Chapter 2
1396 Words
The comments suddenly froze, then began scrolling even faster, even more wildly than before.
A: [Leaving? Are you going abroad for treatment?]
B: [She must be going overseas to try for a baby! I saw a pregnant woman next to Mr. Ford yesterday, and her figure looked a lot like Faye's!]
C: [Ahhh, it must be Faye! Are you two finally having a baby?]
D: [Wake up! Faye just said her husband cheated! Unless... she's running away while pregnant?]
"Baby..."
Faye softly repeated the word. It felt as if an invisible hand had clenched around her heart, squeezing until she could barely breathe.
Instinctively, she touched her flat stomach.
There had once been three tiny pulses of life there, and all three had gone still.
The first time, she had just seen two lines on the pregnancy test when she received the news that John had been in a car accident. She rushed to the hospital without caring about anything else, only to get into an accident on the way and lose their first child.
The second time, she was three months pregnant. By the swimming pool at the Ford family villa, her mother-in-law "accidentally" pushed her into the water. Faye desperately protected her belly, but she still failed to keep that little life.
The most recent time, she had a fever of 104 degrees and lay alone in a hospital bed while waves of sharp pain tore through her lower abdomen. She called John, only to be told he was away on a business trip.
Only later did she learn that his so-called "business trip" had actually been a visit to an amusement park in a neighboring city with another woman and a child.
The baby in her womb had quietly left her in the middle of her loneliness and pain. After that high fever, her body completely broke down, and she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
A chill seeped out from deep in her bones. In the night wind, Faye's voice trembled so badly it hardly sounded like her own.
"Do you all still remember how John and I met?"
The comments were instantly flooded with "sweet memories."
A: [Of course! The golden girl who escaped the mountains and the only son of a wealthy Kingsley City family. It was literally the perfect love story!]
B: [Back then, when Faye got into a car accident and the roads were blocked by heavy snow, Mr. Ford walked dozens of miles to the hospital. His shoes were completely ruined!]
C: [The F in his company's name stands for you! He loves you so much!]
As Faye watched those comments scroll by, her vision blurred completely.
The moments fans had worshiped as a "fairy-tale romance" had all been built on grievances she had never spoken aloud.
"I knelt with him outside the Ford family villa for an entire month before they finally allowed us to get married."
Her voice turned nasal. "His mother looked down on me because I was an orphan. She said I wasn't worthy of the Ford family. I had to lower my head and apologize again and again before she barely accepted me.
"Back then, he risked everything to reach the hospital not because of me, but because I was five months pregnant and nearly died together with the baby.
"He never wanted to appear in my videos, and everyone thought he was just low-profile."
She paused for so long that the livestream began to grow uneasy. "But now it seems the truth was that all his desire to share his life had already been given to someone else."
She closed her eyes, as if she could see that other complete, untouched world made up of tens of thousands of videos.
"In John's alternate account, that woman called him husband so sweetly, and that three-year-old child called him Dad just as sweetly. In the end, maybe I was the one who reached too high."
The words fell like sparks into boiling oil. The livestream erupted, and the number of viewers soared past one million.
A: [If there really are tens of thousands of videos, he must have been filming them for years! Has this man been living a double life the whole time?!]
B: [So whenever Mr. Ford was "busy," he was busy being someone else's husband and father? Disgusting!]
C: [I don't believe it! John isn't that kind of person! Faye, did you misunderstand something?]
D: [Exactly! Could you be overthinking it? You two have ten years together!]
A misunderstanding?
How desperately Faye wished this were only a misunderstanding.
She looked at the comments still defending them and felt her heartbreak turn numb.
"There is no misunderstanding."
Her voice was hoarse, thick with tears. "I saw it with my own eyes. I saw him kiss her earlobe and say her name in a voice so gentle he had never once used with me."
"I'm sorry..." At last, she could no longer hold back. Tears burst from her eyes. "I'm sorry I let everyone down. My happiness seems to have been fake."
"The pregnant woman by his side could never be me."
In the livestream, curses, doubts, and words of comfort tangled together into chaos.
Just then, several abrupt comments jumped out.
A: [Check the news! John was in a car accident! It looks serious!]
B: [It's true! It's all over the trending list! The photos from the scene are terrifying!]
C: [Did he get into the accident because he heard about the livestream and rushed to find Faye to explain?]
Faye's heart clenched violently, and panic surged up almost by instinct.
After ten years, even if he only coughed once, she would instinctively go looking for medicine.
Yet more comments instantly dragged her back to reality.
A: [Serves him right! That's karma for cheating!]
B: [It has to be a pity act! He's afraid of being ruined, so he's trying to win sympathy. What an actor!]
C: [Waiting for J&F Corp stock to crash!]
A pity act?
For a moment, Faye was dazed.
Just then, her phone suddenly rang. The words "Mother-in-law" flashed on the screen.
She numbly answered and turned on the speaker.
A shrill, vicious curse immediately pierced through the phone.
"Faye, where the hell are you? John thought you had been kidn*pped and searched for you like a madman. Then he got into a car accident on the highway, and he's still being rescued!
"And you still have the nerve to livestream? Are you trying to kill my son? I knew a jinx like you should never have been allowed to stay!
"All he did was take care of Lily Jean for a few days. Did you really have to make such a scene?
"You can't even have children, and you still think you get to act like this?"
Lily...
So that woman's name was Lily.
A name that sounded gentle and soft, perfectly matching the face that looked seventy percent like hers.
Faye felt as if her entire body had gone cold, her blood frozen solid.
"So... the woman he's been taking care of all this time is Lily, the one who looks so much like me?"
"Then between her and me, who is the extra one?"
"Madwoman! You madwoman!" her mother-in-law shrieked from the other end. "Your husband is about to die, and you're still talking to me about this? Get back here right now!"
Faye hung up.
Almost at the same time, her phone vibrated with a new image.
It was from John.
On a bloodstained shirt, several crooked words had been written in a darker shade of red.
I'm coming to take you home.
Blood and vows had always been the quickest way to break down the last defenses in Faye's heart.
Despite herself, her heart softened for one fleeting second.
Maybe... maybe he still had her in his heart?
Before she could think any further, someone in the livestream angrily exposed the truth.
A: [Don't believe him! The news video is out! John was injured because he was protecting the pregnant woman in the passenger seat!]
B: [Yes! Witnesses at the scene said he kept shielding that woman the whole time!]
With trembling fingers, Faye opened the news video that had been pushed to her phone.
The footage was blurry, but John's anxious voice could be heard clearly.
"Lily, don't be scared. Hold on!"
- Writer
