Chapter 4

Five years—over eighteen hundred days and nights. I had filled this chat box with longing, breakdowns, pleas, and despair.

"Guillermo, today is the 37th day since you left. I miss you so much."

"Guillermo, I dreamed of you again today. Please don't go, okay?"

"Guillermo, the child is gone. I have nothing left..."

"Guillermo, why didn't you take me with you?"

Every single message was like throwing a stone into an abyss—not even an echo.

Only this one got a quick reply: "Okay."

The response I'd waited five years for appeared at this moment, but it wasn't the answer I wanted.

No explanation, no small talk, just an "okay" that pushed me to the breaking point.

I couldn't control my rationality anymore. I grabbed the glass from the bedside table and smashed it on the floor, then stepped on it barefoot. Glass pierced into my sole, the pain drilling deep, but it wasn't even one ten-thousandth of the pain in my heart.

When Guillermo came in and saw me crouching in the broken glass, blood all over my feet, his pupils contracted sharply.

"Christina!"

He practically lunged over, his knee slamming onto the floor with a "thud," broken glass piercing through his pants, but he paid no attention.

His hands trembled as they held my ankles, trying to pull me out of the glass shards, but his hands were shaking too much to grip steadily.

"What... what are you doing?"

He looked up at me, his eyes already red.

Those eyes, those eyes I'd dreamed about for five years, were now filled with heartache, panic, and something complex I couldn't read.

He carefully cradled my foot. Blood gushed from where the glass had pierced in. His voice changed with panic.

"Call a doctor! You're bleeding so much... how could you..."

He couldn't continue.

My tears splashed onto the back of his hand. His whole body froze.

He slowly reached out, wanting to wipe the tears from my face, but his fingers stopped an inch from my cheek and withdrew.

"Christina, don't do this anymore. I'm begging you!"

I looked at him, at those eyes I'd traced in my dreams countless times. They were right in front of me now but felt as foreign as a stranger's.

"You and Ava—when did it start?"

My voice was calmer than I expected.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why torture me by faking your death?"

"If you'd just told me honestly, I would have accepted it."

Guillermo's lips trembled violently, his Adam's apple rolling up and down, finally squeezing out only: "I'm sorry."

He tried to help me up. I shoved him away, my arm hitting the bed frame. I grunted from the pain.

His hand froze in midair, his whole body kneeling in the broken glass as if nailed to the spot.

Then he raised his hand and slapped himself hard across the face.

"It's all my fault!"

His voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible, his eyes so red they seemed ready to bleed.

"I deserve to die! But Christina... we can't go back anymore."

"Ava is pregnant. I have to be responsible for her, fulfill my duties as a husband. I owe her that."

All the blood in my body turned cold at once.

"Tell me," I trembled as I repeated, "when did you two start? Let me give up, please?"

Guillermo closed his eyes, as if recalling some unbearable past.

"It was... during those days when you were taken away by those thugs to save me."