Chapter 3

Sarah walked back to the table, her mind a storm of shock and fury. The faces of David' s family blurred into a meaningless collage of polite smiles. She couldn' t breathe. She had to get out.

"I' m not feeling well," she said, her voice tight. "I' m going to get some air."

Before anyone could respond, she turned and walked out of the restaurant and into the cool night. She didn' t know where she was going, she just walked, her heels clicking a frantic rhythm on the pavement.

A few minutes later, David' s car pulled up beside her. He leaned over and opened the passenger door.

"Get in, Sarah. What are you doing?"

She stopped and looked at him, the man she had loved, the man who had just dismantled her entire world. The sight of him filled her with a rage so pure it burned away her shock.

She got in the car and slammed the door.

"Don' t talk to me," she said, her voice shaking.

He pulled away from the curb, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "You' re making a scene."

"A scene?" She laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "You' re worried about a scene? You had me sign divorce papers, David. You lied to my face."

He flinched, his eyes darting from the road to her and back again. "How did you know?"

"Does it matter? Lisa is pregnant, isn' t she? Was this your grand plan? Ship your wife off to another continent so you can play house with your pregnant mistress?"

"It' s not like that," he started, but his voice lacked conviction.

"Don' t lie to me anymore!" she screamed, the sound tearing from her throat. "Just tell me the truth, for once in your miserable, cowardly life!"

He accelerated, the city lights smearing past the windows. "You don' t understand."

"I understand perfectly! I was an inconvenience you needed to manage. A problem to be solved."

He swerved to avoid a taxi, his face a mask of anger and panic. "Just be quiet, Sarah!"

He was looking at her, not the road. She saw the headlights first, a blinding white light growing bigger and bigger in the windshield. She screamed his name.

David.

Then, everything was a chaos of screeching tires, shattering glass, and a violent, wrenching impact that threw her forward against her seatbelt. The world went black.

...

Sarah woke up to the smell of antiseptic and the steady beeping of a machine. A dull ache throbbed in her head. She blinked, her vision slowly focusing on the white ceiling tiles above her. A hospital.

She tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea and pain pushed her back down.

"Easy there," a gentle voice said.

It was Emily, her best friend. Her face was etched with worry, her eyes red-rimmed.

"Em?" Sarah' s voice was a rough whisper. "What happened?"

"You were in an accident," Emily said, taking her hand. "You have a concussion and a few broken ribs, but the doctors say you' ll be okay. You' re lucky."

"David?" The name felt like ash in her mouth. "Is he...?"

"He' s okay," Emily said, her expression hardening. "He' s in another room. More banged up than you, but he' s stable."

Sarah closed her eyes, relief and bitterness warring within her. He was alive. The man who had destroyed her was alive.

A nurse came in to check her vitals. She was kind, efficient. As she was about to leave, she paused at the door.

"Mrs. Chen, there was some confusion with your husband' s paperwork," the nurse said, looking at her chart. "When we tried to list you as his emergency contact, we saw he had recently submitted a form to change it. To a Ms. Lisa Chang."

The room fell silent. Emily squeezed her hand tighter.

"The change hadn' t been fully processed by the system yet," the nurse continued, oblivious to the bomb she had just dropped. "So we were still able to reach you based on the old information. Just thought you should know."

Sarah stared at the wall, the beeping of the monitor the only sound. He had tried to erase her. Not just from his future, but from his present, from the very systems designed to connect them in a crisis. Even in a life-or-death situation, his first thought was to replace her with Lisa.

A few hours later, David' s parents swept into the hallway. Sarah saw them through her open door. They didn' t even glance in her direction. Eleanor' s face was a stony mask, her husband following a step behind. They went straight to David' s room.

Then, Lisa arrived. She wasn' t frantic or disheveled. She was calm, composed, her hand resting protectively on her stomach. She walked with an air of ownership, nodding curtly at a nurse before disappearing into David' s room.

Sarah lay in her bed, a spectator to her own public humiliation. She was the wife, but she was the outsider. The woman in the other room, the one carrying her husband' s child, was the one who belonged.

Emily drew the curtain partway, shielding her from the scene in the hall.

"Don' t look at them, Sarah," she said softly. "They' re not worth your energy."

But it was too late. The image was burned into her mind: David, surrounded by his loving family and his new partner, while she lay here, alone, with nothing but the cold, hard truth of his betrayal.