Chapter 5: The Life I Left Behind

I found out about the aftermath much later.

When Hudson saw the medical report, he stood paralyzed by the table for a very long time.

He recognized every single word on that paper.

But strung together, they formed a sentence his brain refused to process.

Six weeks pregnant.

Miscarriage induced by blunt force trauma.

His fingers trembled as he picked up the report.

For the first time, he understood why I had looked so desperate when I grabbed his sleeve at the hospital.

He understood why I had been trying to tell him something.

And he finally realized that while he had been standing beside Tatum's bed, his own child had been dying because of the chaos he helped create.

He called me again.

Straight to voicemail.

He sent message after message.

[Briar, where are you?]

[Please answer me.]

[We need to talk.]

But there was no reply.

By then, I was already in London.

The moment I stepped outside the airport, the cold wind hit my face.

I pulled my coat tighter around myself and looked up at the unfamiliar gray sky.

For the first time in years, nobody knew where I was.

Nobody could laugh at me.

Nobody could turn my pain into entertainment.

Nobody could tell me I was overreacting.

I had nothing but one suitcase, a temporary apartment, and a job offer that had once terrified me.

Now, it felt like freedom.

The company representative was waiting outside the terminal.

"Ms. Ellis? Welcome to London."

I nodded.

"Thank you."

She smiled politely and took my suitcase.

"We've arranged a serviced apartment for your first month. Your new office is in the financial district, and your transfer officially begins Monday."

I stared through the car window as London passed by.

The city was nothing like home.

It was busy, anonymous, and completely indifferent to my existence.

I loved it immediately.

That evening, I unpacked only the essentials.

Then I placed my phone on the table.

It had hundreds of missed calls.

Most were from Hudson.

Some were from Mom and Dad.

There were even dozens of messages from people I hadn't spoken to in years.

I opened social media.

Tatum's story had already spread everywhere.

She had posted a picture from the hospital bed.

Her wrist was heavily bandaged.

The caption read:

[Sometimes you love someone so much that you don't realize when you're hurting them.]

Thousands of people comforted her.

Some blamed me.

Others called me heartless.

Then I noticed something strange.

A comment had been deleted beneath her post.

Someone had written:

[If Briar really attacked you, why did you delete the original prank video before the hospital incident?]

I froze.

I searched Tatum's page again.

The original video was gone.

So were several of her older posts from the day of my wedding.

Someone had started cleaning up the evidence.

My stomach twisted.

Tatum hadn't expected me to leave.

She had expected me to stay, apologize, and eventually accept the role they had written for me.

My departure had changed the script.

I opened my laptop and logged into my old cloud account.

For years, I had automatically backed up photos and videos from my phone.

There were thousands of files.

I searched for footage from the wedding day.

Then I found something I had completely forgotten about.

A security camera from our house had captured the morning Hudson came home after the airport prank.

The timestamp was clear.

He had entered the house carrying a bag of medicine.

He had stayed beside me for nearly an hour.

Then his phone rang.

It was Tatum.

The audio was faint, but the recording captured enough.

"She still doesn't know about the pregnancy, right?"

Tatum's voice.

Hudson answered quietly.

"No."

"Good. Don't tell her yet."

"Why?"

There was a pause.

Then Tatum laughed.

"Because if she knows, she'll use the baby to make you stay."

My entire body went cold.

I replayed the recording.

Again.

And again.

Hudson had known.

Maybe not everything.

But he had known there was a possibility I was pregnant.

And he had still walked away.

I closed the laptop.

For a few minutes, I couldn't breathe.

Then I wiped my tears.

I had spent seven years trying to prove that I was worth choosing.

I was done.

If Hudson wanted the truth now, he could find it himself.

The next morning, I changed my phone number.

I blocked Tatum.

I blocked my parents.

And finally, after staring at his name for nearly a minute, I blocked Hudson too.

Then I walked into my new office.

Nobody there knew my history.

Nobody cared about Tatum.

Nobody knew I had once been a bride abandoned on her wedding day.

They only knew me as Briar Ellis, the woman who had been chosen to lead one of the company's most important international projects.

For the first time in my life, I didn't need anyone's permission to start over.