son.
But Mom, if someone truly loves you, do you
<
have to go to such lengths to get their
attention?
After she died, my life was hell. I finally found someone to lean on, and he was gone too.
That’s when I became suicidal, and that’s when I met the love of my life.
I was standing on the roof, deciding how to die.
He happened to be there, and he saved me.
I’ll never forget his playful expression as he touched my hair, wincing in pain: “My cat just ran away, there’s a vacancy at my place.”
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く
He took me home, cared for me, healed my
wounds.
I became his shadow.
I traveled with him, rescued animals with him,
offered free counseling with him.
An elderly woman helped me up.
She asked why I wasn’t going home.
I looked at the dead grass. “I want to go home.”
“But I don’t have a home anymore.
33
I lived for love Without it Loouldn’t an
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<
I lived for love. Without it, I couldn’t go on.
I put the ring on my finger. After calming
down, I turned off my phone and went to
Arizona for a month.
When I finally turned my phone back on, I saw countless missed calls and messages from Ethan.
A frantic knocking at the door. Ethan, looking haggard, stood there.
He pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my hair.
“Sarah, you disappeared without a word!
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L
Didn’t you think about how I’d feel?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You weren’t like this before…”
Maybe I’d pretended to be so in love with him
for so long.
He actually believed it.
I looked at his resentful face, reached up to
caress it, then slapped him hard.
Chapter 6
“I’ve always been like this. Indifferent to you,
<
not caring about your feelings.”
“All this time, my kindness was all an act.”
“I love someone else. It was never you.”
When he came back to me after Olivia left,
part of it was because they looked so similar,
I couldn’t let go.
The other part? I wanted to drag them to hell.
Now that they looked less alike, and I had
what I wanted.
There was no reason to keep up the charade.
<
He reeled, collapsing to the floor.
“Impossible… You only had me all these
years. How could you love someone else?”
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
I looked down at him, describing every detail
of my time with the man I loved, how we met,
everything.
I laughed, then I cried.
I watched the light fade from Ethan’s eyes.
“Actually, I should thank you for dumping me
for Olivia. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have tried
He knew that was the darkest time of my life,
yet he abandoned me without hesitation to go
confess to Olivia.
How could I still love him?
He started crying, clinging to my legs like a
child begging for candy.
He looked like a stray dog, utterly pathetic.
I stared at my tear–stained dress, disgusted.
“Don’t cry. It’s embarrassing. What do you have to be upset about?”
<
“Even if I didn’t love you, I was with you for
years. And you only came to me because you
couldn’t have her, you used me as a stand-
in.”
