I Was Just His Substitute Wife

The backdrop was somebody else's wedding.

I'd caught the bouquet at a friend's wedding, and Harry had gone with the moment and proposed to me right there.

We didn't even have a ring back then. We used pull-tabs off soda cans instead.

The photographer hired for my friend's wedding was good at his job, so we ended up with two respectable pictures.

But next to a real bridal shoot, they looked crude, like two kids playing house.

I kept firing messages at Harry.

【You're married, and you can still throw a wedding with someone else. You've really got some nerve.】

【If you want to have one, divorce me first.】

【Harry, what exactly do I even count as to you……】

He didn't answer a single one.

After the fight that day, he threw all caution to the wind and paraded his romance with Phoebe Fox all over social media, hiding nothing.

Every topic on every platform was about the two of them, and the gossip accounts kept lining up, one after another, to feast on the traffic.

On the day of Harry and Phoebe's reception, one video that took a different angle cut straight through the noise.

【Does nobody feel bad for the first wife of this "brother-in-law"?】

A lot of people caught on, late.

Oh. So it turned out there was a first wife in this story.

My name, along with Harry and Phoebe's wedding, climbed the trending list one after another.

Overnight, opinion flipped, and Phoebe was met with a flood of abuse.

They called her scheming. They called her a homewrecker who knew exactly what she was doing.

And I knew none of it.

I hadn't slept for days, and while I was resting at home with my eyes closed, Harry came storming in, enraged, and hauled me up.

He slammed me hard onto the floor and gripped my face, squeezing like he meant to crush the bones.

"Libby, was it you who leaked all of it?"

"How can you be this vicious? Do you know Phoebe collapsed on the spot when she saw the news, she was so upset?"

"She's in the hospital fighting for her life right now. Happy now?"

From his scattered words, I more or less pieced together what had happened.

I just couldn't believe it.

Couldn't believe the trust between us was this thin.

Phoebe had only been with him for two years.

We'd been together five, married three.

And in the end, she was his idealized love.

I was the one who'd swallowed every hardship at his side, and I was the one who was vicious to the core.

It was too absurd.

The heart that had gone numb these past few days started to beat again.

Faster and faster, more and more painful, like it wanted to burst out of my chest.

"Enough, Harry!"

I heard myself scream, hysterical.

"I told you and told you I wanted a divorce, and you're the one who wouldn't agree!"

"We've been married three years. I came all this way to help you build a business, slept in a basement with you, lived on scraps with you."

"And in the end you were thinking about your ex the whole time, and the second she cries you go scrambling right back to her!"

"So tell me, what exactly am I, to be treated by you like this?"

I had never blown up at Harry like this before.

His reason came flooding back, and he looked lost.

"Libby, I……"

"Don't say anything. Divorce! Whatever the two of you do from now on has nothing to do with me!"

The area under my nose was wet. I kept wiping at it with my hand, and no matter what I couldn't get it clean.

Then Harry looked at me, terror all over his face.

"Libby, what's wrong with you?"

A streak of vivid red slid into my vision.

Only then did I realize my hand was smeared with blood.

Something was dripping from the tip of my nose, drop after drop onto the floor, carrying a thick, rusty smell.

The room spun.

I saw Harry lunge forward to catch me.

The next second, I blacked out completely.