The Scar He Left: Finding True Love

For three years, I was Colton’s hands and feet. I wiped the sweat from his brow and taught him to walk again after the accident that nearly killed him.

He promised me a future.

But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Charlie, returned from Paris, I became nothing.

"She was just the crutch I needed to walk to you," I heard him tell her.

At his recovery party, Charlie shattered his late father’s cherished wooden puzzle box and blamed me. She shrieked that I had poisoned her soup out of jealousy.

Colton didn't hesitate. He didn't check the security footage. He didn't ask for the truth.

He gripped my jaw, his fingers digging into my cheeks, and forced the scalding broth down my throat.

"Eat it! Prove you're not crazy!"

He roared while I choked on blood and blisters, the hot liquid searing my skin. He chose the woman who abandoned him over the woman who saved his life.

I took the severance check, deleted every photo, and vanished into the night.

Six months later, I was accepting an award for my new rehabilitation clinic in Australia, wearing a diamond ring given to me by a man who treats my scars like gold.

Colton stood in the back of the auditorium, looking like a ghost. He had finally discovered that Charlie was a fraud who faked her "spiritual journey" to get illegal plastic surgery.

He came to beg for forgiveness.

But when our eyes met, I didn't feel anger. I didn't feel love.

I turned my back on him and walked into the light.

Chapter 1

Aminda POV

Three years of my life-one thousand and ninety-five days of devotion-evaporated in the span of a single sentence overheard through a crack in the mahogany door.

"She was just the crutch I needed to walk to you, Charlie."

I stood frozen in the hallway, a tray of Colton's favorite organic kale smoothies trembling violently in my hands.

Just an hour ago, I was the woman who had dabbed the feverish sweat from his brow, held him when he screamed from the white-hot agony of nerve regeneration, and declined a triple-salary offer from a prestigious clinic in Zurich just to see his rehabilitation through to the end.

I thought I was his savior.

I'd foolishly convinced myself I was his future.

Only yesterday, during a grueling session on the parallel bars, his legs had given out. I had caught him, my small frame buckling under his inert weight. We had sunk to the floor together, his heavy, ragged breathing mixing with mine. He had reached up, his calloused thumb brushing the tears from my under-eye.

"When you get me walking again, Aminda," he had whispered, his voice rough with a vulnerability he showed no one else, "I owe you a future."

That sentence had been the fuel that kept me burning the midnight oil, researching experimental nerve therapies until my vision blurred.

Now, standing outside his study, that fuel turned into acid in my veins.

"Don't be cruel, Colt," a male voice laughed. It was Jayden, his best friend. "Aminda gave up everything for you."

"I'm grateful," Colton's voice was crisp, devoid of the warmth that had enveloped me just yesterday. "But gratitude isn't love. Charlie is coming back. Tonight. At the recovery party. I'm going to announce it properly."

"You're bringing Charlie Mack? The woman who dumped you when you crashed the car?" Isaias asked, sounding incredulous. "And you're doing this in front of Aminda?"

"Aminda is a professional," Colton said. The dismissal in his tone was sharper than a scalpel, cutting me to the bone. "She knows her place. She's a therapist. Charlie is... Charlie is the only woman I've ever seen in my future. Tonight is about reclaiming my life. My real life."

My grip failed.

The tray slipped from my fingers.

It didn't crash to the floor. I managed to catch it against my hip in a clumsy reflex, but the smoothie splashed over my pristine white uniform, staining it a grotesque green.

My ears rang-a high-pitched, deafening whine that drowned out the world.

He didn't love me. He didn't even see me.

I was just the mechanic fixing the car so he could drive it to another woman's house.

I turned and ran.

I didn't care about the stain. I didn't care about the party starting in three hours.

I sprinted down the long, marble corridor of the estate that had been my home for three years. My breath hitched in my throat, jagged and painful, like swallowing glass.

I burst out the side door into the garden, blinded by hot tears.

The toe of my sneaker caught on a loose paving stone.

I went down hard. My knees slammed into the gravel, the skin tearing instantly.

I sat there, gasping for air, staring at the blood welling up through the fabric of my torn leggings. The sting in my knees was grounding, a sharp physical counterpoint to the hollowed-out ruin of my chest.

A flash of memory hit me. The first time I massaged his atrophied calves. He had looked at me with such intense self-hatred, and I had smiled, promising him he would run again. I fell in love with his brokenness because I thought I was the one healing it.

What a joke.

I dragged myself up, forcing my trembling legs to move, and limped to the guest cottage where I stayed.

Inside, I went straight to the drawer I hadn't opened in months. There, buried under a stack of medical journals, was a check. Five million dollars. Signed by Esther Carlton, Colton's mother.

"Take it and leave when he's better," she had said, her voice cold and transactional. "He won't marry help."

I had been so insulted then. Now, I just felt numb.

I picked up the check.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from Colton.

Party starts at 7. Make sure you're dressed. Charlie is arriving at 7:15. I want you to ensure her seating is comfortable.

He was asking me to serve the woman he was replacing me with.

I looked at the mirror. My face was pale, eyes red-rimmed. I looked like a ghost haunting my own life.

On the dresser sat a cheap plastic hair clip. It was the only thing he had ever given me-a dollar-store trinket he bought from a street vendor during our first wheelchair outing because the wind was blowing my hair in his face. I had treated it like a diamond.

I picked it up.

I squeezed my hand. Harder.

The plastic snapped with a sharp, violent crack.

Shards dug into my palm. I didn't let go. I squeezed until a drop of blood welled up and dripped onto the pristine wooden floor.

Outside, the sound of the orchestra tuning up for the party drifted through the window. Laughter. Champagne corks popping.

He was celebrating his future.

I looked at the broken plastic in my bloody hand.

I would go to the party. But not to serve Charlie Mack.

I would go to say goodbye to the last three years of my stupidity.