It was past midnight. I was lying in bed, mindlessly scrolling through my phone, when I accidentally tapped into a late-night advice livestream on TikTok. The caller—a man with a digitally altered voice—was mid-confession. He was telling the host, and thousands of listeners, that he was having an affair. And not just with anyone. He was sleeping with the drunk driver who had struck and crippled his wife years ago. At the words car crash and crippled, my left hand instinctively reached across my chest, my fingers brushing against the flat, empty fabric of my right sleeve. The phantom ache of the amputated limb flared up, a dull throb echoing a nightmare I lived every single day. The man on the screen kept talking, his words a stream of casual cruelty. He confessed that he could only make love to his wife in pitch darkness. He said that whenever his hand brushed against the stump of her arm, he felt a wave of visceral disgust. He complained that ever since the accident, his wife had become a lifeless, suffocating presence. Nothing like the bright, vibrant girl he was seeing on the side. A cold prickle of unease washed over me. I reached out to swipe past the video, but his next sentence stopped my heart entirely. It felt like an ice pick driving straight through my ribs. “I mean, she lost her arm saving my mom’s life. But I can’t just sacrifice my own happiness forever out of gratitude, can I?” He sighed, the sound heavy with self-pity. “I admit I still love her. But I just can’t stand looking at her anymore. She’s half a ghost.” The words hit me like a physical blow. I froze. The pregnancy test I had been clutching in my hand slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor. Because five years ago, I threw myself in front of a speeding car to save my mother-in-law, and lost my right arm in the process. And the man in this livestream, the man complaining to the internet that my sacrifice had “ruined his life”—was Simon. My husband. The boy I had loved for twenty years. … 1 He was using a voice modifier, but the cadence of his speech, the slight pause he took before defending himself—it was unmistakably Simon. The live chat was scrolling so fast it was a blur. [Are you insane? You’re disgusted by the woman who saved your family?] [Sleeping with the driver who crippled her?! I don’t even have words for how evil that is.] [I hope karma destroys you, you absolute monster.] A violent chill seized my entire body. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. The man who had always treated me like fragile glass, who swore he would protect me with his life, was currently venting his revulsion for me to fifty thousand strangers. When he talked about the young girl’s bubbly, energetic nature, his voice dripped with an unmistakable, sickening fondness. My stomach violently heaved. I scrambled out of bed, sprinting to the master bathroom, and threw up until there was nothing left but bitter bile. The bathroom door swung open. Simon—who was supposed to be at an academic conference two states away—rushed in. “Catherine? Honey, what’s wrong? Are you sick?” He gathered me into his arms. His hands, large and warm, instinctively reached for the stump of my right arm, massaging the scarred tissue with practiced ease. “I’m sorry I was away these past few days. No one was here to massage it for you. Has it been aching terribly?” His eyes were pooling with gentle, agonizing concern. But all I could hear, looping endlessly in my mind, was his voice from the livestream: Whenever I touch it, I feel disgusted. Five years ago, his mother and I were struck by a drunk driver. I pushed her out of the way and lost my arm. In the dark, suffocating months that followed, I tried to end my life more times than I could count. I swallowed pills. I took a razor to my remaining wrist. Every single time, Simon pulled me back from the ledge. He would hold me, his eyes bloodshot from crying, begging me to stay, swearing that if I died, he would follow me. Since then, unless he was traveling for work, he massaged my shoulder every morning and every night to ease the nerve pain. I had thought those moments were the purest expression of his love. Now I knew that every time he touched me, he was swallowing down bile. He leaned in to kiss my forehead. I flinched, pulling away. “What is it, Catherine?” he asked, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air. He rubbed his cheek against the curve of my neck. “Did I do something wrong? Are you upset with me?” I looked at him, forcing my voice to stay level. “You’re a tenured professor now. A public figure. Doesn’t it embarrass you to have a crippled wife?” “How could you even say that?” he murmured, pulling me tighter. “You gave up everything for my family. And we’ve been together since we were kids. Don’t you know how much I love you?” Staring into his eyes, a terrifying vertigo washed over me. Which Simon was real? The devoted husband rubbing my shoulder in the dead of night, or the man on the internet who wished I was dead? The urge to scream, to confront him about the affair, tasted like pennies on my tongue. But for a fleeting, tragic second, I actually wondered if I was the villain. Maybe I really was just a dead weight dragging down a brilliant, shining man. He ruffled my hair affectionately and pulled a velvet box and a small designer shopping bag from his coat pocket. “I passed by the boutique at the airport. Thought of you.” It was a bottle of high-end perfume and a delicate silver bracelet. It took me one glance to realize the fragrance was a sickly-sweet floral, the kind of scent a twenty-year-old girl would wear to a college party. It wasn’t me at all. When he stepped into the shower, I went through his coat pockets and found the receipt. He had spent ten thousand dollars on a custom, limited-edition jewelry set. The bracelet he gave me was listed at the bottom. It was the complimentary freebie given with the purchase. I stared at the crumpled slip of paper, and a hollow, broken laugh escaped my throat. When we were in college, I had casually pointed out a necklace in a shop window. Simon worked five part-time jobs, running himself into the ground just to buy it for me, telling me that Catherine deserves the absolute best. But now, the absolute best was for someone else. For Brianna. And I, his crippled wife, was only worthy of the scraps she didn’t want. From the bathroom, I heard him humming a soft lullaby over the sound of the running water. It was the song he had written for me years ago. He wasn’t singing it for me anymore. I sat in the dark living room until the sun came up. At dawn, my phone buzzed. The private investigator I had hired on a whim months ago—when Simon’s late nights first started—finally sent over the file. When I saw the name of the driver who hit me, the bottom fell out of my world. I first heard Brianna’s name two years ago. Simon used to come home rubbing his temples, complaining endlessly about his new grad student. “I’ve never met anyone so clumsy, Catherine. If she isn’t knocking over expensive lab equipment, she’s botching the data entry.” He had been on the verge of kicking her out of his research program. I was the one who felt bad for her. I was the one who told him to give her a little grace, to be patient. I never, in my wildest nightmares, imagined that my husband would fall in love with her. That he would love the girl who tore off my arm so much, he would cover up her crimes. 2 The next morning, Simon took a phone call, hastily threw on his coat, and rushed toward the door. “I made reservations for tonight,” he called out. “Don’t forget, it’s our anniversary.” He didn’t go to the university. He drove straight to a boutique pottery studio across town. Through the glass window, I saw Brianna. She was wearing heavy, youthful makeup and an over-the-top, frilly cottagecore dress—the exact aesthetic Simon used to mercilessly mock as childish and ridiculous. Yet now, looking at her, there wasn’t a trace of judgment in his eyes. When they walked up the steps, he actually bent down to lift the hem of her ridiculous dress so she wouldn’t trip. Inside, Brianna was clumsily smearing clay all over the worktable, her hands a mess. Simon, a man who demanded absolute perfection in his lab, wasn’t annoyed in the slightest. He stood behind her, enveloping her hands with his own, patiently guiding her fingers. He leaned down and pressed a tender kiss to her temple. He was a man in his late thirties, grinning like a love-struck teenager. I stood rooted to the pavement outside, the cold seeping into my bones. It wasn’t that he had forgotten how to love. He just didn’t love me that way anymore. Driven by a morbid, masochistic curiosity, I pulled my baseball cap low, slipped on a medical mask, and walked into the shop, taking a seat in the far corner. Memories of our past flickered behind my eyes like a dying film reel. The shop owner noticed me staring at them and ambled over, leaning in with a conspiratorial smile. “Cute, right? I practically watched that girl wear him down. He used to be so cold and guarded, but she completely won him over. They come in at least once a week now.” At least once a week. During the most agonizing phase of my physical therapy, I had begged Simon to come to the rehab center with me just once. He told me the faculty board was breathing down his neck and he simply couldn’t spare the time. He had time. It just didn’t belong to me. The owner pulled out her phone and tilted the screen toward me. “Look at this. He stayed up for three nights straight rendering this AI animation for her birthday.” On the screen, a cartoon version of Simon stood in the pouring rain, holding an umbrella over Brianna’s head, waiting in an endless line to buy her favorite boba tea. I had known Simon for twenty years, and I had never seen that version of him. My vision blurred with hot tears. A few feet away, Brianna leaned back against his chest, her voice a sickly-sweet whine. “Can you please stay with me tonight? Don’t go home.” Simon didn’t even hesitate. “Okay.” “But isn’t it your anniversary? Won’t your… one-armed bandit get mad?” She was laughing. She was mocking my mutilation, and Simon just smiled, fondly tapping her nose. “She depends on me to survive,” he said softly. “She’d never dare throw a temper tantrum.” Brianna sighed, burying her face in his neck. “I’m so sorry, Professor. If I hadn’t been drinking that night, I wouldn’t have almost hit your mom. Thank God your wife stepped in…” I clamped my left hand clamped over my mouth, biting down hard on my own fingers to stop the sob from tearing out of my throat. So it was true. She had been driving drunk. Simon, a man who prided himself on absolute moral integrity, had buried the truth to protect her. When I was first trying to re-enter the world after the amputation, I couldn’t find a job anywhere. Desperate, I had swallowed my pride and begged Simon to pull some strings, just to get me a low-level administrative role in the university’s back office. He had frowned, his expression stern and disappointed. “Catherine, there are procedures for these things. You know I play by the rules.” But his sacred rules instantly disintegrated the moment Brianna needed him. “Don’t carry that guilt, Brianna,” Simon murmured, kissing her hair. “Maybe it was just Catherine’s fate. It has nothing to do with you.” He said it so casually. As if he were comforting her over a failed pop quiz, not the destruction of my entire life. Thinking of the nights I had laid on the bathroom tiles, bleeding out from my own wrists, I couldn’t take it anymore. I shot up from my seat. My chair tipped backward, crashing against the floor with a deafening clatter. From behind me, Simon’s voice called out, “Wait a second.” A spike of pure terror shot through me. I wasn’t ready to face him. I didn’t know how to play this. Was I supposed to scream? Cry? Play the martyr and give them my blessing? Footsteps approached. A hand reached out into my peripheral vision, holding a silver chain. “Miss, you dropped your necklace.” He didn’t recognize me behind the mask. He didn’t even recognize the necklace, which held the diamond wedding band I could no longer wear on my right hand. I looked down. On the hand extending my wedding ring to me, Simon was wearing a misshapen, brightly painted clay ring made by Brianna. My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from him. [Catherine, emergency faculty meeting came up. Going to have to cancel dinner tonight. I’m sorry.] In that split second, the shattered remains of my heart calcified into pure, unadulterated rage. I walked out of the shop, pulled out my phone, and dialed the university’s ethics hotline. “I need to report an inappropriate relationship between Professor Simon Hayes and his graduate student, Brianna Davis.” 3 To my surprise, he didn’t call me to scream or interrogate me. Instead, that evening, he simply unlocked the front door and walked Brianna straight into our living room. The moment she saw me, Brianna dropped to her knees, tears spilling down her heavily rouged cheeks. “Please, Mrs. Hayes, I’m begging you, don’t ruin my academic career! The accident was all my fault, I know that. I’ll do anything to make it up to you, I’ll be your servant—” Simon scowled, gripping her arms and pulling her forcefully to her feet. He poured her a glass of warm water, handing it to her before turning a cold glare on me. “Catherine, Brianna has no one else in this city. Your little phone call nearly destroyed my career, and you’re trying to destroy her future over a misunderstanding.” He spoke as if he had entirely forgotten how that car crash had destroyed my future. He leaned down, reaching out to hug me. As his arm extended, his sleeve rode up, revealing a cheap, bright pink hair tie around his wrist. He noticed my eyes track the movement and awkwardly tugged his cuff down to hide it. I stared him dead in the eyes, my voice dripping with venom. “I’m ruining her? Didn’t she ruin me? She drove drunk, crippled me, destroyed my career, and now she wants to steal my husband?” I swung my left arm with everything I had and slapped him directly across the face. The sharp crack echoed loudly through the silent living room. Simon froze, his head turned from the impact, the righteous indignation in his eyes fracturing. “You… you know?” he stammered. “About me and her…?” Brianna clutched at my shirt, sobbing violently. “I’m so sorry! I know it’s wrong, but fate is just so cruel. Two loving hearts just can’t stop themselves from being drawn together!” The words made me nauseous. Years ago, when Simon had knelt in front of my parents, begging for their blessing to marry me, he had used that exact phrase. Now, he had packaged it up and handed it to his shiny new toy. I started laughing. I laughed so hard that the tears began to stream down my face uncontrollably. “Simon, my God… my biggest regret in this life is fighting so hard to marry you.” He panicked. He lunged forward, wrapping his arms around me in a crushing grip. “Catherine, listen to me, Brianna has nothing to do with us! We’re just soulmates, it’s a spiritual connection—” “Get your hands off me!” “I swear to God, Catherine, I have never slept with her! It’s purely platonic! My body has never betrayed you!” I thrashed violently against him, sinking my teeth into his shoulder until I tasted blood, but he refused to let go. His body might not have betrayed me, but his heart had packed its bags and left a long, long time ago. “I want a divorce, Simon.” I looked at him with absolute, dead calm. The frantic desperation on his face vanished, replaced instantly by a dark, surging anger. “Why do you always use divorce to threaten me?” he yelled, his voice echoing off the walls. “I told you, the title of my wife belongs to you and only you! Isn’t that enough?!” A blinding rage took over. I raised my left hand, aiming a vicious slap right at Brianna’s tear-stained face. I wanted to hurt the people who had dismantled my life. The slap never landed. Simon moved entirely on instinct. He shoved me backward, throwing himself in front of Brianna to protect her. I lost my balance. Having no right arm to catch myself, I went down hard, my side slamming violently into the sharp corner of the glass coffee table. For a fraction of a second, a flash of guilt crossed his face. “Catherine, stop being so hysterical.” I tried to push myself up, but my single arm was shaking too hard to support my weight. A deep, tearing pain bloomed low in my abdomen. It came in waves, sharp and agonizing. “Simon…” I gasped, clutching my stomach. “Help me up… I’m pregnant…” His pupils contracted. To my horror, beneath the shock, a flicker of genuine relief—even joy—flashed in his eyes. From behind his shoulder, Brianna spoke up, her voice small and delicate. “You don’t know, do you? The doctors said the trauma from the crash made you completely infertile.” The air left my lungs. For the past year, I had been religiously tracking my ovulation. I had choked down bowls of bitter, foul-tasting fertility teas every single morning, desperate to give Simon the family he said he wanted. And he had known. He had watched me torture myself, watching me act like an idiot, and said absolutely nothing. Before I could even find the breath to ask him why, Simon looked down at me, his expression hardening. “There’s no need to lie about a baby just to manipulate me into staying, Catherine.” He adjusted his collar, looking down at me as if I were a stranger. “Look, if you really want a child that badly, Brianna and I can have one for you. You can still be a mother.” The boy I had loved was gone. The creature standing in front of me wore his face, but he was a monster, delivering the most depraved insults with a calm, academic detachment. Using the last ounce of my strength, I pulled the divorce papers from my bag and hurled them at him. The pages fluttered, scattering across the floor. Simon just laughed. It was a cold, arrogant, dismissive sound. “We’ve known each other for twenty years, Catherine. You think I don’t know who you are? You are entirely dependent on me. You’ll never leave.” I stared up at him from the floor, the pain in my stomach intensifying, and realized I didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore. The boy I had spent twenty years loving finally, definitively, died right in front of me. 4 By the time the ambulance got me to the hospital, my dress was soaked through with blood. My phone buzzed on the bedside table. Brianna had sent me a video. It was Simon—the aloof, intellectual professor who claimed he couldn’t boil water—wearing an apron, carefully chopping vegetables to cook a meal for his precious girl. I miscarried that night. The morning I woke up, a notification popped onto my screen. Simon had transferred ten thousand dollars into my account. [Catherine, don’t worry, I won’t abandon you. But Brianna’s future is on the line. I need you to go to the dean’s office today and tell them your phone call was a misunderstanding. Tell them you had a mental breakdown and imagined it.] I didn’t reply. I hit block. Early the next morning, I hired a professional printing company and a few men. We marched right up to the main gates of the university and unfurled a massive red banner. “Brianna Davis: Innocent Grad Student by Day, Home-Wrecking Mistress by Night.” It was right in the middle of the morning rush. Within minutes, hundreds of students had gathered, pointing, whispering, and snapping photos. Brianna saw the banner and immediately burst into perfectly choreographed tears. As campus journalists rushed forward with recorders, Simon came sprinting out of the administration building, pushing through the crowd to shield her with his body. “I apologize to everyone for this disruption,” Simon announced, his voice projecting over the murmurs. “Ever since the car accident that took her arm, my wife has suffered from severe, untreated paranoia and mental illness.” He held up a stamped psychiatric evaluation for the cameras to see. It felt like someone had driven a stake through my chest, leaving a gaping hole for the winter wind to howl through. He had planned this. He had fabricated a psychiatric hold to discredit me, just in case I ever became a threat to Brianna. “To prove my absolute innocence, and to protect Ms. Davis from these baseless accusations,” Simon declared solemnly, “I am officially resigning from my tenure at this university, effective immediately.” He paused, looking deeply aggrieved. “I need to focus on getting my wife the psychiatric help she so desperately needs.” His eyes were sincere, his tone heavy with sacrifice. He looked exactly like the earnest young man who had promised my parents he would cherish me forever. But out of the corner of his eye, he was watching Brianna, making sure she was safe. The moment the crowd dispersed, he grabbed my left arm, dragging me ruthlessly into a secluded alleyway between two buildings. “What the hell is wrong with you, Catherine?” he hissed, pinning me against the brick wall. “I told you I wasn’t going to divorce you! Why can’t you just let her go?!” I laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “So refusing to divorce me is supposed to be a reward? Simon, you’re the one sleeping with another woman. Where do you get this absolute audacity?” The last shred of his patience snapped. “Because I’m sick of it!” he roared. “I’m sick of coming home every single day to look at your depressing, dead-eyed face! You used to be fun! You used to smile and laugh! Now look at you! All you do is wallow in self-pity!” Brianna came jogging into the alley, gasping for air between her dramatic sobs. “Professor! My parents saw the photos on Twitter… my dad almost had a heart attack!” Simon’s fury instantly melted into frantic, desperate panic. “Look at what you’ve done,” he snarled at me. “Apologize to her right now!” “Are you insane?” I spat. “She’s a homewrecker and a drunk driver. Why would I apologize for telling the truth?” Simon’s hand suddenly shot out. He gripped my right shoulder, his fingers digging viciously into the sensitive, scarred flesh right where my arm had been amputated. That spot was a web of damaged nerves. The slightest pressure sent blinding, white-hot agony shooting through my body. He used to massage it so gently, terrified of causing me pain. Now, he was intentionally crushing it, using my trauma as a weapon to force me to bow to the woman who crippled me. “Apologize!” he ordered. Cold sweat broke out across my forehead. The pain was unbearable, but I clamped my jaw shut, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream. “Don’t push me, Catherine,” he whispered dangerously. “You can’t even dress yourself without help. Where exactly do you think you’re going to go if we divorce?” He leaned in close. “I’m going to say this one last time. I am not divorcing you. And I am not leaving Brianna.” The absolute certainty in his eyes was nauseating. He genuinely believed I was a pathetic, broken creature who would endure any humiliation just to keep him. The pain in my nerves was causing black spots to dance in my vision. I couldn’t breathe. Just to get his hand off me, I squeezed my eyes shut and choked out, “I’m sorry.” Satisfied, Simon released his grip. “Good girl. Go home and wait for me.” He adjusted his jacket. “I need to go do damage control with Brianna’s parents.” I nodded slowly. The moment they walked away, I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me straight to the airport. As I sat in the backseat, I opened my phone and set the emails I had drafted to send on an automated timer. Simon. I hope to God I never see your face again.
🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “424261”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel