Chapter 3

The hospital was a world of white ceilings and the rhythmic beeping of machines. I drifted in and out of consciousness, my body a landscape of pain. They pumped me full of antivenom for the spider bite and set my broken bones. But they couldn't fix the thing that was growing in my brain.

Dr. Evelyn Reed, a neurologist with kind but serious eyes, was the one who confirmed it. She sat by my bedside, holding the brain scan films up to the light.

"The crash exacerbated the swelling around the tumor," she explained, her voice gentle but direct. "The glioblastoma is as aggressive as the initial report suggested. We were able to relieve some of the immediate pressure, which is why you're awake now. But Ethan... we need to talk about a treatment plan. It's going to be a fight."

A fight. I was already so tired of fighting.

I had survived the crash, survived the venom, survived their hatred. But for what? To face this slow, inevitable decay from within? For a moment, despair washed over me completely.

The door to my room creaked open. I expected a nurse, but it was Liam. He stood in the doorway, clutching a toy race car. Chloe stood behind him, her arms crossed, a smug look on her face.

"The hospital called me as your emergency contact," she said, as if it were an inconvenience. "They said you were stable. I see they were exaggerating."

I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in my ribs forced me back down. "What are you doing here, Chloe?"

"Liam wanted to see you," she said, nudging him forward.

Liam walked slowly to my bedside. He didn't look at me. He looked at the IV line in my arm. Then, with a sudden, vicious movement, he slammed the toy car down onto my hand, right where the needle was inserted.

Pain, sharp and blinding, shot up my arm. The IV needle was ripped out, and blood started to well up from the wound.

"Liam!" I gasped, more from shock than pain.

He didn't flinch. He just looked at me with cold, empty eyes. "Uncle Mark says you're weak. He says you always run away when things get hard."

Chloe didn't move to stop him. She watched with a faint smile, as if proud of his cruelty. "He's just expressing his feelings, Ethan. You traumatized him."

My mind reeled. Traumatized him? My heart ached with a sudden, vivid memory.

I saw Liam, just two years old, his face streaked with tears after falling off his tricycle. I remembered scooping him up, his small arms wrapping around my neck, his sobs quieting as I held him close. I remembered singing him to sleep every night, his warm, trusting weight in my arms. We were a real family then. Or so I had thought.

That memory, so warm and pure, felt like a relic from another life. It was a stark, brutal contrast to the cold-eyed child standing before me.

"Chloe, how could you let him do this?" I whispered, cradling my bleeding hand.

She finally stepped closer, her voice dropping to a low, venomous hiss. "Let him? I encourage it. You deserve so much worse. After what you did to Ben, after how you ruined my life, this is nothing."

There it was again. Ben. The ghost that had haunted our entire relationship.

"You know that's not what happened," I said, my voice shaking with a sudden, desperate need to make her see the truth.

"Oh, I know exactly what happened," she sneered. "I was finally happy. Ben loved me. And you... you were jealous. You couldn't stand to see me with someone else. So you drove him away. You poisoned him against me, filled his head with lies until he left."

The story she had built in her mind was so complete, so wrong, that it left me breathless. She actually believed it.

The truth was so much more painful.

I closed my eyes, and the real memory flooded back, not of Liam, but of Chloe. Chloe, five years ago, sobbing hysterically in my arms after Ben Carter, the love of her life, had unceremoniously dumped her to take a research position overseas. He hadn't just left; he had emptied their joint bank account, leaving her with thousands in debt.

She was a wreck. She wouldn't eat. She wouldn't leave her bed. She was on the verge of a complete breakdown.

At the time, I was just her friend, the quiet architect who had loved her from afar. I was also on the cusp of my big break-a prestigious international fellowship to study under a master architect in Japan. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I gave it up.

I turned down the fellowship, cashed out my own savings-the money I had set aside for my future-and used it to pay off the debts Ben had left her with. I told her the bank had made an error and recovered the money. A lie. A lie to protect her pride.

I stayed. I nursed her back to health, piece by painful piece. I held her when she cried, I listened to her rage, and I slowly, carefully, helped her rebuild her life. I never once told her about the fellowship I had sacrificed. I let her believe I drove Ben away because the alternative-that the man she loved had used and abandoned her-was too much for her to bear. I became the villain in her story so she could be the victim. It was the only way I could see for her to heal.

And out of the ashes of that disaster, our relationship grew. We fell in love. We had Liam. I thought my sacrifice had been worth it. I had my family.

But I was wrong. My selfless act had been twisted into a monstrous crime. She hadn't healed. She had just found a new person to blame. Me.

"Chloe," I said, my voice barely audible. "I gave up everything for you."

She laughed, a sound completely devoid of warmth. "Gave up what? Your dead-end job? Your sad little life? You latched onto me because you had nothing. You trapped me when I was at my weakest. Mark sees it. He sees you for the parasite you are."

The injustice of it was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. My sacrifice, the foundation of our life together, had been reframed as a weakness, an act of manipulation. And she had taught our son to see it the same way.

I looked from her hateful face to my son's empty one. The truth wouldn't save me. It was just another thing they would twist and use against me.

In that sterile hospital room, with the blood dripping from my hand, I understood. I wasn't just fighting a tumor. I was fighting a history that had been rewritten to destroy me.