Seven years after graduation, Webster Hill and I—Elena Bertie—received invitations to the same New Year's gala. At the reunion dinner, our former headmaster teased him from across the table, steam rising from the dishes between them. "Elena once gave up her entire future for you. So... when are you two finally making it official?" Webster's glance flicked toward me. His throat tightened. "I'm getting married next month." While the table erupted in whistles and applause, he added, almost under his breath, "To Vivian." The name had dropped like a blade, the air had gone still. Every gaze had slid to me, soft with pity. I lifted a bite of fish, smiled upward, and said, "Congratulations." Then I went on eating. Whatever had to do with Webster had nothing to do with me. I focused on eating—one bite for me, one for the child I was carrying. My deskmate, Lisa, watched me wolf down rice and sighed. "Well, turn grief into appetite, I suppose." I rolled my eyes, cheeks bulging, and mumbled through the grains. "That page turned years ago. I've long moved forward." "Don't act tough. If you wanna cry, my shoulder's right here." Her earnestness startled me. I had no idea that my love for him was so obvious to everyone. Webster swapped seats with Lisa and settled beside me. "Dude, promise you'll come to the wedding." My fork paused. I had not heard the word for so long. It summoned the ghost of a girl once chased down corridors by spit and stones. I answered, polite and level. "Call me Elena, please." The deliberate distance made his smile falter. "Elena, if we can't be... Well, we can still be friends. I really hope you can be there." "We used to fight side-by-side. Such good times." We ate together, crammed together, and chased girls together. Or rather, I helped him chase Vivian Kitto. "Sorry, busy that day. I can't make it." The twenty-fifth was my son's birthday. We already had a family day planned at Disney. His eyes dimmed. "You never used to refuse me, Elena." "You said it yourself. That was before." I rose, bag over shoulder, and took my leave of the table. "I've got a child to bathe and tuck in. Enjoy the evening, guys." Webster suddenly caught my wrist. Something unreadable flared in his gaze. "What child? Are you nannying for someone?" I slipped free easily. "I'm married. I have a son." A short, harsh laugh escaped him. "Still the same, Elena, clinging to your dignity while your soul rots." I never bothered to recall the past. It had never been pride. He had simply trampled my dignity so Vivian could walk on it. "I trust her." The click of stilettos approached. Vivian had arrived, radiant as ever, claiming every gaze. She tucked her hand through his arm and beamed. "Long time no see, Elena. Sorry I'm late." "Since the twenty-fifth is impossible, bring your husband to my bachelorette on the twenty-fourth." That would be Christmas Eve. Why should I gift it to her? I was about to refuse when she turned to the room with a lilting smile. "Surely Elena has let go of the past, right?" "After all, you and Webster practically grew up together." The words clubbed me across the ribs. *** I was ten when my dad carried a one-legged boy into our house. His war-comrade's only son, Webster. His parents were crushed beneath their own roof in the quake, only to save his life. Disaster had made him brittle, suspicious. I offered my favorite toy. But he smashed it. "My models are rubble. Don't bother to remind me!" My parents spooned pork into his bowl. But he sniffed at their kindness. "You don't have to raise me. Just send me to an orphanage." He wanted death. His eyes were dim. I washed his twisted foot, steadying him through physiotherapy. He squinted at me, mocking me as the little foot-maid. One winter noon, I tried to support him into sunlight. Yet he shoved me into the freezing pond, and I burned with a fever for a week. In the end, even my parents talked of giving him up and sending him to the orphanage. Only my childish stubbornness kept him.
For five years, I had been his crutch. And slowly, he finally saw me as a friend. We linked pinkies. "Elena, you saved me. I swear to you a lifetime of happiness." When I shivered, he draped his blazer around my shoulders. At meals, every rib on his plate migrated to mine. The day I vaulted into the grade's top ten, he was more excited than I was. On that day, he hugged me so hard our fingers locked. I believed we would live happily ever after, just like Webster had promised before. But then, Vivian appeared. She would be redoing her senior year here. With long hair, she had a face every boy would sketch in his notebook. As the monitor, Webster introduced her around the class. When he reached me, Vivian smiled oddly. "Elena Bertie, your girlfriend, right? The famous power-couple." My smile remained. But his voice cut across, slow and deliberate. "You're mistaken, Vivian. Elena's my buddy." My heart clenched. Stunned, I looked at him in disbelief. Under her measuring stare, I managed a nod. "Right, we're buddies." I wanted to question him, but on second thought, I realized he never actually said he loved me, let alone intended to marry me. The whole drama was just my wishful thinking. I drew back without hesitation. He had no love for me, after all. He asked me to help him chase Vivian. So I covered his midnight trysts, even ghost-wrote his love notes to her. I kept my love deep inside my heart, keeping my distance. Then one dawn, he knocked at my bedroom door. "Elena, she turned me down. She said a cripple like me doesn't deserve her..." His eyes had been road maps of sleepless nights. A sour ache rose in me. I couldn't help but hug him. "It's her loss if she said so. If she doesn't want you, I do. I've loved you for years." His throat bobbed. Inside his eyes were emotions I could barely understand. The next second, he kissed me. "Elena, MIT together, then we get married." The dean informed me one day. If I ranked first in the recommendation exam, I would secure a guaranteed spot at MIT. I studied like a maniac, thinking happiness was glittering just ahead. But on exam morning, Webster had an accident. A car slammed into him at the gate, hurling him three meters. I sprinted across the asphalt, screaming for an ambulance. The dean kept reminding me, "Ten minutes to the exam, Elena. I'll accompany him. Just go!" But Webster's fingers clawed into my palm, blood warm. I looked up through a haze of tears. "I'll renounce my guaranteed admission. I choose to take the SAT." In my eyes, no future was worth more than his safety. A month later, as I helped Webster limp into the classroom, Vivian stepped forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Webster, you're my boyfriend now." During my bewilderment, she looped her arms around his neck, smiling with reckless triumph. "Since you were willing to take that risk for me, you must come to my send-off dinner." "A send-off dinner?" My voice came out dry and cracked, as though a fist closed round my heart. "I've been accepted by MIT through the recommendation exam. So, yeah, I'm holding a party." She looked at me, mouth curved in contempt. "And I have you to thank for it, kind enough to surrender your own place for my boyfriend." I trembled, trying to argue, "Webster is my..." "Buddy," he cut in, and the word dropped me into an ice cellar. A tear slid free. Webster's body went rigid. "Elena, you want me to be happy, don't you?" "Even without the recommendation, with your grades, you'll still get in." I refused to believe it and caught his sleeve, breathing in sobs. "We said we'd be together. You promised me a lifetime of happiness..." Vivian shoved me hard. "Stop scheming after my man under that cover of 'his buddy'." "I've seen your sort before, man-stealing tomboy." My head struck the lectern. Blood seeped through my hair. Webster tried to reach for me, but Vivian pouted. "Tomboys have a trick for every occasion. It's just a little cut. Look how she plays the fragile innocent." With a gloomy face, he took Vivian's hand and walked away. By the time I came home bandaged, Webster had made an excuse and moved out. Needless to ask whose idea it was. Guess I had lost my mind, still clinging to the pact we made, unable to let go. On Webster's birthday, Vivian shook her hair loose and slipped her elastic around his wrist. "Here's my gift. Happy birthday." Sweetness flooded his eyes. "I love it." I refused to be outdone. In public, I handed him the present I salvaged from five sleepless nights. It was the old plastic model buried with his house in the earthquake. His gaze faltered. When he shifted his gaze to me this time, something in him softened. Vivian's eyes reddened, her voice shook. "Give the hair-tie back. I see, you prefer your girl-buddy's gift." "Are you flaunting it to shame me? To call me stingy and careless?" The air around us curdled. Her best friend jabbed a pen into my forehead. "Tomboy, what's your game? Throwing down the gauntlet in front of the real girlfriend?" Panic seized Webster. He swept the model to the floor and ground it beneath his heel. Then, he turned to me, his voice glacial. "I'm an adult. Who keeps toys from childhood?" "Growing up together doesn't mean we forget boundaries." Shards littered the ground. With red eyes, I lifted my head. "But that night, you came to my room..." and kissed me. The last three words never left my lips before a vicious slap snapped my head sideways. "Elena, don't push your luck!" The sting on my cheek was nothing beside the tearing in my chest. Vivian sneered. "Webster in your room? You threw yourself at him, didn't you, shameless tomboy." "I didn't." Unfortunately, no one believed me. Teenagers were quick to hate when a spark was offered. They branded me the slut who entangled Webster, and hatred caught like wildfire. Stones thudded against my back. My books were shredded and flung into bins. Chair legs were sawed through. Even my silence was reported as chatter that wrecked the class. One winter day, Vivian's gang poured a pail of filthy water over me. They then locked me in the bathroom overnight. After that night, I burned with a fever for days. From my sick-bed, I still nursed a thread-thin hope that Webster would come. He never did. Then a headline flashed across my phone. At that moment, it crushed what was left of my heart.
"Betrayal for Wealth: War Comrade's Orphan Abused and Crippled" The article turned the truth on its head, saying my father only adopted Webster because he coveted his dead comrade's fortune. And then he tortured him, starved him, and broke his leg. The comment section screamed for my parents' deaths. I explained again and again, telling them the money had been buried beneath tonnes of rubble and Webster's leg was crushed in the quake. But no one listened. They found out things about me: tomboy, home-wrecker, third wheel. The cyber-storm swallowed me. My father, honest all his life, could not bear the slander. He jumped into the river and never came back. My mother was shattered. The doctors took her to the psychiatric ward. The house that once rang with the laughter of four was left to me alone. The day the college-entrance papers ended fell on the seventh night after Father's death. Webster texted, "How did the exam go?" I blacklisted and deleted him. *** "Cat got your tongue?" Vivian's voice hauled me back to the present. She hid a smile behind her hand. "Don't worry. Even if you only finished high school, we won't laugh. We're all friends." My face stayed blank. "Christmas Eve that day. I'll spend it with my family. Got no time for that." At the word "family", Webster's eyes lit up. "Elena, how have Mr. and Mrs. Bertie been these years?" "Before the wedding, I'd like to visit them." The image of my mother leaping from the building flickered across my mind. I curved my lips. "I hope you see them soon, very soon." My gaze slid to Vivian. As expected, she turned away with guilt, then composed herself and smirked. "So, Elena, no university, what have you been doing?" "I heard you served a year in prison. Is that true?" With a single sentence, the architect of my ruin tossed me to the wolves. But her own hands were spotless. Webster's face darkened. He stared at me in disbelief. I kept my voice level. "Yeah." *** On the seventh night after Father died, I spent my last coin on a bottle of wine for him. A mob smashed the makeshift memorial. They snapped canes that held the awning. One of them shattered the bottle against my skull. Blood in my eyes, I snatched a shard and drove it into his belly. As he fell, his phone rang, Vivian's name flashing on the screen. *** Her best friend lifted an eyebrow. "And what, exactly, sent you to jail?" "Probably got caught brawling with the lawful wife?" "Once a homewrecker, always trash. No surprise if she's selling herself now." The same teachers and classmates who had been all polite smiles a moment ago changed immediately. They were studying me with a blend of pity and voyeuristic glee. It was exactly the scene that drowned me seven years ago. I looked at Webster, wondering whether, after all these years, he would finally speak the truth. The first thing he said when our eyes met was. "Elena, I won't hold the prison term against you." "You're still my best buddy." A sheet of ice slid down my spine. The man in front of me was a stranger wearing a familiar face. Seven years had passed, and he was still nailing the "man-stealing tomboy" sign to my back. I gazed at him icily, then swung my arm and gave him two ringing slaps, one for each cheek. Since they insisted on poking the wound open, I would no longer wait until after the delivery. Webster stood frozen. Vivian shrieked, features twisted. "You dare hit him?" "Parasite! You should have died with your parents!" Webster was still gaping. Vivian's best friend, Kelly David, snatched a chair and brought it down on my head. Bang. It sounded so heavy and fierce, but the pain I had expected never came. A gentle voice drifted from above my head. "Darling, if I'd known the alumni dinner was this hazardous, I would have insisted you bring the entire security team." It was my husband, Derrick Doyle. When he looked at them, his mellow baritone carried the chill of a magistrate's gavel. "Assault, expect my lawyer's letter." Kelly, a seasoned street thug, sneered fearlessly. She kicked the splintered chair aside. "Pretty boy, which gutter do you crawl out of? Looking cute doesn't scare me. Drag me to court if you can." Derrick's lip curled. In his circle, he was the infamous "Devil". Those who talked back to him usually disappeared before breakfast. "Honey, your classmate is... so amusing." The moment the words left his mouth, I knew the legal route had been abandoned. Kelly was doomed. A vestige of conscience made me pull out my phone to call the police. But Kelly ripped it from my hand, smashed it under her heel, and ground several times. She was even grinning. I sighed. No use healing those determined to drown. She jabbed a finger into Derrick's chest. "Go on, lawyer, police, whatever, just try..." Before the sentence ended, two men in black clamped a hand over her mouth and clubbed her unconscious. She was carried out like a rolled carpet. Vivian yelled, "Who are you people? Where are you taking Kelly?" I answered for him, knowing he wouldn't bother. "My husband, Derrick Doyle." Webster's whole body had gone wooden. His Adam's apple bobbed. "Elena... you're really married?" Vivian gave a cold laugh. "Derrick, do you even know what your wife is?" Everyone here can testify, she played mistress, a textbook man-stealer." "High-school grad, jailbird." "Just dump her while you still can." I almost smiled, imagining the scene of Vivian begging for mercy.
Watch? https://cps-front.novelix.live/app-api/ext/new/202606195YSCltu5al ? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "Novelix" app ? search for "ni283885", and watch the full series ✨! #Novelix