Blame On His Excessive Devotion

On my twenty-eighth birthday party, Lucas carried my sister Annawho had fallen into the poolback to his bedroom for everyone to see.

Everyone assumed I would swallow my pride and endure this humiliation.

Instead, I stormed the party and asked for a divorce.

Lucas turned to look at me and grinned like a bastard.

"Think it through," he said.

"There's no turning back once you leave me."

I nodded. "I know."

Three years after we separated, I went to pick up my boyfriend, Dr. Ethan Quinn, from work.

I ran into Lucas sitting across from him in a consultation room, holding a small, delicate little girl in his arms.

The moment our eyes met, he smirked coldly and pointed at me, telling the little girl, "You wanted to find your mother, right? That's her."

People shuffled back and forth in the hallway, and the consultation room door had been closed by the patient who'd just come in.

Lucas stopped in front of me with long strides.

His sharp, chiselled face was as cold and unreadable as my memory of it.

The tailored suit hugged his lean, impeccable frame. The little girl in his arms wore a couture princess dress and looked adorable.

She clung to Lucas's neck and stared at me timidly.

"Can't even recognize your own child?" Lucas's thin lips lifted, but the smile never reached his eyes.

"Well, you haven't seen her all these years. How would you know?"

I went still. Bitterness flooded me. Back when I agreed to divorce him quickly, I took nothing not even the infant in my arms.

Everyone said I was heartless. Even my own parents thought so.

The first time I mentioned divorce, my mother called me home.

"You're getting divorced why didn't you take your baby? It's your child! How could you be so cruel!?"

When I kept my head down, she grew panicked. "If you leave, your sister will marry Lucas soon. She will end up being your daughter's stepmother?"

I curled my cold fingers into a fist. In my mother's mind, this marriage had always belonged to Anna.

I was merely a placeholder a stranger temporarily filling a role. But Anna isn't my biological sister.

Fate had played a cruel trick.

we were switched at birth. When I was taken home, the family arranged a match between me and Lucas.

Anna was separated from Lucas, and in anger she ran abroad and cut contact.

No one knows exactly how they persuaded Lucas, but in the end he agreed to marry me.

For two years of marriage, we treated each other with respect and maintained a harmonious.

But everyone also knew Lucas was always searching for Anna.

The day I heard Anna had come back was my due date.

In the middle of the night, I woke with pains and instinctively went looking for Lucas, only to find him on the balcony, on the phone.

He was whispering soothingly, "I'll pick you up myself don't worry. No one's going to say anything okay, I'll go for you right now."

As he turned, our eyes met. I said calmly, "My stomach hurts. Please take me to the hospital." He paused only briefly, then kept walking out. "I'll have the driver take you."

I caught him again at the door.

His looked unhappy.

"Anything else?" he asked. My voice trembled with the pain in my abdomen.

"Lucas," I said, "If you walk out that door today, it's over between us.

His expression darkened instantly. "What are you doing now?" he snapped.

"I am just picking her up. What are you so nervous about?""

After a pause, he added, "Don't forget, this marriage was originally hers that you took."

It felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over my head.

Two years of marriage, I wouldn't say Lucas loved me deeply, but he had never treated me poorly.

For a time, I thought he had let her go and wanted to build a life with me.

But now I realized it was all just an illusion. Another pain hit me, forcing me to bend over to catch my breath.

Then his phone transmitted Anna's cool voice: "If I am not welcomed, I'll buy a plane ticket back now." Lucas's face tightened; he turned and strode out.

"Don't be willful. I'll be there in a minute Anna, you dare try that"

And the door shut behind him, closing off his dominance and any trace of favoritism for me.

I leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window, trying to ease the pain, but it worsened. Warm liquid started to run down my thighs.

I panicked and called Lucas.

Before I could finish talking, he said coldly, "How long do you plan to make a scene?" I whispered, shaking, "I'm bleeding the baby"

"Enough." He cut me off, mocking.

"I thought you were different from those women. It turns out that you use the same cheap tricks."

"Don't worry, I'll deal with it when I get back." Click. He hung up. Decisive and resolute.

Before I married, my adoptive parents had told me, "If you don't want to go through with this, you don't have to. Our family will take care of you."

Back then, I thought that as long as family interests were involved, Lucas wouldn't be so cruel.

I learned the hard way that you can't ask someone who never intended to love you to suddenly care.

The thought of divorce first appeared then.

An ambulance took me to the hospital.

Lying on the operating table with my life hanging by a thread, memories rushed in.

I remembered the early sweetness of our marriage.

Lucas took me to watch the ocean at dawn, kissing me when he was tipsy and making love with me at all hours after we registered our marriage.

My friends said, "He really dotes on you." But that lasted for only six months.

I started to notice something when I overheard him talking with friends.

"Are you showing off your love so publicly to force Anna to come back? It doesn't seem very effective, though."

Lucas leaned against the railing with a faint, mocking curl to his lips.

"We'll see how long she can take it."

"But your wife is really good in every way. You're not actually falling for her, are you?"

Lucas sipped his drink and said dismissively, "It's all just for show." His indifferent eyes hurt me more each day after.

I tried giving him the silent treatment, and he, sensitive as he was, would always coax me gently, lowering his pride.

I began to soothe myself with soothing words, too.

He hadn't let Anna go because he couldn't forget her because he resented it, not because he loved me.

If he was willing to pretend and be kind forever, I would keep playing along.

I didn't know then that time isn't the curereunion is.

During my final moments on the operating table, the staff hurried.

As my consciousness gradually faded, I remembered that incident again.

I thought of the night, after knowing our marriage, Anna staged a hunger strike and fainted from low blood sugar.

It was raining. Lucas carried her into the ER, soaked through, clutching her hand and calling her name.

I followed behind with the payment slip, watching him nervously took out a candy from his pocket and carefully peel it open to place between her pale lips.

I stood by the IV pole and noticed his exposed nape when he bent over, rain and sweat mixing and dripping from him.

He had stomach pains that night and sweated, but he stayed by Anna's side in the ER all night.

Yet when I had an amniotic fluid embolism and my life was hanging by a thread, he didn't even answer my call.

I survived maybe the heavens took pity.

Five days after I came out of ICU, I heard about what he'd done while I fought for my life.

He had thrown Anna a welcome-back party, with fireworks and celebration, even though I nearly died on the operating table.

Under the fireworks, he and Anna shared looks full of restrained affection.

In this marriage, I forgave many things I shouldn't have forgiven, thinking it would bring me happiness.

Later I realized he'd already decided our ending.

No matter what I did, I couldn't be happy with him.

So the first thing I did after discharge was to ask for a divorce.

He was silent for a long time, "Don't overthink things. Just focus on recovering."

He thought my decision was influenced by postpartum hormones.

Three months later, at my birthday party, I asked for a divorce again.

He was carrying dreanched Anna toward his bedroom.

When I spoke, he turned and grinned like an asshole.

"Think it through. There's no turning back once you leave me." I calmly nodded, "Okay."

"Achie, little Taro~" Anna's voice pulled me back.

Her makeup was flawless and she clicked around in heels at Lucas's side.

"What did the doctor say?" "Surgery's scheduled for next month."

Anna breathed a sigh of relief.

"You don't know how hard it is to get an appointment with Dr. Quinn. Now little Taro will have"

She stopped, suddenly noticing me.

"Claire?" Before I could answer what she said, "You came back because Taro is sick, right? After all, you are her birth mother."

Lucas's voice cut in coldly, "Birth mother? She deserves to be called that?"

I froze and glanced instinctively at the child in his arms.

I found the loss and sorrow I'd tried not to face in her eyes.

In a heartbeat my chest felt like it had been ground against shattered glass. Pain radiated to my limbs.

Lucas had initially agreed I could take the child, but he changed his mind.

I demanded to know why.

He lounged on the sofa and said lazily, "Anna didn't want to have kids. She's worried about her figure."

"But that's my child!" I shouted.

"She's my child too," he said.

"Don't worry, Anna will raise her as her own."

When I refused, Lucas resorted to pressure.

He said, "Don't forget how your adoptive parents' family got their jobs"

At that moment I realized I had no power to fight against him.

During the standoff, Anna tugged Lucas's sleeve to smooth things over.

"Let's have dinner together and catch up, Achie?"

Lucas gave me a cold glance, "I don't enjoy catching up with my ex-wives."

He turned and left.

Anna hurried after him, then came back, saying "You're not here to fight me for Taro, are you?"

"No. I'm here to get married."

She was surprised.

"You're getting married?"

No wonder she was shocked.

I'd divorced Lucas two years ago, and they still hadn't registered a marriage.

Once again, I was moving ahead of her.

She let out an audible, relieved "Oh."

Then asked hesitantly, "Have you told Mom and Dad?"

"Not yet," I said.

However, at that night, my parents called and demanded I come back home.

My mother faced me and asked,

"Why are you back? You said you'd never come back."

"Who are you marrying? How stable is the family? Do they know that you have married before and had a child?"