Chapter 7: Southern Roots, Shattered Dreams

Evan and I weren’t actually an arranged marriage. I met him in high school.

He was the kind of guy who made you believe in happy endings—until he didn’t. In those days, everything felt possible, even for a girl with a future already mapped out by her parents’ ambitions.

Back then, my parents had already picked a fiancé for me—the prince of the Carter family in Savannah, Carter Hayes. But I didn’t want to marry him.

Carter Hayes: the golden boy of Savannah prep, whose smile could charm the pearls off a Southern debutante. But I knew what was behind that smile—an arrangement, a contract, two families getting richer while I lost myself.

My parents’ marriage was purely for business. Since I was a kid, I watched them act loving in public, but bring home different lovers in private. The few times they were together, it was endless fighting and blame-shifting.

The air in our house always felt heavy, the AC rattled in the window, bourbon glasses clinking in the next room, and I learned early how to slip out before the shouting started.

I was sick of such a fake, broken family. So I fiercely resisted an arranged marriage. In my sophomore year, Evan became the boy who sat behind me. When I was at my lowest, he approached me like a happy puppy wagging his tail.

He always had a way of making me laugh, even on the worst days. He’d doodle on my notebook margins, sneak me M&Ms during quizzes, and flash me that crooked grin that made my heart flip.

Saying yes to his confession felt natural. We went from school sweatshirts to wedding gowns. Not long ago, we even went back to our old high school to give a speech together. Everyone envied us.

I can still hear the applause in the gym, the way the old principal beamed at us, his voice booming over the loudspeaker: "Maple Heights’ finest love story!" I believed it, too.

Everyone said we were the perfect campus romance. I was immersed in their envy, thinking I’d found true love. Never knowing the one I thought would never betray me had already found a songbird somewhere along the way.

The girl in the videos sweetly calls him hubby. She posts “little daily moments with my sugar daddy,” and her followers beg for more updates. Evan would hold her, filming trending TikTok dances with her. His face wasn’t shown, but you could tell he enjoyed it. Every business trip, he brought this girl. All those nights I thought he was working late, he was actually in someone else’s arms.

All those silent dinners alone, those calls that went straight to voicemail, suddenly made a sick kind of sense. He was never really mine—not after he met her.

Once, I told him not to work so hard. He said: “I want your parents to respect me, and I want to earn more money so we can have a wedding everyone envies.”

If only I’d listened closer, heard what he didn’t say.

Five minutes before the accident, Evan messaged me: “No matter what happens, Evan will always love you.” Every time I read that message, I cry. But all of it was popped like a soap bubble.

The sound of that message notification still echoes in my ears. Some nights, I reread it just to torture myself, tracing the words with my thumb until the screen blurs.

[The main guy even has an excuse ready for after the fake death: he was swept downstream, rescued by a family, and lost his memory.]

[The kicker is, the heroine believes it when she hears it, chooses to marry him, and starts a life of suffering, dying depressed in a cycle of forgiving Evan. How are there still authors writing this kind of tired, abusive romance?]

[But now the plot’s changed. The heroine found out the truth early. Please don’t let her repeat the same mistakes!]

The chat bubbles, for once, felt like the voice I never had—urging me not to fall for the same old lies again.