It was true—he had once been the person who knew me best in this world, the one I was closest to.

But so what? No matter how well someone knew you, there always came a day when you drifted apart.

Gerard Sanchez and I met when we were eight years old.

By the time we separated, we had spent sixteen years side by side.

Back then, I was the kid who looked nothing like her adoptive parents—wrong features, wrong skin tone—and had spent a full year being mocked by classmates. Dug out of a dumpster. Crawled out from under a rock. A feral child. That was what they called me.

He was a naive boy raised in a loving home, the kind of kid who fancied himself a hero.

He had a habit of showing up when I didn't need him, planting his hands on his hips like a tiny adult and firing back at every classmate who laughed at me.

I told him more than once that words like those barely registered. Growing up in the orphanage had given me skin thick enough that schoolyard taunts felt like a feather brushing my arm.

But he stubbornly believed I was being threatened and intimidated, too scared to stand up for myself.

So he volunteered to be my protector.

He begged his parents to transfer him into my class. He begged our teacher to seat him next to me. He even threw a full-blown tantrum—screaming, rolling on the floor—until his parents agreed to move to a house closer to mine, all because his old neighborhood wasn't on my route and made it hard to "keep me safe."

His over-the-top antics surprised me, but I knew how children were. They loved new things and grew bored just as fast. The orphanage was full of older kids who'd been returned after the biological children in their adoptive families got tired of them, or simply decided they didn't want a sibling anymore.

I figured once he got bored of hanging around me, he'd find some other friend.

I never expected him to follow me around like a shadow for eleven years.

From elementary school through high school, I went from resenting the intrusion on my solitude to growing used to having him beside me. A girl's feelings have a way of taking root without her noticing.

The year we graduated high school, I asked him a question, keeping my voice light.

If it had been someone else getting picked on back then, would he have had the same harebrained impulse to trail after them like a lost puppy?

He saw right through the smile to the insecurity underneath.

And he caught it, steady as anything.

"It's strange. Ever since I started following you around, I've thought more than once about how ridiculous it would be to just latch onto some random person and play hero. It would make no sense."

"It's like it was meant to be. My whole hero complex existed just so I'd be ready when you came along."

I held on to those words for years and years.

I was still holding on to them even after he started playing hero for someone else.

By my first year of grad school, we had been together for five years. Both sets of parents agreed we would marry after graduation.

Everything was moving along exactly as planned—until our engagement party.

Leila Graves, who had grown up in the same orphanage as me, shattered it all.

She brought the orphanage director with her, armed with fabricated evidence, and announced in front of every single guest that she was the one my adoptive parents had meant to choose.

She was the one Gerard was supposed to protect. The one he was supposed to love.

She claimed that when my parents came to pick a child, I had tricked her into taking sleeping pills so she would miss her chance. We were the only two girls of the right age. With her out of the picture, I became the only option.

And because of that, she said, she had been condemned to a nightmare—a living hell—when she was sixteen.

I assumed everyone could see through it. A pathetic, jealous lie, and a clumsy one at that.

After all, during the years she had pretended to be my friend, she had stabbed me in the back more times than I could count.

When she couldn't scrape together enough from her part-time jobs to cover living expenses, I fought to get her a financial aid grant—wrestled it away from a classmate who came from money but pretended to be poor. Leila turned around and told that classmate I had targeted her on purpose, that I resented anyone with wealth.

When her jobs ate into her study time and finals were approaching, I didn't just organize my notes for her and stay up reviewing with her until three in the morning. To keep her from failing, I even tried to slip her my answers during the exam.

But she turned around and told the teacher I was trying to cheat.

Every time I vented to Gerard about it, he'd get so angry he could barely contain himself. He told me to stay far away from people like that, the kind who repaid kindness with cruelty.

Yet he not only believed her, he canceled our engagement over it.

My adoptive parents took my side at first, comforting me, telling me not to worry. They told me to wait until Leila calmed down, until the investigation cleared things up.

But that wait stretched on for an entire year.

During that year, I was terrified of losing them. I walked on eggshells, did everything they asked, deferred to Leila at every turn, and watched as they slowly stopped noticing me.

Until finally, the disgust in their eyes made it clear they'd decided I was exactly what she said I was: a scheming thief who'd stolen someone else's life.

While I was lost in thought, my phone chimed. A private message from Leila.

I know you saw it. Drop the act. We've been happy together all these years. Don't even think about being a homewrecker.

I scoffed and didn't bother replying.

I tapped into her profile instead. Her account was full of photography content she'd shared. A handful of followers. A low-tier photographer certification, the kind anyone could buy.

I laughed.

Gerard ruined my career to pave the way for yours, and you still can't amount to anything.

Back then, under the weight of their cold stares, I'd earned a spot in an international exchange program through competition alone. I thought that would be enough to win back their affection.

But one week before I was supposed to leave, Gerard took all of my work and reported me to the photography competition organizers, claiming I'd plagiarized Leila's work.

The school and the organizers revoked my exchange spot immediately.

I watched Leila trail behind Gerard, satisfaction and a thin veneer of pity on her face.

I could barely get the words out.

"Why?"

His expression was colder than the day I'd refused to let him follow me around when we were eight.

"She may not be as talented as you, but she works harder. She needs this opportunity more than you do. Besides, if it weren't for what you did back then, she'd be the one with all of this."

"You're the one who stole from her."

In that moment, everything he'd said when he was eighteen felt like a lie.

The rage hit me so hard I collapsed and ended up in the hospital.

When I woke up, Gerard was sitting by the bed. He sighed.

"There's no need for such a dramatic reaction. She said she only wants a career. She won't compete with you for anything else. I'll still marry you. But I have one condition."

"From now on, you can't do any work related to photography publicly. But privately, whenever she needs help, you help her."

His words were vague, but I understood perfectly.

I stared at him, trembling.

"You want me to be her ghostwriter?"

He grunted in acknowledgment.

"You owe her that. That award-winning piece is something she'll never be able to produce in her lifetime. So to make it up to her, you'll shoot for her until she decides she doesn't want to be a photographer anymore."

That day, I destroyed everything in the hospital room like a woman possessed.

It didn't change his mind.

The day before Leila left the country, she came to see me. She was carrying my award, holding my exchange spot, and clutching an offer from the prestigious magazine that had been meant for me. My boyfriend stood beside her as she thanked me.

I snapped. I screamed and hurled everything within reach against the walls.

After Gerard left, I quietly pulled out my phone and drew her into conversation.

She didn't suspect a thing.

She laughed.

"Honestly, I was just jealous of you. So I made up a lie. I never expected them all to actually believe it."

I swallowed the storm raging inside me. After she was gone, I filed an appeal and posted every last word of it on the school's forum.

I thought the truth would finally set me free.

But what I got wasn't my adoptive parents coming to their senses.

Instead, Gerard hired someone to produce evidence that the audio recording was a fabricated AI edit.

He even told everyone I had a severe mental illness.

Then he deleted every precious piece of footage I'd captured over thousands of days and nights since I first picked up a camera.

Including every shot I'd ever taken of him.

He said that as long as any of it existed, it would destroy Leila beyond redemption.

I became a pariah. Classmates shunned me. Teachers looked at me with contempt.

When the school expelled me, he said to me:

"She's pitiful. She's already on the verge of a breakdown. I can't destroy the last thing she has left, so I have no choice but to let you take the fall."

I asked him, my voice raw and hoarse:

"Have you forgotten what she did to me? So you don't love me anymore, is that it?"

He recoiled like a cornered animal.

"Of course I love you! But can you stop dragging up ancient history? Everyone makes mistakes. She's not some monster!"

That day, I finally understood.

The person who played hero for me could just as easily play hero for someone else.

An hour before Leila's flight, I saw her on the TV in the psychiatric ward, being interviewed by reporters.

She was radiant, beaming, nothing like the withdrawn girl I'd first met.

Standing beside her was Gerard, gazing at her with open devotion.

How perfectly matched they looked. It cut through me like glass.

Even my adoptive parents came to tell me to stop trying to ruin them. To just let it go. To consider it good karma.

I lay on the hospital bed, staring at the empty ceiling.

I thought about who I'd been at seven years old. Owning nothing, yet so happy.

And then I jumped from the fourth floor.

I didn't die. On the way down, I hit a tree. It broke my fall just enough.

But the impact to my abdomen was severe. The doctors said I might never be able to carry a child.

While I drifted in and out of consciousness, I heard my adoptive parents urging Gerard to call off the engagement and just be with Leila.

He refused. Sharply.

"No. I have to marry her. It's the only way to keep her under control and clear the path for Leila."

So when I woke up, I didn't hesitate for a single second.

I severed the tendon in my right hand.

What I could no longer do, I would rather destroy than let anyone else take from me.

Once they realized I was useless, they stopped visiting.

I cut every last tie to all of them.

And I went north. Alone.

The year after I left, Gerard and Leila got together.

Not long after that, I met Clarence Gilbert.

And I started a new life.

As for what Gerard called "stalking his social media"—

I'd stumbled across one post by accident. It looked familiar, so I tapped on it.

After that, his content kept appearing no matter how many times I blocked it. Like gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

I gripped my phone, my brow knotted tight.

A small hand reached up and smoothed the crease between my eyebrows.

"Mommy, Mommy! What are you thinking about?"

Before I could answer, a larger, warmer hand settled over the same spot.

"What's got you so lost in thought? Benny Abbott's been calling you forever."

I looked up at the gentle face of the man in front of me.

Then I handed him my phone, the chat log still on screen.

After a long moment, he let out a quiet scoff.

"Unbelievable. These days, apparently anyone can call themselves an ex. Sit tight. Tomorrow night, your husband's going to put on a show."

He used my name to create a class reunion group chat and had his assistant organize a get-together.

He also made sure the invitation was personally passed along to Gerard and Leila.

Inside the private dining room, I sat at the head of the table, making small talk with old classmates.

Then a low, tense murmur drifted in from outside the door.

I walked over and opened it.

Leila's pinched expression melted instantly into something soft. She hurried to loop her arm through Gerard's, who stood frozen beside her.