Part 1After Five Years Abroad, Everyone Believed I’d Perished

After the breakup, I took my shattered heart and, without telling a soul, fled the country to study abroad.

For five years, I changed my name, my number, and severed every last tie to my old life.

Everyone thought I was dead.

That I had died on the day my boyfriend, Liam, went behind my back and married my stepsister.

For five whole years, a fresh red rose was laid on my grave every single day.

Five years later, I returned to arrange for my mother's grave to be moved. And there he was, Liam, once again holding a red rose to mourn me.

After a moment of shared shock and awkward silence, I managed to speak.

"Long time no see."

He forced a twitch of his lips, hiding the rose behind his back.

"Long time no see," he echoed. "I thought… I thought you were dead."

I offered a thin smile, pretending not to notice the redness rimming his eyes.

He wasn't wrong.

Cathy was dead.

She died five years ago, on the day he secretly married my father's illegitimate daughter.