Desperate slut. Insatiable whore. The comments were endless. Meanwhile, Sebastian became the noble husband who'd been betrayed yet still took responsibility. And Narelle? She was celebrated as the brave woman who'd endured public scorn for true love.
Their fans flooded my phone with death threats. Funeral wreaths arrived at my door. Someone photoshopped my face onto escort advertisements, images so vile I couldn't look at them twice.
While I drowned, Sebastian took Narelle to every place I'd ever dreamed of visiting with him. Every single one.
And still—still—I couldn't let go.
How could I? In this entire world, after my mother, he was the only person who had ever truly loved me. The only one who'd been good to me.
I was eighteen when my father brought Narelle and her mother home.
One month later, at my birthday dinner, my mother pressed a blessing charm into my palm. Her hands were warm. Her smile was soft.
Then she walked to the rooftop and stepped off the edge.
Her diary told me everything. Pages and pages of deliberate humiliation. Narelle and her mother's calculated cruelty, their whispered campaigns to break her.
I brought the evidence to my father.
Narelle cried. Her mother cried harder.
I was thrown out that same night.
That winter was brutal. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones and never quite leaves.
I was hours away from sleeping on the streets when Sebastian found me. He'd searched the entire city.
He pulled me into his arms so tightly I couldn't breathe, his voice caught between fury and anguish.
"Why didn't you come to me?"
"Joy." He tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. "Remember this. Even if the whole world abandons you, I want you. I will always want you."
After that, Sebastian poured everything he had into taking care of me.
He brought me to his elite prep school, a world of trust-fund heirs and designer uniforms where I stuck out like a stain on silk. Everyone waited for me to fail. To crumble. To prove I didn't belong.
At the opening ceremony, Sebastian took the stage as the top student representative. He was supposed to give an academic speech.
Instead, he looked directly into the crowd and said:
"Joy Harding is my life. Touch her, and you touch me."
The whispers stopped after that.