He held out a warm bottled drink.

"Here, sweetheart, have something hot. Wouldn't want you getting sick."

"Hard to get around in your condition. How come you don't have family or friends with you?"

As he drew his hand back, he deliberately let it brush across my chest.

Watching the look in his eyes, I kept my head down and called Godfrey over and over.

Every time I dialed, he cut the call.

Twelve calls in all.

So I typed out a text begging for help and sent it to him instead.

On the other end, Godfrey was pure impatience.

"Cornelia, how childish are you going to be? Do you really need to make up a lie like this to mess with me? Just go to sleep."

The driver saw what I was doing and snatched the phone from my hand.

"Once you're in my car, don't even think about running."

The road ahead was turning more and more deserted.

Out of options, I shoved the door open and threw myself from the moving car.

The pain hit so hard I blacked out at once.

When I woke again, my whole body hurt so much I could barely breathe.

The doctor looked at me with real regret.

"Your legs were only just showing signs of recovery, and now they've taken another serious injury. The scans aren't good at all."

My voice shook.

"Are my legs never going to heal?"

He couldn't say for sure either.

"Let's focus on treatment for now."

The hope that had just flickered to life was snuffed out again, and I crumbled completely.

I held myself together until the officers finished taking my statement and left. Only then did I hide under the blanket and cry.

Footsteps sounded outside the door.

Then came an argument, both voices kept low.

I looked through the gap in the door.

May's eyes were red, her voice thick with tears.

"Godfrey, this is all my fault. Nelly nearly got hurt for good."

"The doctor said after an accident like this, her legs may never let her stand again."

Godfrey looked at her, his eyes full of ache for her.

"Stop putting everything on yourself. This isn't your fault. She just had bad luck, there's nothing you could do."

May leaned into his arms and cried.

I was the one who'd been hurt.

Yet somehow it was May getting comforted.

Godfrey soothed her for a long while before they finally pushed the door open and came in.

I didn't want to face them, so I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

"Nelly, I know you're already awake."

Godfrey took a fancy gift box out of his pocket.

"I'm sorry. It's my fault for not believing you. That's why you ended up jumping from the car."

"You've always said you wanted this bracelet, haven't you?"

"I meant it as a surprise. Now I guess it's an apology gift instead."

I slowly opened my eyes.

May took the box from Godfrey's hand, lifted the lid, drew out the bracelet, and fastened it on my wrist.

"Nelly, Godfrey lined up all night to get you this bracelet."

Looking at the bracelet on my wrist, something in me softened for a moment.

The next second, the color drained from my face.

On the custom tag at the end of the bracelet were three letters: "YQ."

May Cox.

Fighting the pain in my arm, I ripped the bracelet off and flung it at Godfrey.

"Take your bracelet and get out!"

Godfrey's face went dark all at once.

"Cornelia, what the hell has gotten into you now?"

I held my anger down.

"Who exactly did you buy this bracelet for? You know perfectly well whose name is engraved on it!"

May picked the bracelet up off the floor, a flicker of glee in her eyes.

Then she put on that innocent act to explain it away for Godfrey.

"Nelly, there's got to be some misunderstanding here. Godfrey was probably just careless and didn't look closely."

"Men are like that, being careless is normal. Don't hold it against him."

That shop's custom order process requires three separate confirmations.

There was no way it was a misunderstanding.

Watching the corner of May's mouth twitch up despite herself, I let out a cold laugh.

"May, you're smiling so wide already. Go on, put the bracelet on."

May pouted at once.

"I don't want to—"

"Cornelia, don't come crying about it later!"

Godfrey snatched the bracelet from May's hand and fastened it on her wrist himself.

Then he turned his head and looked at me, almost taunting.

"Nobody owes you a thing!"

With that, he took May by the hand and walked out without looking back.

That night, May sent me a message.

"Haven't you noticed how much happier Godfrey is when he's with me? He and I never run out of things to say."

"If I'd met him first, I'd be the one with him now."

"Nelly, you might never walk again. You shouldn't drag Godfrey down with you."

"So hand him over to me, okay?"

Then came a long video.

The background was a hotel room.

Godfrey and May sat on the bed drinking, a dozen empty bottles scattered on the floor.

Halfway through the drinking, May suddenly leaned in, cupped Godfrey's face, and pressed her lips to his.

His body went rigid for a moment.

Then he lifted a hand to the back of her head and deepened the kiss.

They kissed like they couldn't bear to part, and fell onto the bed together, wrapped around each other.

The video cut off abruptly.

The black phone screen reflected my ashen face.

The next day, Godfrey came to apologize with flowers and a newly bought bracelet.

"Nelly, can we stop fighting?"

"I already took the bracelet back to the shop and had it swapped. The name's right this time."

I laughed coldly and pulled up the video May had sent the night before.

"So this is your guilty little apology after cheating on me?"

The smile froze on Godfrey's face, and something I'd never seen before flickered in his eyes—panic.

"Nelly, let me explain."

"May and I were both drunk last night. It was impulsive. I'm sorry."

"We only kissed. Nothing else happened."

I had just opened my mouth when the door of the ward suddenly swung open and May stepped in.

She was trembling, weeping like a broken flower, and shot me one timid glance before turning to Godfrey, seeming to want to speak and then holding back.

"I…"

Godfrey quickly grabbed the tissues off the table and handed them to her.

"What happened?"

May bit her lip, her eyes full of a hurt and fear that wouldn't lift.

"Someone posted on the campus forum calling me a homewrecker, saying I got between you two. The post has that video from the hospital yesterday. Now everyone at school is shutting me out."

"Godfrey, do I have to drop out? Mom and Dad won't pay for me to retake the year. What am I supposed to do with my life…"

Godfrey took the phone May held out to him.

As he read the post and watched the video, something ice-cold surged in those dark eyes.

"Cornelia, you've gone too far!"

"What?"

He turned the screen toward me.

Let me see exactly what was in the post and the video.

The video came from the camera on my wheelchair.

Back then, worried that something might happen to me when I was alone, Godfrey had installed the camera on my wheelchair himself.

The footage uploaded automatically to the cloud on both our phones.

But the thing he'd done to protect me had become the blade driven into me now.

He was certain I had made that post.

I shook my head.

"Godfrey, I didn't post that."

He didn't believe me. His eyes on me were full of anger and disappointment.

"Cornelia, I never imagined you could be this vicious."

"May waited on you hand and foot, humbled herself like a servant to take care of you. Fine if you're not grateful, but to smear her on the campus forum like this?"

"Do you have any idea what a girl's reputation means to her? Are you trying to destroy her?"

Tears welled up in May Cox's eyes.

"Nelly, if this is what it takes for you to feel better, then I won't say a word. You're my best friend, after all."

Her yielding, her sweet reasonableness, only poured fuel on the fire.

Godfrey knocked the flowers off the table with one punch, stepped on them, and ground them under his heel again and again.

"Cornelia, your cruelty terrifies me."

"Everyone has to answer for what they do. I hope you don't come to regret yours."

I lowered my eyes, my fingertips trembling faintly.

The unfairness of it sat lodged in my chest, neither rising nor settling, until I couldn't breathe.

Soon enough I understood what Godfrey had meant by those parting words.

Godfrey posted on the campus forum under his real name, saying May was his actual girlfriend, that there was no such thing as a mistress or a homewrecker.

He said all his care for me had only ever been the care a boyfriend shows his girlfriend's best friend.

When a classmate posted a photo of us together and pressed him about it, he replied that I'd used my paraplegia to play the victim and hounded him without letting go.

Someone screenshotted the whole thing off the campus forum and spread it across the internet.

Every big creator on the video apps rode the story for views.

My information was dug up in no time.

They flooded my social media accounts with insults and bombarded my phone number without stopping.

"You crippled bitch, seducing your best friend's boyfriend—doesn't it make your skin crawl?"

"No wonder you broke your legs. Even heaven knows you're rotten and wanted to punish you!"

"How does a school even admit someone so morally bankrupt? Just wait to get expelled!"

Then some worked-up stranger tracked down which hospital I was in.

He slipped into my room under cover of night and climbed onto my bed, meaning to do something to me.

A nurse doing her rounds stopped him.

It only spiraled bigger.

Then came the message from my academic advisor, urging me to drop out.

The unfairness and the collapse surged up all at once, and a sharp pain stabbed through my head.

The machine beside me broke into rapid beeping.

Breathing turned hard, the figures in front of me spinning into a blur.

The doctor rushed in.

"Someone, in here!"

"Get the sedative, now!"

Just as the sedative was wearing off, a memory I'd forgotten came flooding back.

My fall from the cliff had never been an accident.

Those hands, that face, came into focus in this very moment.

With a shaking hand, I dialed the police.

"Hello, someone's trying to kill me…"