Exactly one week before our wedding, my fiancé, Arthur Vance, told me he was going on a trip with his ex-wife and their daughter. The trip would last five days and four nights. They would get back just in time for him to marry me. By the time I found out, his happy family of three was already a thousand miles away. That night, I called him frantically, dialling his number over and over like a madwoman. I finally managed to get him to come back early. With red, tear-filled eyes, I confronted him: "She is your ex-wife. You are about to get married. How could you justify spending the night out of town with her?" He rubbed his temples, the look in his eyes cold and entirely apathetic. "Evelyn, I already abandoned them to come back here." "What more do you want from me?" 1 People always say that in a first marriage, you guard against mistresses. But in a second marriage, you guard against the ex-wife. I always thought something like that would never happen to me. But reality delivered a brutal, crushing blow. According to our original schedule. In exactly one week, Arthur and I were getting married. He had been incredibly busy with work lately, so the burden of finalizing all the wedding details fell entirely on me. I had been running around like a headless chicken for days. I naively assumed that, just like me, he was working overtime desperately trying to clear his schedule so we could get married. But this morning, he suddenly called me. "Evie, my daughter is throwing a tantrum and wants to go on a trip. I need to go spend some time with her." The hand I was using to address wedding invitations trembled violently. A thick drop of black ink slid unsteadily from the tip of my fountain pen. It fell. And landed with a soft splat. Blooming across the dark red envelope. In the bottom left corner, our two names written side-by-side: [Arthur Vance & Evelyn Miller] The ink bled across them. Instantly blurring them beyond recognition. The smile on my lips faded. I put the pen down and lowered my eyes. "Didn't you say you were swamped at the company? You don't even have time to help plan our wedding, but you have time to take your kid on a trip?" The line went silent for a moment before he finally offered an excuse. "Chloe found out I was getting married and cried all night." "If I don't agree to this, I'm afraid she'll never call me 'Dad' again." His voice was filled with helplessness, but also an overwhelming, undeniable indulgence. Chloe was the only daughter he had with his ex-wife. Naturally, she was his absolute treasure. My grip on the phone tightened instinctively. I opened and closed my mouth several times, but I couldn't force a single word of objection out. What could I possibly say? Tell him not to see his kid? Say that I needed him more right now? "What's wrong? Are you mad?" Sensing my mood had soured, he let out a low chuckle. He even sounded amused as he teased me: "You're not actually jealous of a little kid, are you?" I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and suppressed the suffocating frustration rising in my chest. I silently comforted myself: [At least he told me before he left.] [Besides, that's his daughter. She's his flesh and blood, a bond he can never sever. How can I possibly compete with her?] I compromised. But I still couldn't stop my nose from stinging. My voice carried a grievance I couldn't quite hide. "I'm not mad." "Just... try to come home early tonight." The phone was quiet for a second. Finally, he offered a vague, non-committal hum. "Mhm." 2 Back in the day, Arthur's divorce from his ex-wife, Sarah Holt, was notoriously ugly. At the time, the Vance family business was on the brink of bankruptcy. His father committed suicide by jumping off a bridge, and his mother fell severely ill from the shock. Outside, they were drowning in massive debt. Inside, his mother's medical bills were astronomical. The pressure was already suffocating him. And it was at that exact moment that his high school sweetheart and wife, Sarah, filed for divorce. She demanded full custody of their daughter. And she demanded that the Vance family liquidate two-thirds of their remaining assets as child support. Having the majority of his family's wealth siphoned away was undoubtedly a fatal blow. But having the love of his life abandon him in his darkest hour? For Arthur, that was a soul-crushing betrayal. I heard that Arthur barely survived that period of his life. I thought that since things ended so horribly between them... That he would never, ever have any entanglements with her again in this lifetime. But today, the vague hesitation in his voice gave me a sudden, inexplicable sense of dread. For the entire afternoon. I was trapped in a state of restless, suffocating anxiety. I sat cross-legged on the rug. I looked up and scanned the room. Everywhere I looked was celebratory wedding red. On the floor, beside me, in the distance... Red wedding decorations were scattered everywhere. It was supposed to be the most joyous color imaginable, but it couldn't spark a single ounce of happiness or excitement in me anymore. I hugged my knees and rested my head on them. I let time slip away, second by second. And I let the freezing chill in my heart spread slowly through my entire body. I glanced at my phone screen over and over again. Unlocked it. Locked it. Unlocked it again. Locked it again. Over and over. But since that phone call this morning... Arthur hadn't sent me a single message. I grew exhausted from waiting and eventually dozed off. Until my 10:00 PM alarm went off. I jolted awake from my hazy sleep. I looked up and instinctively scanned the room. My heart plummeted. [No one.] [Arthur isn't back yet.] I pulled down my phone's notification bar. [Nothing.] [Absolutely nothing.] The emotions I had been suppressing all day instantly exploded. I tapped his familiar contact name and dialled Arthur's number. 3 The first time, no one answered. The second time, after ringing three times, it finally connected. I didn't speak. The other end of the line was silent too. After just a few seconds of silent standoff. I realized the person who answered the phone wasn't Arthur. "Sarah?" The person on the other end let out a soft laugh. "It's me." The heart that had been suspended in my throat all afternoon finally crashed heavily to the floor, sinking to the very bottom. I bit down hard on my lower lip. The pain forced me to stay calm for a moment. Even though the truth was glaringly obvious. I still stubbornly, desperately asked: "Why are you there? Didn't Arthur say he was just taking his daughter out for the day?" She burst out laughing. The sheer, unadulterated triumph in her laugh was completely undisguised. "I'm her mother. How could I possibly leave my child?" "Besides, we're going to be out of town for so many days this time. He's a grown man who can barely take care of himself; how is he supposed to take care of a kid?" My brain short-circuited. For a second, I literally couldn't process what she meant. The questions tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them: "What do you mean?" "What do you mean 'so many days'?" "Wasn't he just taking her out for the day?" "He told me he was coming home tonight." She feigned surprise, but her tone was dripping with blatant showing off. "Oh, you didn't know?" "My little Chloe wanted to see the ocean, so Arthur drove us down to Miami." "We're staying here for five days and four nights." I stood frozen in place. The joints in my fingers slowly turned white as my grip on the phone tightened. Miami was over a thousand miles away from where we lived. Arthur absolutely did not tell me that "spending time with his kid" meant travelling that far. Or that it meant spending multiple nights out of town with his ex-wife. I was shaking with rage. My voice trembled uncontrollably. "Put Arthur on the phone." Sarah let out a soft, mocking laugh. "I can't. He's in the shower." "I'm actually just about to bring him his underwear." "He still has that exact same habit. Every time he showers, he forgets to grab his clothes." 4 Faintly, through the phone, I heard Arthur's voice: "Sarah, I forgot my clothes." His tone was perfectly natural and casual. Like a completely normal husband calling out to his wife. At the same time, it indirectly proved that everything Sarah just said... was entirely true. [They're divorced, yet he has absolutely zero boundaries with her!] Arthur's blatant lying filled me with a burning, suffocating rage. Sarah's mocking laughter still echoed in my ears. I collapsed onto the sofa. Trembling uncontrollably. I gritted my teeth, biting down viciously on my lower lip. It wasn't until I tasted the faint, metallic tang of blood that I instinctively let go. The call had already been disconnected. Leaving me completely humiliated, frozen in place, forced to digest these agonizing emotions all by myself. But... why? What gave them the right to humiliate me like this? I refuse to allow them to trample all over me while I sit here fully aware of what they're doing. I licked the broken corner of my lip. I picked up my phone again. And called Arthur back. No answer. I kept calling. Until the 19th try, the call finally connected. This time, Arthur was the one who answered. "Evie, my phone was on silent earlier. What's wrong? Why are you calling so frantically?" His tone carried a rare, minuscule trace of apology and guilt. By now, I was completely calm. My voice was entirely flat, devoid of any emotion: "Where are you?" He cleared his throat unnaturally, his defensive posture noticeably shrinking. "I... I'm in Miami. Chloe said she wanted to see the ocean, so I brought her." "Is Sarah there too?" "..." "Yeah." After a long pause, he finally admitted it. I closed my eyes, suppressing the chaotic emotions churning behind them. "If you rush back tonight, I will pretend none of this ever happened, and our wedding will proceed as planned." "Evelyn! How the hell am I supposed to explain that to my kid if I leave right now?!" His voice instantly spiked several octaves. His tone was filled with sheer anger and explosive frustration. I immediately hung up the phone. Then I locked the screen and turned the phone off. I didn't want to hear any explanations right now, and I refused to compromise. I only wanted the exact result I demanded. 5 Arthur arrived home at 4:00 AM. I was curled up on the sofa. I hadn't slept a wink all night. I had replayed a million different scenarios in my head of what would happen when he got back. How we would confront each other, how we might even have a screaming match. But none of that happened. When he walked through the door, he just shot me an icy, detached glance. Then he started unpacking his luggage, completely ignoring me. I had become invisible to him. The rage I had been building up all afternoon felt like it was punching a wall of cotton. This was exactly what everyone around him said about him: He has such a great temper. It was true. From the day Arthur and I met to the day we started dating. Five whole years. We had never had a single fight. It wasn't that we didn't have conflicts. We just couldn't fight. Every time we had an issue, he would just use those calm, emotionless eyes to quietly watch me lose my temper. And then he would drop a single sentence: "You need to calm down." Clearly, this time, he was planning to use the exact same cold-treatment tactic. The suffocating, dead silence in the room made it hard for me to breathe. After a long silence. I still chose to speak first: "Are you not going to explain what happened today?" The air pressure in the room dropped even lower. He stopped what he was doing. And looked up at me. His brow was furrowed with deep impatience: "My kid wanted to see the ocean, what was I supposed to do?" I practically roared back at him simultaneously: "Then when you called me, why didn't you say you were going so far away? And for five days and four nights?!" "Furthermore, going on an overnight trip out of state with your ex-wife... do you think that's appropriate behavior for a man who is about to get married?!" He froze in place. A flash of embarrassment crossed his eyes. He knew he was in the wrong. His tone involuntarily softened a bit: "It was super rushed at the time, I didn't have time to tell you." "Besides, if I had told you, would you have agreed to it?" "Look, Chloe was already crying her eyes out because she thought me getting married meant I was abandoning her." "If I rejected her one tiny request on top of that, do I even deserve to be called a father?" Every word he said was perfectly articulated, armed with flawless logic. But I was shaking with sheer, absolute rage. Gritting my teeth, I forced out the suffocating resentment I had been holding in all day: "If you want to play the role of 'Father of the Year', did it have to be right now?!" "You have the time to take your ex-wife and your kid on a vacation, but you don't have the time to help plan our wedding?" "Did you ever even care about us getting married in the first place?" He stood there, looking at me with absolute, freezing calm. The way he looked at me was filled with exhaustion and barely concealed tolerance. "Evelyn. I already abandoned them to come back here." "What more do you want from me?"
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "391289", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel