He Chose Her, So I Jumped Chapter 01

He Chose Her, So I Jumped Chapter 01

The year my depression hit rock bottom, my boyfriend and my best friend got married.

I climbed onto a rooftop, ready to end my life, but a younger colleague of mine who worked in therapy pulled me back.

Cassian Whitmore was a renowned clinical psychologist with an elite education overseas. For me, he walked away from a thriving private practice and a brilliant future.

He stayed by my side every day, guiding me through therapy and leading me out of the darkness of my past.

This year, my depression finally began to improve. I ordered flowers and made a pair of matching rings, ready to start a new life.

However, outside a restaurant, I saw my ex-boyfriend and my best friend sitting across from him.

“We really owe you for planting those suggestions in her head all these years,” Julian said. “If a lunatic like her had actually killed herself back then, Marceline and I would’ve had that hanging over us for the rest of our lives.”

The darkness of my past crashed over me again. I grabbed a knife and slashed at my wrist like I’d lost my mind.

But Cassian didn’t rush over and wrestle the knife away like he had before. He only looked down at me, something dark and unreadable in his eyes.

“Marceline was right. Constantly indulging you isn’t doing your condition any good.”

“Starting today, if you want to die, then die. I won’t say another word.”

Staring at the three people in front of me, I began to breathe faster.

If everyone wanted me dead, I would give them what they wanted.

…

The sharp blade split my skin, and blood flooded my vision red.

But the pain in my body was nothing compared to the agony in my chest.

Cassian glanced at the wound on my wrist, then looked away.

“You’ve been threatening to kill yourself for years. When have you ever actually died?”

“Marceline’s right. It’s all an act. You’d never really have the nerve to do it.”

Contempt coated his voice. He sounded nothing like the Cassian I had known.

Marceline stood behind him and looked down at me, smug satisfaction gleaming in her eyes.

“Elowen, I know you resent me for being with Julian, but love isn’t first come, first served.”

“You can’t use your depression to force him to stay with a woman he doesn’t love.”

Blood slid from my fingertips and struck the floor. My hand trembled around the knife as I stared at the woman before me like she was a stranger.

When her parents, Roland and Celeste Voss, divorced, neither of them wanted the burden of raising Marceline. They abandoned her at her grandmother’s house in the country.

I begged my parents to bring her home to live with us. From that day on, she had the same clothes, the same food, and every comfort I did.

When kids at school mocked her as the unwanted girl with no parents, I raised my fists and stood between her and every vicious rumor.

Until I caught her and Julian naked in the same bed. Even then, she had worn this same righteous expression, without the slightest trace of guilt.

Remembering what the three of them had just said, I turned numbly to Cassian and held his gaze.

“All these years, did you only treat me to keep me from going after them?”

The diamond ring dug painfully into my palm. I had shaped and polished it myself, one of the only two in the world.

Something flickered in Cassian’s eyes when he saw the devastation in mine.

He started to explain, but Marceline cut him off.

“Dr. Whitmore, you’re a professional clinical psychologist. Don’t you know patients with depression can’t control themselves during an episode?”

She cast a scornful glance at my bleeding wrist.

“She even found the perfect angle for her little performance. The cut missed the artery completely. Does someone like that really have depression?”

As soon as she finished, everyone’s gaze dropped to the wound on my wrist.

My hands clenched. I had slashed myself blindly in a moment of desperation, yet somehow that had become her proof that I was faking my illness.

Cassian’s face darkened. He gave my wrist, where the bleeding had already slowed, a cold look and sneered.

“No wonder you’ve tried to kill yourself so many times and never succeeded. You were faking every one of them, weren’t you?”

“Elowen Hartwell, whether you live or die is no longer my concern. After years of psychotherapy, you haven’t improved at all. That proves my treatment was wrong.”

He paused and looked at Marceline with a tenderness even he didn’t seem to notice.

“Marceline just returned from studying psychology overseas. What she’s saying makes sense.”

“The only thing that may help you now is for me to let go.”

A broken smile pulled at my lips.

Without hesitating, I raised the knife and drove the blade deep across my artery.