Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
On our wedding day, he left me there alone and disappeared.
I stood in the chapel with a four-month pregnancy barely hidden beneath my dress and called him again and again.
At first, he just wouldn’t answer.
Then his phone went off completely.
The whispers started around me, low but sharp enough to cut.
“I’ve never seen a groom leave someone at the altar.”
“A pregnancy-pressured marriage never ends well. If he doesn’t want her, can you blame him?”
I stood there in the wind coming through the open doors, numb and helpless, forcing myself to calm the guests as they slipped out one by one.
I waited like an idiot at the street corner for the rest of the day.
I waited until everyone was gone.
He still never came.
An older woman beside me said offhandedly, “Evan Sterling looks a lot like your dad’s first wife’s son. What if he got close to you for revenge?”
On the drive home, that sentence looped through my head again and again.
Then, dazed and barely aware of the road, I crashed into a truck.
I died under the wreckage.
So did my four-month-old baby.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back three months earlier—the day I found out I was pregnant.
I sat on the toilet for a long time, clutching the pregnancy test in my hand.
A beam of light came through the small half-open window, falling across the two bright lines on the stick.
The sound of dripping water in the bathroom struck my nerves one drop at a time, dull and painful.
The suffocating agony of my death in the last timeline still hadn’t faded when Evan’s voice came from outside the door.
“Claire?”
His tone was as calm and concise as ever.
Half an hour ago—at least, in my memory—I had still been standing in that chapel, begging over and over for him to appear.
In my previous life, on this exact day, he had just gotten home from work and brought me my favorite bread from the bakery.
I had run out to him, thrilled, thrown my arms around him, and shoved the test into his hands.
I still remembered the look on his face then—complicated, unreadable.
He had stared at it for a long moment before asking, “Are you sure?”
All the joy in me had frozen. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over my head. I had pulled back my smile and asked carefully, “You… don’t want it?”
“That’s not it.” He had pressed his lips together and looked at me for a long moment. “We’re not married yet.”
“Then let’s get married now. Okay?”
He had thought about it for a while.
Then he said, “Okay.”
Evan and I had been together for five years.
I had believed we would finally make it to the altar.
But the moment I remembered the humiliation of my last life—me standing there at the wedding, panicked and alone, gripping my phone while people pointed and whispered, praying he would show up and save me from that
When Evan pushed the door open, I was huddled in the corner, my face drained white.
In the trash can lay the pregnancy test I’d hidden, wrapped up and buried under other garbage.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
His tall frame blocked out the light as he crouched in front of me, a faint crease forming between his brows.
“What’s wrong?”
He smelled like the outside world—wind, dust, exhaustion. I knew he was busy. Sometimes he was so consumed by work he didn’t have time to spare for me.
When we’d first gotten together, he had taken care of me in every possible way. I had relied on his love and let myself be reckless with it.
But somewhere along the line, he had changed into this version of himself.
Sharp brows. Bedroom eyes that should have looked affectionate.
And yet his gaze was always dim somehow, unreadable. Even when he looked at me gently, it felt like he was carrying too much inside him, too many things he would never say.
Little by little, I had learned to rein myself in. I stopped acting spoiled. Stopped asking him to do things for me just because I wanted him to.
He loved me.
But somewhere, somehow, that love had started to feel mixed with something else—something murky, something I didn’t dare touch. It made me more and more careful around him, like one wrong move would break something I couldn’t put back together.
As he looked at me now, was he already thinking about four months from now?
About how I would become one piece of his revenge?
About me lying on a freezing operating table, gritting through the pain?
At four months, the baby would already be formed. The placenta would have taken shape. It wouldn’t just be ending a pregnancy. It would mean tearing it, alive, from my body.
What had my father ever done to him to deserve this?
What could Richard Bennett possibly have done that Evan would choose to repay it like this—through me?
Maybe the memories of my last life were too humiliating, too raw.
This time, I didn’t tell him I was pregnant.
I buried my face in my arms. After a long while, I said softly, “I’m fine. I must’ve eaten something bad. If I lie down for a bit, I’ll be okay.”
Evan’s hand paused.
Then, slowly, he rested it on top of my head and gently rubbed the edge of my ear.
His voice was like his fingertips—soft, but carrying almost no warmth.
“Okay.”
In the five years we were together, Evan had once told me I was his life.
There had been a winter when Southport got snow for half a month straight—a rare, impossible kind of winter. Evan would stand outside the subway station every evening in a black wool coat, waiting for me to get off work.
Then he’d take my hand, and we’d walk under the dim amber streetlights toward the apartment with its lights already glowing in the distance.
Evan didn’t like snow. But he’d said, “If you love it, Claire, then I’ll try to love it too.”
So when had he changed?
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Little by little, Evan grew busier. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home for three or five days. Sometimes he’d disappear even longer, barely replying to my texts.
And yet every time he came back, he became that same gentle, attentive man again.
There would be hot food on the table. My clothes would be washed and folded.
As if… he were making up for something.
The bedroom door opened, pulling me out of the memories of my previous life.
Evan stood in the doorway. “Claire, I need to go into the office.”
The office again.
And again, Evan had forgotten that today was my birthday.
In my previous life, I’d reminded him with obvious irritation, telling him to come back early and celebrate with me. He’d agreed.
I waited the entire night for him.
The candles burned down into the birthday cake, leaving twenty little black holes behind.
They had looked like they were mocking me—my pathetic hope, my stupidity.
If he was never going to come back, why promise me anything at all?
This time, I didn’t want to beg him to celebrate my birthday with me.
I stayed silent for a long while before I finally forced the emotion down and answered softly, “Okay.”
There was no movement behind me.
Then I remembered. Every time he left, I kissed him goodbye.
Was that what he was waiting for?
I curled deeper under the blanket, trying to hold onto a little warmth. “I’m not feeling well. I’m going back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
Evan never forced me. A second later, the door clicked shut.
Then I heard the sound of a car pulling away downstairs.
The room went still again—oppressively, suffocatingly still.
I gathered myself for several minutes, then got up, got dressed, and walked out.
The truth was, after all these years, I knew almost nothing about Evan.
He had a company, but he never let me drop by his workplace. He never talked about meeting family either.
If that woman at the wedding in my previous life hadn’t let something slip, I still wouldn’t have known how long I’d been living like a fool in the dark.
Five years had made me far too dependent on him.
This time, I wanted to tear that dependence apart with my own hands.
The late-autumn wind was fierce, rushing past in cold bursts and whipping my hair loose. I hailed a cab by the curb and gave the driver the address.
He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Miss, what are you doing going to Old Town alone?”
It took effort to force a smile onto my face. “I’m… picking up my boyfriend from work.”
That was the address Evan had once listed for his company.
I’d only seen it by accident in his phone in my previous life. Otherwise, he never would have even told me where he worked.
Back then, he disappeared all the time—gone for three or four days at a stretch.