He Gave Up Our Baby So He Could Marry the Heiress

I was the girl the Harding family raised to become Dale Harding's future wife—and nobody in that house ever wanted me.

But when the Hardings lost everything, they placed their only hope in my hands.

To repay that debt, I took Dale with me and fought our way from city to city, years of hardship, until I'd raised him into the man he became.

The day Harding Group clawed its way back to the top, Dale pinned me against the wall and took me, rough and relentless.

He said：“Without you, I don't even know what Harding Group would mean to me.”

But later, at the Harding Group victory banquet, he brought another woman to stand in front of me.

“Maisie and I are getting married. We want you to handle the wedding for us—you, of all people.”

I smiled and said yes, then turned around and booked an abortion.

It was time to leave.

——

Dale came home just as I finished digging up the jasmine on the balcony.

He'd given me that plant before he went abroad.

He said I was like jasmine: soft on the outside, unyielding underneath.

Only because he'd never once seen me break.

Like now. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, close enough to feel my heartbeat, and still didn't notice the tear tracks on my face.

Liquor and expensive cologne filled the air between us. He nuzzled against my ear.

“Why'd you leave early? Are you mad at me?”

I didn't answer. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, everything I refused to feel would show.

He laughed softly and tightened his arms around me.

“Come on, don't be mad at me, okay?”

“You know I'm doing this for Harding Group. We've barely found our footing again. Marrying into the Joyce family is the only way I can keep what we built.”

“You understand that, right?”

My eyes burned. I tipped my head back toward the stars and asked, very quietly:

“Dale. All this time—what have I ever been to you?”

I don't know if he heard me.

A moment later, his full weight dropped onto my shoulder. His head lolled sideways against it. He was asleep.

I stood there on the balcony with him draped over me for a long time.

Only when the night wind picked up did I turn, hoist him onto my shoulder the way I'd done a hundred times before, and half-carry him back to bed.

I tucked the blanket around him and was about to leave when his hand shot out and pulled me into his arms. Still asleep, still dreaming, he murmured:

“You won't leave me, will you?”

For the first time, I had no answer.

I was an orphan. From the day I was brought into the Harding household, I knew what I was for: to become Dale Harding's wife.

Eight years by his side inside that family.

Then the Hardings fell, and we spent five more years clinging to each other through the wreckage.

Minus the five years he was overseas, that was seventeen years of my life.

Before today, I believed I would never leave him.

But Dale, you're getting married, and the bride isn't me.

What am I supposed to be to you after this?

If we had never crossed that line, I could still look you in the eye and answer to the role I was given—the girl who'd always been by your side, nothing more.

But there is no "if."

I slipped out of his arms, wide awake.

In the study, photographs of the two of us covered every wall.

I took them down one by one, and I didn't spare the ones tucked inside his desk drawers, either.

I'd spent the better part of a decade raising him. Now he had someone better. How could I bring myself to stand in the way?

My fingers brushed the mouse and the monitor lit up. A polished design for a pair of matching rings filled the screen.

Rings he'd designed to propose to me.

Every time I'd secretly glimpsed that file, my heart had raced like a girl in love for the very first time.

Now the initials engraved on the woman's band read: Maisie Joyce.