He Proposed to Her, I Warn My Younger Self

I froze. I stared at those words for a few seconds, but the blood loss was already making everything feel slow and foggy. Just as I was about to tap out a reply, the door burst open with a bang. Hugo stormed in, and the second he saw all the blood in the bathtub, his face dropped. "Adeline Wright! All you ever do is pull stunts like this to get attention, don't you?" He pulled me out of the water, grabbed a bath towel, and roughly wrapped it around my wrist. "I only proposed to Loria Ingram to generate buzz for my new project, and you had to make such a big deal out of it?" I looked at him, and a faint, prickling pain began to spread through my chest. Ten years, and he couldn't even put any effort into lying to me. "How does putting a ring on her finger in public create buzz?" I managed to say, my voice shaking. Hugo impatiently pulled me to my feet. "The media wants a big splash. Now get up. I'm taking you to the hospital." The blood loss was making me feel dazed and out of it, and I let him half-carry, half-drag me out the door. The stairs were swimming in front of me as I leaned against him, my whole body feeling cold. The moment I was finally sitting in the car, I couldn't hold it in anymore and started sobbing, "Hugo, could you please let me go?" His hand on the steering wheel paused for a second, and then he pressed his lips together before slowly saying, "We're never going to be apart." He leaned over and reached out to touch the scarred, bumpy right side of my face. I shoved his hand away hard. "Don't touch me! If I'd known back then that you'd turn out like this, I never would have saved you." I covered my right cheek with my hand as I cried, spitting out those harsh words. Hugo's face immediately turned ugly. "Enough! I don't want to fight with you right now." I was about to talk back when his phone rang and cut our argument short. He answered it, and his expression slowly turned serious. "Got it. I'll handle it right away." After hanging up, he jerked the steering wheel and made a U-turn. "A bunch of online trolls popped up, saying Loria is the other woman who stole someone's man." His tone turned very urgent. "After you get bandaged up, you need to come with me to the press conference right away and clear things up." As he drove, he freed up one hand, grabbed some tissues, and pressed them hard against my still-oozing wrist. "Hold it down tight." I watched how smoothly he did it, and my heart went completely cold. So in his eyes, I didn't even have the right to be upset. All my pain and hurt mattered less to him than Loria's reputation. "Do you even care about me at all?" I asked. He shot me a glance. "The doctor said you always cut it pretty shallow every single time, so it's never going to kill you. Can you just grow up a little? This isn't the time to throw a tantrum." I closed my eyes and didn't say another word. Tears kept falling silently until my whole face was wet. ***** After we got to the hospital, a nurse hurried over to stitch up my wrist. Outside the room, Hugo picked up his phone and spoke in a gentle voice, "Don't be scared, Lori, I'll take care of it. Yeah, she's going to clear things up." I stared blankly at the nasty, jagged scars lining my wrist, and even the pain itself started to feel completely numb. After the nurse finished bandaging me up and left, I pulled my old phone out of my pocket. The screen was still on, and that unread message was glaring at me. It read: Who is this? Do you know Hugo? My fingers were shaking as I typed back: I'm you from ten years in the future. The other side replied almost instantly: Really? So are you and Hugo happy together now? When I read those words, I couldn't hold it in anymore. I covered my mouth with my hand and started crying.