Dead Before You Loved Me He Realized the Truth Only When My Grave Was Cold Chapter 02

Dead Before You Loved Me He Realized the Truth Only When My Grave Was Cold Chapter 02

Two days earlier, I’d gone to pick up my pregnancy test results.The doctor pulled me aside, and my world collapsed.

I was given a death sentence.

I tried to find Kael.

He’d been too busy to be seen lately.

I never wanted to disturb him.

But I was dying.

I just wanted to see him.

I wanted to say, “Kael, you’re the only one who loves me. I’m scared. Let me be selfish. Just stay with me.”

I circled the building parking garage again and again.

Just as I’d made up my mind, I noticed a car shaking.

It was Kael’s car.

I don’t remember what I did next.

When I came to my senses, Kael was staring at me with an angry face.

“Elara, calm down. It’s not her fault. It’s me. Go home. I’ll explain everything.”

I stared blankly at the woman in the backseat, her clothes disheveled.

Kael’s jacket covered her face.

He was protecting her.

Her figure looked familiar.

Kael shoved me into a taxi and sent me back to the home we’d shared for three years.

I waited for him to come back and explain.

If he’d just apologized, I would have forgiven him.

Maybe he’d been drunk. Maybe it was a moment of weakness.

If he said it, I would believe him.

After all, I was dying. I just needed him to stay with me.

A full day and night passed. He didn’t call. Not even a text.

Then, last night, he handed me the divorce papers.

He really was a bastard.

“When you two got married, I told you,” Darien said, his voice sharp with scorn.

“That boy’s always been a selfish jerk. Takes what he wants, throws it away when he’s done.”

“Oh,” I murmured weakly.

He was a bastard too, I thought. Loved quickly, left without mercy.

Darien seemed suddenly irritated.

“I can’t believe you signed so fast. I thought you’d beg him to stay, like you used to beg me.”

I curled my fingers tight, my voice small. “I know begging won’t change anything. People who want to leave will always leave.”

Darien fell silent, like he’d remembered something painful.

I had begged Darien not to leave me once.

My mother died young, from the same illness I had now.

I’d grown up only with my dad.

He’d worked as a chauffeur for Mr. Blackwood, the head of the family.

Quiet, honest, and unassuming, with unwavering loyalty.

Mr. Blackwood took him everywhere.

The day he died was my birthday.

Before he left, he hugged me. “Be good, baby. Wait for Daddy. We’ll cut the cake together.”

I waited all night.

By the next morning, I saw his body, covered in blood.

Someone had kidnapped Mr. Blackwood. My dad had taken a dozen knife blows to protect him.

Afterward, the Blackwood family took me in.

To repay my father, Mr. Blackwood arranged an engagement between me and Darien.

Darien’s parents hadn’t approved, but they’d been too afraid of Mr. Blackwood to object.

Darien and I hadn’t fallen in love just because of the engagement.

He was three years older. When I joined the Blackwood household, they put us in the same school.

On my first day, I punched an older girl.

She’d stood in my classroom doorway, arrogant and cruel.

“Where’s Elara?”

She found my desk, threw my new books and notebooks on the floor, and ground them under her fancy shoes.

I froze.

“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

“You don’t deserve to know me. Just stay away from Darien.”

She was two grades above me, and she spat her warning like poison.

Then she turned to my new classmates.

“Don’t you know? Her mom’s dead. Her dad was just the Blackwoods’ driver.”

“She only got into this school because her father saved Mr. Blackwood.”

“Trash. She doesn’t belong at Havenbrook Preparatory Academy.”

Kids at Havenbrook came from wealthy, powerful families.

Someone like me belonged outside, waiting to drive the rich kids home.

After she spoke, the classmates who’d been ready to be friendly stared at me with disgust.

I didn’t know what to do.

She laughed, cruel and satisfied.

She wasn’t done humiliating me.

“Who knows if her dad worked with the kidnappers? Poor people are sneaky and evil.”

She could insult me. But she couldn’t lie about my dad. She’d crossed a line.

I fought her. I pinned her under a desk and covered her head with my backpack.

Her friends panicked and ran for help.

Darien showed up. I learned then that she was in his grade.

I let her go. She ran to Darien, crying, and grabbed his arm.

Darien pushed her away roughly. He touched my injuries, his voice cold.

“What really happened?”

Someone whispered the story to him. He looked down at the girl.

“You deserved that.”

“Elara is a Blackwood. No one touches her.”

He stared at the trembling girl. “Don’t let me see you again.”

The Blackwoods ruled Havenbrook. Making Darien angry cost her family dearly.

She never came back to school and her family sent her abroad.

I’d just lost my father, alone and scared.

In that moment, Darien looked like my guardian angel.

Throughout school, he stayed by my side.

He taught me the homework I didn’t understand.

He let me be picky about food.

“Let her eat whatever she wants,” he’d say. “Can the Blackwood family not afford it?”

He even picked out my clothes.

Students whispered: “You’d think Elara was his daughter.”

Those years were the happiest of my life.

Every time I tried to hate Darien, I remembered those days.

Hating someone was exhausting. I let myself forgive him.