Chapter 1: The Journal

When we started talking about marriage, I stumbled across the journal Caleb Young kept when he was sixteen.

My heart jackhammered as I flipped through his messy handwriting—every line yanked up memories I’d tried to bury.

“She’s huge, and she’s got this crush on me. It’s honestly gross.”

My chest tightened—old insecurities crawling up my spine like cold fingers. I pressed my palm to my sternum, needing something solid to hold me together. The words hit me with the force of a slap, sharper because I had always trusted him.

“I found a girlfriend, hoping she’d give up and stop looking at me like that.”

Those sentences haunted me for days, echoing while I waited in line at Kroger, pretending to scroll through my phone. I could almost see my teenage self, hopeful and awkward, weaving friendship bracelets and dreaming of something that never existed.

His complaints in the journal stopped on May 13th.

That was the day I ended my weightlifting career to save him.

I vaguely remember, during my freshman year at Ohio State, he asked me, “Do you want to be together?”

We’d been sitting on the old futon in my campus apartment, the scratchy fabric rubbing my bare legs, the hum of a late-night infomercial on TV filling the silence. The Ohio night was thick with humidity, the air conditioner rattling in the window as I hesitated, then nodded. It felt monumental—like a storm finally breaking after years of silent thunder.

When I said yes, it was like a huge weight had finally been lifted from his shoulders.

He’d smiled for real that night, letting out a breath he’d been holding for years. I remember thinking that was what love looked like.

I thought we loved each other.

But in the end,

It turned out to be nothing more than years of him struggling to repay a debt of gratitude.

Suddenly, it all felt meaningless.

I broke off the engagement and left the Young family.

I packed up my things in cardboard boxes, the kind you snag for free behind Walmart, and tossed in a half-eaten box of Lucky Charms and a faded Ohio State sweatshirt. Then I drove away from their big white house in Maple Heights, the porch light glowing like an accusation behind me. The silence in my new apartment was both freedom and heartbreak—the only sound was the neighbor’s TV and the clink of my keys on the counter.

A few months later, one night, he parked outside my apartment and waited.

When he saw the man beside me, his eyes turned red.

“Who is he?”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. The words came out raw, like he hadn’t slept in days. The parking lot was half-lit by a flickering lamp post, and I could see the tension in his fists, the way his jaw clenched as he waited for my answer.