I Saved Him, Now I’ll Leave Him

Chapter 1

Back when our love was still young and pure, I took forty-nine knife wounds meant for Ralph Pierce and fell into a vegetative state.

Five years later, I finally woke up, only to discover that he had fallen in love with my best friend, Sophia Anderson.

Even my own mother had taken Sophia in as her goddaughter.

Heartbroken and lost, I poured my pain into an anonymous online post. I never expected it to go viral.

Sophia was harassed and relentlessly cyberbullied. Unable to endure the humiliation, she took her own life.

Ralph still honored his promise and married me, but he hated me with every fiber of his being.

He hated that I had woken up at all, hated me for becoming the reason the woman he loved most was gone.

My mother blamed me too, accusing me of destroying the happy life she and Sophia had built together as mother and daughter.

The endless arguments between Ralph and me slowly wore away the last remnants of our love.

Then came the earthquake.

While trying to save me, he was trapped beneath a collapsing beam that crushed his neck.

With his dying breath, he used the last of his strength to tell me to run.

And all the while, he held Sophia’s urn tightly in his arms. "Claire… I’ve repaid the life I owed you. In my next life, please let Sophie and me be together…"

After his death, my mother publicly disowned me. "If you hadn’t torn Ralph and Sophie apart, they could have lived happily together! I don’t have a selfish, cruel daughter like you!"

Alone and buried beneath endless blame and hatred, I endured the rest of my life in misery and solitude.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day I first woke up from my coma.

*****

My mother, who had rushed over after getting the news, saw me and her eyes instantly turned red.

"Claire, thank God, you're finally awake!"

I turned my head slowly and saw Sophia frozen stiff not far away.

And I noticed the cross necklace around her neck.

That was the birthday gift I had given Ralph years ago, meant to bless him with a lifetime of safety.

Back then, he told me this cross meant the world to him, and he would cherish and keep it safe forever. And now he'd casually given it to her.

My throat tightened with bitterness, and I forced out a stiff, wry smile.

In my past life, the accident happened the very day after Ralph and I got engaged.

The first year, he stayed by my bedside caring for me. He bathed me, massaged my limbs, and sat with me talking every day.

In the still of the night, Ralph, who was always reserved and unfriendly to everyone else, would lean over my side and cry like a child.

"Claire, we were just about to get married. How could you be so stupid? Why did you take that knife for me?"

The second year, he came less and less often. When he did come, he was always with Sophia, and he left my care to a nurse. Sometimes he would say a couple words to me, then he would exchange a look with Sophia, and a quiet, charged, illicit energy hummed between the two of them.

A doctor once asked him who the person lying in the hospital bed was to him.

Ralph glanced at Sophia, then paused. "She's a friend of mine."

The third year, Ralph almost never came at all. Only my mother would drop by occasionally, to make a quick, perfunctory visit before leaving.

On the TV in my ward, they showed how Ralph spared no expense at Sophia's birthday party, setting off fireworks for her all night on a mountaintop.

The entire New York elite circle was talking about their perfect romance.

No one remembered me anymore, the rightful fiancée who took a knife for Ralph Pierce.

The nurse told me all of these things after I woke up.

In my past life, I couldn't accept their betrayal. I had a huge fight with Ralph and kicked Sophia out. But his heart had already gone with Sophia long ago.

Heartbroken and dejected, I made a post to vent my feelings from a fake social media account, and it unexpectedly went viral.

Sophia was harassed and bullied online because of this.

In no time, the headline "Pierce Group Heir’s Girlfriend: Homewrecker Who Stole Her Vegetative Best Friend’s Man" dominated every major news outlet.

Sophia couldn't bear the pressure and harassment, and she slit her wrists that same night.

To salvage his reputation, Ralph married me out of sheer desperation. But in private, he was colder to me than a complete stranger.

I was completely broken, and I lashed out at him for being so cold-hearted.

He smiled coldly and threw me onto the bed, then roughly ripped my clothes apart. "She's dead. Are you satisfied now!? You wanted marriage, I gave it to you. You wanted s*x, I'm giving that to you too! Claire, if you're going to blackmail me because you saved my life, don't talk to me about love. Because you don't deserve it!"

The next day, I went crying to my mother to pour my heart out.

She looked blankly at the red bruises all over my body, then turned around and gently wiped Sophia's memorial portrait.

"As Ralph's wife, you have to fulfill your marital duties. You got everything you have from Sophie's life. What right do you have to feel wronged here? Don't come to my house ever again. You'll offend Sophie!"

In my past life, my mother hated me so much that she directly contacted reporters and announced that she was cutting ties with me.

I became a laughingstock to everyone.

They all said I exploited the life I saved to force what I wanted, broke up two lovers, and even my own biological mother was disgusted by me.

In the end, I died alone on New Year's Eve.

My body wasn't discovered by a neighbor until it had already decayed and started smelling.

Just thinking about how miserable I was when I died in my past life made my heart ache uncontrollably.

The man I loved most, the best friend I once trusted with everything, and the mother who once adored me, all of them, in the end, came to hate me.

Now that I’ve been granted a second life, I refuse to repeat the same mistakes.

If they both love Sophia, then I’ll simply step aside and let them be together.

I picked up my phone and sent a message to an account that had remained silent for years.

Claire: Julian, I’ve come to fulfill the marriage promise we made all those years ago.