The line went quiet for a moment.

I thought he might ask why the baby was gone.

He didn't.

His voice came back flat and cold.

"Do whatever you want."

"I told you a long time ago. Madison grew up with me. Her parents died in an accident saving my life. I owe it to her to look after her for the rest of mine."

"She's a simple person. Don't drag your filthy little mind into what we are."

Then he hung up.

I sat there holding the phone while the tears kept falling.

These past days, the pain had hollowed me out until I'd gone half numb to it.

Adam Gilbert was my classmate in college.

Back then I worked part-time at a bubble tea shop, and one day a customer was deliberately giving me a hard time.

He was the one who stepped in and said something for me.

He never knew I'd already fallen for him at first sight.

Maybe it was that small kindness that gave me the nerve. I worked up my courage and started chasing him.

I never expected what he said back.

"Deborah, the truth is, I like you too."

After graduation I followed him from one city to the next.

Until we finally settled down.

His time went to work, and almost all of what was left went to taking care of Madison Brooks.

What he saved for me was pitifully little.

I spent a lot of evenings alone in the apartment, scrolling through the photos Madison posted of the two of them together.

I told myself Adam still loved me, in the end.

I worked so hard to convince myself they were only friends.

But it wasn't until much later that I understood. Madison was never satisfied just being Adam's friend, and Adam, always protecting how Madison felt, kept sacrificing me to do it.

A message came in from the wedding planner.

"Ms. Henson, are you sure you want to cancel the service?"

I confirmed it.

I was the only one who ever cared about a single step of that wedding, from start to finish.

Choosing the rings, the guest list, the venue, the favors...

From beginning to end, I was the only one looking forward to that day.

Adam came to a single dress fitting with me, and only because Madison wanted to shop and the dress shop happened to be on the way.

I looked around the apartment, at everything I'd chosen so carefully, the big things and the small ones, the furniture and appliances down to the lamps and the tablecloths.

He never had any patience for any of it.

I remembered the time before he left for Iceland, when I'd asked him.

"Could you take me to see a movie?"

He was already halfway out the door, brushing me off.

"Some other time. I promised Madison I'd take her to that restaurant she's been dying to try."

Now I understood.

He simply never cared about anything to do with me.

I let every relative and friend know the wedding was off.

Then I called a moving company and had them carry out every appliance and every piece of furniture I'd chosen so carefully.

The apartment that used to feel like home went empty fast, but my heart had emptied out long before it.

I sent him one last message.

"I've taken everything I bought. I had a cleaning service come through your place too."

Then I deleted his contact.

As if this man had never appeared in my life at all.

Back at my own place, I sat on the couch and watched a movie.

A friend called, her voice gentle with worry.

"Debbie, it's okay. I saw it ages ago, Adam was never good enough for you. Leaving him was the right thing to do."

"The next one will be better."

I gave a small, quiet laugh.

It was raining outside, and the past kept rewinding through my mind, scene after scene.

I should have seen it sooner. Whatever Adam and I had, it ended the very first time I met Madison.

We'd been on a date when Madison called him, crying, saying she wasn't feeling well.

He'd left in a rush.

"Madison needs me. I have to go take care of her. You can get yourself home, right?"

That night, walking home alone, I realized someone was following me.

I was shaking so hard I could barely keep moving.

I made it as far as a convenience store and ducked inside, and the clerk took pity on me, called the police, and saw me home afterward.

By the time I got there my clothes were soaked through.

The rain left me with acute pneumonia.

While I was in the hospital, he stayed at Madison's side the whole time. Not even a text.

The day I was discharged, I called him.

I'd meant to tell him we should break up. In the end I said nothing at all.

A year ago, on a business trip, I got caught in a robbery at the airport.

Hands trembling, I called him.

"Can you come pick me up?"

He was in the kitchen at the time, making soup for Madison, and all he said was,

"Just grab a cab home. Madison wants chicken soup, I can't get away."

What he didn't know was that not far from me, a man with a knife was attacking people.

One dead, one wounded.

The injured man was less than two hundred yards from where I stood.

I walked out of that terror by myself, and he never even asked whether I'd made it home safe.

It's not that it didn't hurt.

But I loved him.

And because I loved him, I always found more room to forgive.

He'll get better with time, I told myself.

Then I lost the baby, and I finally couldn't keep lying to myself.

I answered my friend calmly.

"You're right. He's the one who doesn't deserve me."

All along, my love had been pure and fierce.

He was the one who could never hold it. He took everything I gave, every sacrifice, as his due, and left every hurt and every grievance of mine to rot.

So I'm done with him.

My life went on the way it always had, steady, unremarkable.

The only difference was that I stopped resisting matchmaking dates.

I started letting myself meet different men, get to know all kinds of people.

Back when I was with Adam, I didn't have a single male friend.

I never wore the floral dresses and short shorts I liked, only because he didn't like them.

Now I lived entirely on my own terms.

A month slipped by just like that. I thought it would stay this way for good.

Then one day I was having dinner at a restaurant with a man I'd recently met.

I looked up and saw Adam, not far off.

The man across from me was gently settling on a time and place for our next meeting.

Adam came over with a thunderous face and stopped right in front of us.

"So you couldn't wait to line up your next guy."

Seeing him again, hearing something that ugly, my face went cold.

"It's none of your business."

He let out a scornful laugh.

"Deborah, are you done throwing this fit?"

He held out a box.

"I brought this back from Iceland for you. See if you like it."

The mention of a gift struck me as bitterly funny.

"Is it another thing Madison didn't want?"

He blinked, thrown.

He probably hadn't expected this blunt, sharp side of me.

He reined himself in and spoke.

"Deborah, I know I've neglected you lately. I'll do my best to—"

I cut him off, impatient.

"Adam, we've already broken up. You don't need to say any of this to me."

His patience ran out completely.

"How long are you going to keep this up?"

"You know perfectly well Madison's young and doesn't think things through, and you still have to hold it against her."

"Calling off the wedding, getting rid of the baby, you don't think you're being unreasonable? You want me to just abandon Madison, leave her to fend for herself? You know that's impossible."

I looked at him, and almost wanted to laugh.

He had always known. He knew exactly what I really minded, and he hadn't cared.

In his heart, no one had ever mattered the way Madison did.

Whatever Madison did, she was young, she didn't know better. Whatever I did, I was making a scene over nothing.

"I'm serious."

"Adam, I don't love you anymore."

"Deborah, we've been together for years. We were so close to getting married. If you really can't make room for Madison, I'll send her abroad to study, and once she's grown up a little, the two of us can—"

"I'm me, and you're you. There is no 'us'."

I looked at him without warmth and said it slowly, one word at a time.

"Adam, your clinging is genuinely exhausting."

The air went solid all at once.

The last bit of warmth drained out of his face, and his eyes turned sharp on me.

His voice came out cold as ice.

"Fine."

"Deborah, you think I can't live without you?"

"If you hadn't gotten pregnant before the wedding and backed me into a corner, do you think I'd ever have wanted to marry you?"

"Thank you for calling off the engagement. Now I won't have to wake up every day facing someone I got sick of a long time ago."

With that, he dropped the gift box straight into the trash without a second's hesitation.

Then he turned and strode off.

He walked away, his posture cold and absolute, without a trace of reluctance.

I sank back against the chair.

My fingers were trembling slightly.

He thought my pregnancy had been a setup, a scheme to force him to marry me.

In his heart, that was the kind of person I was.

I clenched my fingers hard and held on to the surface calm, refusing to come apart in front of anyone.

Only my heart felt like someone had run a knife through it, raw and bleeding.

Not long after, a close friend of mine got married.

I hadn't wanted to go, afraid I'd run into Adam.

But she begged me.

"Debbie, please, I'm still short one bridesmaid. I'm begging you, help me out."

"Adam already said he's away on business next month, so he can't come to the wedding."

"Don't worry, you won't run into him."

I thought it over, and agreed.

The day of the wedding, the whole place was alive with noise and celebration.

I was hurrying across the banquet hall when my eyes unexpectedly locked with someone else's.

Adam stood a little way off, a glass of champagne in his hand.

He looked at me, his gaze calm and still.

My friend came over, full of apology.

"Debbie, I'm so sorry, I don't even know how this happened."

"Adam swore he wasn't coming to the wedding, and then just now he said his work schedule changed last minute, so he could make it after all."

I shook my head.

It was fine. As long as I kept my distance, it didn't matter.

There were so many people at the wedding. There'd be no reason for our paths to cross.

Soon the mood swelled to its peak.

A few of the women guests kept glancing toward Adam, and one of them finally worked up the nerve to walk over to him.

"Hi. Do you have a girlfriend? Can I get your Instagram?"

Every eye in the room turned in that direction.

Adam's cold gaze swept over the girl in front of him.

The next second, it settled on me, certain and deliberate.

I knew what he meant.

He was telling me that if I bowed my head and gave in now, he would still give me one more chance.

Otherwise, I might really lose him for good.

I didn't move. I just quietly ate a piece of candy.

And Adam went on staring at me, stubborn about it.

Until the smile on that girl's face could barely hold, on the edge of turning into embarrassment and humiliation.