"You've been with me since you were eighteen. You've lost two pregnancies for me. Without me, what man out there would want you?"
I stared at him.
My chest felt like a red-hot coal had been dragged across it.
Ten years. We'd slept under bridges. Split a single cup of instant noodles. At our lowest, the only thing filling our stomachs was water.
We couldn't afford birth control. Couldn't afford a clinic.
So I'd stood out in the freezing cold until my body gave in. Climbed to the top of a staircase and thrown myself down.
I endured the pain, crying until I had nothing left as I said goodbye to our two babies.
Blake knelt at my bedside and drove a knife into his own flesh. Twice.
His bloodied hand trembled as it covered my eyes, and his voice came word by word against my ear. "Tessa, I swear I'll give you a good life. If I ever betray you, let me die a wretched death."
That promise carried weight. I believed it for half my life.
But now, he'd been undone so effortlessly by a woman he'd known for six months.
I couldn't understand it. A man who had loved me that fiercely—how could he just rot from the inside out?
His phone rang. The ringtone was distinctive.