9 Chapter 9
I don’t know how many years I had been dead. My soul was becoming transparent.
I never thought she was dead. I never imagined the girl I had loved for seven years would truly be gone forever.
But fate is a cruel thing.
“Sarah! Sarah, goodbye! You little rascal, goodbye! It’s time for me to say goodbye, too.”
When I was in Napa celebrating with Victoria, she kissed me under the vines.
Before the engagement party, Victoria and her parents knelt before me, begging me to marry her. They said it would be her last dying wish. They praised my generosity, my
decisiveness.
Only then did I learn the truth. The leukemia was fake, but her desire to kill Emily was
real.
The Daniel who had eyes only for Emily had died with her in that decrepit cabin in
Oregon.
That cold, decomposing corpse in the morgue was my fiancée, She was fine when she
left, and now she was gone.
But I forgot. I forgot that Emily was always the one giving in, always the one making
sacrifices.
I decided that as soon as I got home, I would beg Emily for her forgiveness.
That entire trip, no matter how beautiful the scenery or how fine the wine, felt like ashes
in my mouth.
But Emily’s parents were still alive. After betraying her, I couldn’t abandon her elderly
parents.
I loved Emily. But saying that now, the words are nothing but a bitter, hollow joke.
I will never, ever be able to forgive myself.
14:28
@ Chapter 9
In a moment of abysmal weakness, I agreed.
I thought to myself, if I had just said no to Victoria’s ridiculous request, would I be holding my beloved wife right now? Would I have met our unborn child? Would I have taken Emily to the beaches of Hawaii she always dreamed of?
That fall, on Emily’s birthday, I stood at her grave.
I thought she was just angry with me, that she wanted me to grovel and apologize like I had before. But days turned into weeks, and I heard nothing from her.
After that, I was a walking corpse.
The second I saw that familiar lock of her hair, my heart died.
“Goodbye, Em! In the next life, let’s be best friends again!”
Daniel’s POV
They said Emily would surely understand.
The moment the police called, I kept praying. “Please, don’t let it be Emily. It can’t be her.”
But in the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Emily’s ghost.
How desperate must she have felt, having to give up her own fiancé?
I forgot that she, too, needed to be chosen, just once. I forgot how she had cried to me about the injustice in her family.
When the detective told me Emily had been pregnant, I wished I was the one lying on
that cold slab.
In the days that followed, Jake and Victoria were arrested.
Eventually, they passed away, too.
My company failed. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about following her.
Life is a cycle. And now, they had all said their goodbyes to me, each in their own way.
Slowly, I began to lose my sense of direction.
9 Chapter 9
I was a complete and utter bastard. I conspired with outsiders to hurt the person I loved
most.
Jake’s family took Victoria’s child.
Sarah’s children grew up. When they waved hello to me, the oak tree would creak, as if answering for me.
I lowered my head and drew circles on the ground with my ghostly finger.
But the empty house that greeted me sent me into a blind panic.
I waved in Sarah’s direction. Just as my form was about to fade completely, I saw her,
tears in her eyes, waving back at me.
I tried to storm the hospital and kill that evil woman myself, but I was caught and
detained for months.
I finally felt a sense of release. In my own apartment, I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.
The Daniel who was left was a person who disgusted even me.
Ending my life was the only way I knew how to atone for the pain I caused Emily. It was
the last and only thing I could do for her.
Victoria used her pregnancy to get out on medical leave, with a police guard at her door.
