Paralyzed for Five Years My Wife Kissed the Man Who Destroyed Me

"What's the matter—afraid you won't be able to stop yourself from regretting it?"

"Nanette, I've told you before. If you dare leave me, I'll drag us both to hell."

Nanette said nothing.

She simply parked the wheelchair by the side of the road, bent down, and with practiced hands tugged my shirt lower, covering the drainage bag that had already gone cold against my skin.

Her voice came out soft, barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry. I didn't know he was coming."

Those two words were like a spike driven straight through my heart.

I locked onto her eyes, jaw clenched so tight it ached.

"Sorry?"

"Fine. If you're really sorry, then go kill him."

After the accident, Nanette Swanson—once the pampered only daughter of a prominent Creston City family—had every last shred of pride stripped from her forever.

She knelt outside the operating room doors like a hollow shell.

Head bowed, murmuring the same words over and over.

"I'm sorry. I was going to call you beforehand. I didn't expect to black out."

I was drowning in agony so raw it felt like my chest was being torn open. I wanted to grab her by the throat and demand answers, but I couldn't even sit up straight.

I wanted to end it all. My fingertips finally brushed the fruit knife on the bedside table, but when I looked up, I saw the victims' families crowded outside the ward, sobbing, pounding on the door. I had no choice but to follow Nanette's arrangements and face them.

After the Swanson family lost everything overnight, we went ahead and got our marriage license on schedule.

Because they had nothing left, her parents had no choice but to move back to a crumbling house in their ancestral village.

Even so, Nanette found grueling part-time work and insisted on keeping me in the city.

It was a basement apartment, but it had air conditioning.

We ate the cheapest groceries, rationed down to the last portion, but the expensive specialty medications that kept my body functioning never ran out.

No matter how late Nanette came home, she would wash me down and massage my limbs without fail.

I believed she was spending her love, spending her entire life, atoning for what she'd done to me.

Until the night I jolted awake from a nightmare earlier than usual and found Nanette sitting at the edge of the bed, hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

On her phone screen, a video from that night's party was playing.

Nanette had lost at a dice game. Someone next to her asked with a nasty grin, "After you got with Duncan, did you still sleep with Stephen? You gave yourself to him the night you turned eighteen. Don't think we don't know."

Nanette's face went scarlet in an instant.

She shoved the person away and didn't answer. Instead, she chose the dare.

And in that dare—the one that destroyed my family and ruined my life—she made her choice without a second's hesitation.

A crisp snap. The brake line severed.

The group let out a collective gasp, their eyes bouncing between Nanette and Stephen with leering amusement.

"I knew it. Duncan's just the decoy you use to get your mom off your back about marriage. Your real love was always Stephen."

The more Nanette refused to answer, the wilder they got.

They kept forcing Stephen to drink, and Nanette intercepted every glass, downing them one after another.

Because Stephen had a mild alcohol allergy.

And Nanette couldn't bear to let him suffer even the discomfort of an itchy rash.

Eventually, Nanette was too drunk to stand. They shoved and jostled the two of them into a hotel room.

The door hadn't even closed before Stephen kissed her like a man possessed.

He pinned her against the wall, sucking hard on her lips, fingers working her buttons with practiced ease.

His voice was raw when he asked, "Don't marry him. Please."

"I'll lose my mind."

Nanette kissed him back through her tears, desperate and burning.

"I... can't break my mother's heart."

"Even if I marry him, we can still have this forever. My heart will always be yours..."

The two of them lost themselves in each other until they collapsed from exhaustion, the severed brake line long forgotten.

And at that very moment, I was lying in bed, happily imagining what kind of dream wedding I'd throw for Nanette once I won the prize money from the race.