Chapter 2

Today was supposed to be the day of my engagement party with Seraphina.

I'd booked her favorite Michelin-starred restaurant. That bottle of ’82 Lafite had been quietly decanting for three hours, just like my own burning heart, slowly chilling, settling into a heavy silence.

Finally, she arrived, carrying a dusty weariness and an air of apology.

"Julian, I'm so sorry. Something came up at the last minute."

She sat down, skillfully offering her excuses, not even noticing that her white silk blouse, with the second button haphazardly slipped into the third buttonhole, revealed a disheveled hint of what shouldn't be.

Even more damning was the strange, cheap, and sickeningly sweet men's cologne clinging to her – like a needle, it pricked at my temples, sending jolts of pain through me.

Just fresh off another man's battlefield, you rush to my dinner? Seraphina, you truly are a master of time management.

"Seraphina, we…"

The words "break up" were on the tip of my tongue, but then her phone abruptly lit up.

The name flashing on the screen: Caleb.

She answered almost instinctively. The face that had been so dismissive towards me a second ago instantly melted into a tenderness I'd never seen, a sweetness that could drown a man.

From the other end of the line, Caleb's perfectly rehearsed, fragile whimper pierced through the speaker, floating directly into my ear:

"Sera… I'm so scared being alone… I feel so cold."

"Are you going to leave me again, like last time? Do you not want me and our baby anymore?"

Seraphina shot up from her seat, her voice filled with an unprecedented urgency and tenderness.

"Don't be silly, the doctors told you to rest. I just stepped out for some fresh air; I'll be right back to you, promise."

She hung up, snatched her trench coat, and was about to leave.

I finally spoke, my voice cold as ice: "Seraphina, look up at the calendar on the wall."

Her steps faltered. When she turned back to me, her eyes held nothing but impatience.

"Julian, be mature. You know Caleb's situation. He has a history of self-harm, and he acts out when he gets emotional. Now, he's pregnant for his treatment, practically gambling with his life."

"That's a human life! It's just one dinner, can't you be understanding?!"

She finished, then turned resolutely and walked away.

I stared blankly at the cake on the table, inscribed with "Sera & Julian."

The frosting melted under the lights, dripping down like the ridiculous love I'd poured into her for four years, silent, laughable tears.

I vaguely remembered our sophomore year.

Caleb was still abroad, stubbornly sending her all sorts of luxury items and overly sappy letters.

Seraphina hadn't even looked at them. Right in front of me, she'd tossed everything into the trash.

She'd made an international call, her voice laced with ice: "Caleb, I'm warning you, stop bothering me with your dramatic, dying acts. It's cheap."

After hanging up, she'd turned, cupped my face, and kissed me reverently in the sunlight:

"Julian, don't pay any attention to him. You're the only one in my heart, always have been. That boy isn't even fit to tie your shoelaces."

But now, for that man "not fit to tie my shoelaces," she abandoned me again and again.

All because her parents had died young, and Caleb's family had taken her in.

All because two months ago, Caleb's father had tearfully entrusted his terminally ill son to her.

All because he held something critical over her head.

She called it repaying a debt, a way to show gratitude.

She said it was just borrowing her body to have a child, to use the umbilical cord blood to save a life.

"Julian, you have to believe me, my heart is yours. Once he's repaid his family's kindness, we'll get married. I swear."

But does 'repaying kindness' mean sleeping with him?

I looked at the puddle of melted frosting and suddenly felt that the girl in the white dress, who had pushed me away from a runaway race car in the rain, had died long ago.

Died in Caleb's sickbed and his seductive embrace.

I decided to give her one last grand gift, a personal epitaph for this relationship.