Falling For Me At My Life's End

Chapter 1

I was brought into this world by a system from a book to win over Jaxton.

If I can't make Jaxton fall in love with me, the system will erase me.

My body would slowly decay until nothing was left but a pool of blood.

In the last few days of my life, I told him I was dying and begged him to love me.

He coldly said, "Then just go die."

Later, when I was really about to die, he cried and begged me to stay alive.

[1]

My life was counting down, and I relied on medication to sustain my soon-to-be-broken body, frequently ending up in the emergency room.

I lay on the hospital bed, picked up my phone with the hand that wasn't hooked up to an IV, and dialed Jaxton's number.

The moment he answered, I felt as happy as a kid on Christmas morning.

"Jaxton, I ended up in the emergency room again, but luckily nothing serious happened this time..."

"Can you come to the hospital to see me?"

Every time I came back from the brink of death, I would call Jaxton. Even just hearing his voice would bring some relief to my body.

"Lilah, you were in the emergency room seventeen times last month and eight times this month. Still not dead yet?"

"You really go to great lengths, spinning such pathetic lies to get my sympathy and deceive me."

Clearly, Jaxton never believed a word I said.

But he actually remembered how many times I had been in the emergency room.

Even I couldn't keep track of how many times those cold medical instruments had brought me back to life.

I only knew that every time I was close to death, all I could think about was Jaxton.

I thought, if only he loved me.

I came from a book, just a character written by someone else. My fate had already been planned out.

The only way to rewrite my destiny was to come to this world that didn't belong to me and make Jaxton fall in love with me.

If he never loved me, I would have to live humbly until I died, until I turned to dust.

"Jaxton, I'm really dying."

"I don't know how much longer I can hold on. Before I leave, can I see you one more time?"

"Your birthday is coming up. I want to celebrate it with you."

My tone was extremely humble.

Jaxton's cold laugh came through the phone, "If you're going to die, hurry up and die!"

"When you're really dead, I'll consider whether or not to come and collect your body."

Jaxton hung up the phone. When I called back, his phone was already turned off.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I stared blankly at the phone, unable to stop myself from mocking my own foolishness.

As someone sent to win him over, I had actually fallen for him.

[2]

Since Jaxton refused to come see me, I decided to go see him myself.

His birthday was coming up, and I thought, since my body couldn't be cured anyway, I might as well discharge myself from the hospital and go celebrate his birthday.

Before I left, my attending doctor told me, "With your current condition, if you don't continue chemotherapy in the hospital, you might not last half a month."

"It doesn't matter," I said with a smile. "Since that day will come sooner or later, I might as well go home and prepare for it in advance."

The doctor looked at me with sympathy. "You're really pitiful. You've been hospitalized for over a month, and no one from your family has come to see you."

"Your husband came once, but he just yelled at you and left..."

The doctor hesitated, then let out a long sigh.

I knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to say that my husband, Jaxton, was really heartless. How could he treat me like that?

She also wanted to say that my family was cruel for not caring about me.

But she didn't know that I was just like a bubble, without any family...

Jaxton was my only family.

When I first came out of the book, I met him. He took the broken me home.

He gave me the name Lilah and taught me to read and write.

He took care of all my needs and made sure I had a peaceful life.

At that time, I thought winning him over would be very easy.

But one time, by chance, he was teased by his friends and, in a moment of confusion, I offered myself to him to help him sober up.

When he sobered up, I shyly leaned against his chest. "Jaxton, I'm yours now. Let's be together."

But he pushed me away. "You took advantage of me! Shameless!"

I rolled off the bed, wrapped in the blanket, and looked at him in confusion. "Don't you like me too? Why are you angry?"

As he dressed, he yelled at me, "My heart belongs to Caylee. You're just a beggar I picked up off the street. How could I possibly like you?"

So, Jaxton didn't like me.

After that incident, he started to hate me.

But later, when his family found out about us, his parents forced us to get married.

He went from hating me to despising me, even resenting me.

Chapter 2

1

I bought Jaxton's favorite strawberry cake and returned to the house we lived in when we got married.

Before I even entered, I saw a woman sitting in the living room through the crack in the door.

When I saw her face clearly, my legs went weak, and I leaned powerlessly against the wall.

That woman was Caylee, Jaxton's ex-girlfriend.

I had never met Caylee before; I had only seen her photos on Jaxton's phone and heard about her from his friends.

It was said that Caylee and Jaxton had been together since college, but Jaxton's mother didn't like her and forced them to break up three years ago.

Since then, Jaxton had been depressed and often drowned his sorrows in booze.

On the night Jaxton and I got married, he was drunk and pinned me down, taking me roughly while calling out Caylee's name.

Afterward, he threw a box of birth control pills at me. "Take them!"

Holding the box, my eyes stung with tears. "Jaxton, we're married. Why do I have to take these? Don't you want a baby?"

His hand paused as he buttoned his shirt, then he turned and grabbed my face with disgust.

"Lilah, do you think you're worth anything? Do you actually think you can give me a child?"

"Listen carefully. I married you not because I love you but because I needed a tool for my desires."

"From now on, our relationship is confined to the bedroom. Don't entertain any other thoughts, or I won't be kind to you."

Looking at Jaxton's cold and distant expression and hearing his emotionless words, I felt suffocated.

To him, I was nothing more than a bedmate.

At that time, I didn't understand why he acted that way.

Until a month after our wedding, he got drunk again and held me passionately until midnight.

After he fell asleep, I secretly looked at his phone.

There were 1,314 photos in his album, all of Caylee.

My head buzzed, and tears streamed uncontrollably down my face. My whole body went numb and trembled.

I couldn't believe that the man who was intimate with me every night had a heart full of love for another woman.

2

In the year we had been married, Jaxton had never mentioned Caylee to me.

And now, he had brought her back to our marital home.

"Are you Lilah's sister?" Caylee's voice pulled me back to reality.

She had somehow appeared in front of me, looking me up and down with undisguised disdain.

"You even bought a cake. Are you here to celebrate Jaxton's birthday? Please, come in."

Caylee took the cake from my hands and politely invited me inside.

Every move she made, every word she spoke, made it seem like she was the mistress of this house, and I was just an outsider.

"Jaxton is really something," Caylee continued. "He told me you were in the hospital and wouldn't be back tonight, so he invited me to stay over."

I stared at Caylee's back, my eyes burning red, but I didn't cry like I used to.

She was flaunting how much Jaxton cared for her.

I should have felt sad, but for some reason, I felt nothing.

It wasn't until I saw Jaxton wearing an apron and carrying a plate of baked fish from the kitchen that my world completely collapsed.

In all the time we had been together, I never knew he could cook.

I had imagined countless times what he would look like cooking, but when I finally saw it, I couldn't feel happy.

Because he wasn't cooking for me; he was cooking for the woman he loved, Caylee.

How laughable. The things I longed for, Caylee could get effortlessly.

I wanted to question Jaxton about why he brought Caylee to our home.

But when I saw him smiling so gently at her, I swallowed all my words.

After all, among the three of us, I seemed more like the third wheel, as if I had no right to question him.

Chapter 3

[1]

Jaxton looked at me, a flicker of panic flashing in his eyes before it quickly disappeared. He took off his apron and sneered, "Aren't you supposed to be dying? Why are you back? I don't want you dying in my house; it's a bad omen."

Yes, I was dying, but he didn't believe it. Not that it mattered; he actually wished I would die som