Mervyn Stephens's first love was insane.

She tailed us at dinner. When we went on dates, she threatened to jump off buildings.

I'd brought up calling the police more than once, and every time Mervyn talked me out of it.

He said Victoria Pruitt was young and didn't know better, and that I shouldn't stoop to a madwoman's level.

Until the day of our engagement party, when Victoria slipped past security and snuck inside.

She tore my wedding gown to shreds and shattered my champagne tower.

Then she shoved me down a staircase—three months pregnant.

This time, Mervyn finally snapped.

He didn't listen to a single excuse. He had her committed to a psychiatric hospital on the spot.

I thought, at last, my life could settle into peace.

But that very night, the woman who should have been locked away in that hospital appeared beneath my building.

Under a cherry blossom tree, petals swirling through the air.

The girl who had abandoned him all those years ago looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and asked,

"Mervyn, you still love me, don't you?"

"At your engagement party, you played my favorite song."

"Your fiancée wore a gown I designed. The restaurant you took her to was my favorite."

"You even planted my favorite cherry blossoms outside your home."

"Mervyn, open your eyes and look at me. I refuse to believe you've truly let me go!"

——

He hadn't let her go.

He was silent for only three seconds before he bent down and kissed her.

He kissed her like he was venting, biting, devouring.

Only when he'd poured out every last drop of resentment in his heart did he release her, his eyes red.

"Yes. I can't let you go."

"But Victoria, what makes you think I, Mervyn Stephens, would marry secondhand goods who threw me away?"

Victoria didn't answer.

She just rose on her toes and kissed him.

His body went rigid for an instant.

Just as I thought he would push her away—

He pulled her into the car instead, his eyes burning.

Under the cover of night, the car began to rock violently.

What the two of them were doing needed no explanation.

And I was already too sick to speak.

Ten years together, and I had always known Mervyn had a madwoman for a first love.

A woman who was obsessive, willful, beyond reason.

She'd left him when he had nothing, then clawed her way back after he rose from the ashes, refusing to let go.

Every time Victoria showed up, Mervyn would turn to me, his face thick with annoyance, and say,

"She's just a lunatic. Why bother with her?"

But now, he was the one tangled up with that lunatic.

My stomach heaved.

I rushed to the bathroom and threw up until the world went black.

I don't know how long I retched before Mervyn finally came back.

He was straightening the clothes Victoria had wrinkled.

The moment he saw me, he rushed to my side.

"What's wrong, Melody James? Is this from what happened earlier today?"

"Don't be scared. I'll take you to the hospital right now."

He draped a coat over my shoulders, supporting me as he steered me toward the door.

But the perfume clinging to him only made me sicker.

I shoved his hand away, blindly, desperate not to be near him.

Mervyn assumed I was still angry about what had happened earlier.

His expression shaded into impatience.

"Melody, weren't you always the reasonable one?"

"Why are you still angry with me over today?"

"Victoria's just a lunatic. Don't lower yourself to her level. Let me make it up to you properly tomorrow, all right?"

Make it up to me how?

By teaching her another hard lesson in the car?

Or by keeping her as a mistress, just to humiliate me?

I couldn't get the words out.

Mervyn stood beside me for a while.

Finding it pointless, he quietly walked out.

Every trace of sleep had left me. I stared at the ceiling, my eyes hollow.

My head was full of the sight of the two of them kissing.

I turned it over and over, and still I couldn't let it go.

I wanted to find Mervyn and get the truth out of him.

When I reached the study door, Mervyn was sitting by the floor-to-ceiling window, lost in thought.

His eyes were fixed on the direction Victoria had gone.

And in his hand he held the ring Victoria had given him all those years ago.

Suddenly I remembered the things Victoria had said.

I turned my head and looked around me.

Pink curtains, childish decor, cherry blossoms everywhere.

This was supposed to be our marital home, paid for and furnished with my money, and yet there wasn't a single corner of it that suited me.

Just like how I didn't care for soft instrumental music, and didn't like eating at fancy restaurants.

But Mervyn always, without fail, took me to that same upscale steakhouse.

At first I thought Mervyn simply didn't understand these things.

Now, looking back, it wasn't that he didn't understand.

He had only taken his love and his longing for Victoria

and woven it into every part of his marriage with me.

The answer was already clear. There was no need to ask.

Understanding it all now, I wiped away my tears.

I was about to turn back when I accidentally knocked over a vase beside me and shattered it.

The sharp crack of the breaking vase made Mervyn whip his head around.

The ring in his hand slipped free and rolled to my feet.

Without thinking, I bent down to pick it up.

The man who had looked so wistful a moment ago suddenly rushed over.

Roughly, he snatched the ring out of my hand.

"Don't go touching my things!"

The edge of the ring cut a thin line of blood across my palm.

The wound was deep, but I didn't feel any pain.

Maybe I'd just gotten used to it.

When we first got together, Mervyn had lost his temper with me over this very ring.

I'd called it ugly.

I'd said the cheap, childish craftsmanship didn't suit a businessman like him.

But he'd said it was his good-luck charm, and no one was allowed to touch it.

Some good-luck charm.

It was a keepsake of his longing for her.

I looked at the bare finger of Mervyn's hand, and a faint curl tugged at my lips before I could stop it.

"Mervyn, where's our wedding ring?"

As though something had come back to him,

Mervyn's furious expression softened a little, and he lowered his voice.

"Forgot about it. Probably left it at the engagement party."

He hadn't forgotten it.

Victoria had thrown it away.

This very night, I'd seen it with my own eyes.

He'd carefully treasured the ring Victoria gave him for ten years.

But my wedding ring, he'd tossed casually onto the side of the road.

"If it's gone, it's gone. It wasn't anything important anyway."

Mervyn let out a sigh.

Just as I was about to leave, he suddenly grabbed my hand.

I thought he'd noticed the cut on my palm.

The next second, instead, I heard him say, careless as anything,

"Melody, let's just cancel the wedding. We can sign the marriage license, that's enough."

"You saw the state Victoria's in."

"There's something wrong with her mind. She can't handle any kind of shock."

This reason again.

The first time Mervyn and I went on a date,

Victoria had followed us to the restaurant and slipped something into my food.

I was throwing up and falling apart for days, nearly dehydrated enough to land in the hospital.

Mervyn said she was still young, and told me not to hold it against her.

The second time, on our anniversary,

Victoria threatened to jump off a building to make him go back to her.

Mervyn said she just couldn't accept the fact that we were together.

The third time, the fourth, the fifth...

She killed the kitten I was raising. She threw out the piece I'd entered into a competition.

And every single time, Mervyn said to me,

"She's just a madwoman. Why bother arguing with a madwoman?"

"From now on we'll just be more careful, just don't set her off, that's all."

Back then, I never caught the tenderness buried under those words.

Looking back now, I understand.

He'd been enjoying all of it.

Because he enjoyed it, he indulged her.

Because he loved her, he gave in willingly.

And my devotion, my years at his side, were nothing but one act in their twisted little love story.

The ache in my chest was unbearable. I pulled away from Mervyn's reach.

The blood pooled in my palm dripped to the floor with the motion.

Mervyn finally noticed the cut, and his expression snapped tight with worry.

"How did this happen?"

"Honestly, what am I going to do with you? You're hurt, and you don't even think to tell me?"

I had told him. No one had ever cared.

There was a time one of Mervyn's enemies came after me. It was dire.

I called him dozens of times. He never picked up.

I only learned the truth after I'd already been admitted to the hospital.

Victoria had lured those people to me on purpose.

She'd faked being sick, taken Mervyn's phone, and blocked every message I sent.

Because of that, I lost our first child.

When Mervyn found out the truth, he was wracked with guilt.

But the moment I actually asked him to punish Victoria,

that guilt curdled into impatience.

I should have understood it even then.

The person he truly loved, deep down, had never been me.

And the unloved never earn the right to be willful.

Still, better to understand it now than never.

I drew my hand back and dressed the wound myself, under Mervyn's gaze.

Mervyn watched me for a long while.

His eyes held heartache, and guilt.

And something else I couldn't read.

But I had no desire to keep tangling myself up in this.

Before he could speak again, I turned away first.

"It's nothing serious. Go to sleep."

"You've got Victoria's mess to clean up tomorrow."

Mervyn knew he was in the wrong, and didn't know how to coax me back into a better mood.

He hesitated for a long time, then only let out a quiet sigh.

"All right. Get some rest."

"Since you don't want to see me, I'll sleep in the study tonight."

"If there's anything you need from me, just say the word."

There was no need.

From now on, I would never need him again.

Back in my room,

I cancelled the honeymoon trip we'd planned and called my mother, an ocean away.

When I'd finished telling her everything, she let out a long sigh.

"I told you from the start that Mervyn couldn't be trusted. You just wouldn't listen."

"Well, here we are. You got your heart trampled, didn't you?"

"Forget it. Come home once you've had enough of all this. Your father and I miss you so much."

"And don't grieve too hard. Wounds always heal in the end."

Yes. Wounds always heal in the end.

Just as the feelings I had for him would, in the end, be laid down.

I looked at the plane ticket my mother had sent me.

Something cracked open in my chest, and the tears wouldn't stop falling.

For myself, and for the past ten years.

I didn't sleep a wink all night.

By the time I got up, Mervyn had already left.

On the coffee table in the living room sat a brand-new diamond ring.

He was always like this.

Every time Victoria finished one of her scenes, he'd offer me some kind of compensation.

Flowers. Handbags. Diamond rings.

Anything, except sending Victoria away.

If neither of them could let the other go, then I'd let them have each other.

I packed my things and went to the hospital alone.

Halfway there, a red sports car came barreling straight at me.

I couldn't get out of the way. My whole body slammed hard against the ground.

In an instant, the world spun upside down.

Violent pain tore through me, sinking from every limb deep into my core.