the way he looked at her was unmistakable.

Soft. Indulgent.

I had only ever seen that look on his sixteen-year-old face.

After that year, I never saw him smile like that again.

So stars fall after all.

And moons get abandoned.

Before I could steady my breath, the gala moved into the charity auction segment.

The host announced loudly from the stage,

“Our next item is the ownership of the Nelson Charity Foundation.”

My heart dropped.

On the screen, the bidding numbers kept climbing.

My fingers trembled so badly I could barely hold my phone. I called Ryan again and again.

The moment he picked up, my voice was already pleading.

“Ryan, I accept that you don’t love me anymore. We can divorce.

“Just help me one last time. That foundation is the last thing my parents left me. I just…”

There was a brief silence on the other end.

Then he spoke, slowly.

“Jane, haven’t I done enough for you?”

I tried to say more, but the line went dead.

On the live stream, the auctioneer’s gavel came down hard.

“Sold! Congratulations to Angel Investments for thirty million!”

The camera cut to Ryan.

He raised his glass calmly, toasting in Wendy’s direction.

The lights hit his sharp features. Refined. Distant.

He sold the last piece of my parents’ memory just to make her smile.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t even cry.

There was a tight pressure in my chest, like something lodged there, making it hard to breathe. I coughed suddenly.

A metallic sweetness rose in my throat.

I sank to the floor and stared quietly at the red spreading beneath me.

Ryan.

You’re ruthless.

As everything inside me went dark, the boy’s voice came again.

He looked even more panicked than I was.

“Jane! Run! Don’t look back!

“Leave him! I don’t want to see you hurt over him.”

I couldn’t sleep that night.

At some point, Ryan was standing by the bed, staring at the nightstand with a complicated look in his eyes.

All the knives had been thrown out.

And yet, sitting there was a neatly peeled apple.

The peel hadn’t broken. It curled in one long spiral.

That was the kind of patience only the sixteen-year-old Ryan had.

I thought maybe, while I was asleep, the boy had come to see me again.

I shot upright and threw my arms around the figure in front of me, burying my face in his suit.

“You peeled the apple and left. I thought… I thought you weren’t going to stay with me tonight.”

Ryan’s body went rigid. Like he didn’t know what to do with me.

After a long pause, he awkwardly patted my back.

The movement was stiff. Careful.

“Jane… are you having another nightmare?”

The moment I realized it was his voice, I screamed and shoved him away, scrambling to the corner of the bed.

“Go away. You’re not him.”

He stepped closer and dropped to one knee beside me.

He stared into my frightened eyes, his thumb brushing lightly against my cheek. His voice was unusually soft.

“There’s no one else here but me.

“I know you’re upset about the live stream today. I swear, once Wendy has the baby, I’ll come home and spend more time with you.

“Come with me to the family dinner tomorrow. Okay?”

His grip on my wrist loosened slightly, like he was waiting for my answer.

I looked up through blurred tears.

“Ryan… let’s get divorced.”

The warmth that had just started to return to his eyes vanished.

For a second, I felt his anger. Then it twisted into something else. Something almost possessive. Like he was terrified of losing something.

He pulled me into his arms, holding me tight.

I forgot to struggle.

Until a hot tear landed on the back of my hand.

Through my blurred vision, I thought I saw the sixteen-year-old Ryan crying for me, whispering that I wasn’t allowed to leave.

My hand trembled as I reached up and wiped away the tear.

My fingertips touched warm skin.

Like I was soothing something fragile.

“Okay… I won’t divorce. I’ll come with you.

“Ryan, don’t cry.”

The next day, he brought me to the family dinner.

The moment he turned away to greet someone, Wendy approached with a glass of wine in hand.

She deliberately rested a hand on her barely noticeable stomach. The other toyed with the star-and-moon necklace at her collarbone.

She leaned close to my ear and smiled openly.

“Honestly, I admire you,” she said. “Even crazy, you still get to live comfortably at home.

“Oh, and that useless foundation of yours? I didn’t even want it. Things left behind by dead people are bad luck.

“Mr. Spencer just didn’t want to deal with it. Said it annoyed him. So he handed it to me to take care of.”

I stared at her red lips as they moved.

The last thread of control I had snapped.

“Wendy, you’re shameless.”

Her smirk didn’t fade.

I reached out.

I barely used any force.

But Wendy let out a dramatic cry and fell backward.

Behind her, the champagne tower crashed to the floor.

Glass shattered like an explosion, echoing through the entire hall.

“Jane! Have you completely lost it?”

Before I could react, a furious hand struck my face.

The sound of the slap cut through the room.

Silence followed.

The hit was so hard I tasted blood instantly.

A thin line of red slid down from the corner of my mouth.

I fell among the shards of glass, my palms slicing open as I tried to steady myself.

I didn’t feel the pain.

Because at that very moment, Ryan was holding Wendy carefully in his arms, shielding her.

He didn’t look at me once.

In front of everyone.

The boy in the school uniform came running toward me again.

He stumbled and dropped to his knees beside me, desperately trying to pull me up.

But his fingers passed through me over and over again.

He was sobbing, his voice breaking through the murmurs in the room.

“Stop hitting her! Ryan, you bastard! Don’t touch her!

“Run, Jane!

“The Ryan you see now doesn’t love you anymore! You’re going to die!”