At Twenty-Eight, He Married My Enemy. At Eighteen, He Gave Me a Second Life. Chapter 02

At Twenty-Eight, He Married My Enemy. At Eighteen, He Gave Me a Second Life. Chapter 02

There was a sincerity in the boy’s voice that I hadn’t heard in years.

Slowly, I opened my hand.

The pills scattered all over the floor.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ethan saw me as a lunatic standing in the way of his happiness.

But to eighteen-year-old Ethan, I had once been the only person he wanted to protect.

My father had started having an affair with Blair’s mother, Victoria, when I was still very young.

After that, he almost completely stopped giving my mother and me any money.

I attended high school on a full scholarship, while Blair came from a wealthy family and was the most popular girl in school.

She had beautiful blonde hair, expensive clothes, and a crowd of people who were always desperate to be around her.

I wore old coats from discount stores, took the bus home every day, and cared for my chronically ill mother.

Everyone knew I was poor.

Everyone knew I was the easiest girl in class to pick on.

So bullying me came with almost no consequences.

Blair led the others in dumping their lunch scraps into my locker.

After club events, they made me clean up all the trash.

Someone once tossed a pair of cleaning gloves onto my desk and laughed.

“You’re only good for this kind of work anyway.”

I said nothing.

I just cleaned everything up.

Then they complained that I smelled like garbage and refused to sit near me.

I spent two years sitting alone in the corner of the classroom.

Then Ethan transferred into my class.

For the first time, I had someone sitting beside me.

He took the trash bag out of my hands.

He helped me with my schoolwork, waited in the cafeteria line for me, and walked me to the bus stop after school.

No one ever came to pick me up, so he always stayed until he saw me safely get on the bus.

One day, when Blair and her friends were mocking me, Ethan cornered her against the lockers.

“Does picking on people just because your family has money make you feel important? Touch Eileen again, and I swear you’ll be the one going out of your way to avoid her from then on.”

After that, no one dared bully me in front of him.

I once asked him why.

He clearly hated dealing with people, so why was I the only person he treated so well?

Ethan’s eyes turned red.

He raised a hand and gently touched my face.

“Because I used to get bullied too. Just like you.”

From that day on, I wasn’t alone at school anymore.

We promised to apply to college together, go public as a couple, and build a life together.

But in the year before graduation, everything was destroyed.

Blair tricked me into going to the equipment room behind the gym.

Several boys from outside the school were already waiting inside.

They ripped my school uniform and held up their phones, recording everything.

By the time Ethan found me, his eyes were already bloodshot.

He charged inside and started fighting them.

In the chaos, the folding knife he usually used to peel apples ended up buried in Blair’s abdomen.

His hands were covered in blood.

But the first thing he did was take off his jacket and wrap it around me.

“Eileen, don’t be scared. I’m here. No one’s going to hurt you.”

At the time, Ethan had already been accepted to Stanford.

But because of what happened, he was sent to juvenile detention and lost his chance to attend Stanford.

By the time he was released, I was in my second year of college.

My father only cared about Blair and Victoria.

He couldn’t have cared less how I survived.

During the day, Ethan hauled lumber and drywall at construction sites.

At night, he loaded shipments in a warehouse.

His shoulders and arms were always covered in scrapes and bruises from work.

But he still paid my tuition.

He also helped cover my mother’s medical bills.

After graduating from college, I gave up the chance to continue my education.

Ethan and I rented a tiny office and started a business together.

During those years, we worked late every night and gave each other whatever time we had left.

We both believed that if we just held on a little longer, our lives would keep getting better.

But one year before the company was set to go public, Blair became Ethan’s personal assistant.

At first, Ethan deliberately made things difficult for her.

He said he was getting revenge for me.

But on the night of my twenty-fifth birthday, Ethan never came home.

Early the next morning, Blair sent me a photo.

In it, she and Ethan were lying in the same bed in an unmistakably intimate pose.

She included a message.

“Happy birthday, Eileen. Do you like my surprise?”

I stopped myself from remembering any more.

I curled up in the corner of the hospital bed and clutched my phone tightly. It was the only thing that could still make me feel safe.

“Ethan…”

“I’m here.”

The boy answered me again and again.

“Eileen, I’m here! Hang in there!”

I wiped away my tears and held the phone close.

As long as eighteen-year-old Ethan was still there, I wasn’t alone.