The Love of a Second Betrayal

I’d succeeded. I’d won over the broken second lead. And now I was going home.

I walked in carrying the gift I’d bought him, the pregnancy test results tucked in my bag.

And locked eyes with the two people in matching pajamas inside our house.

I knew then that this marriage was over.

The system asked me, “If you return to the real world, everything Liam has will be reset. He’ll be back in a wheelchair—worse off than before.”

“Host, do you confirm your return to the real world?”

“Yes.”

Chapter One

Two weeks earlier, I’d flown to Africa to shoot a wildlife documentary.

Liam had texted me every single day to check in.

Everyone in Seattle’s social circles knew Liam Hale loved me more than his own life.

But now I was standing in the doorway.

And the two people inside were wearing matching pajamas.

The strap of Vanessa Stone’s silk nightgown had slipped halfway down her arm, and the neckline was badly rumpled.

There was no need for anyone to explain.

A heavy, dragging ache settled in my lower belly. It felt like someone had torn a hole in my heart and an icy wind was blowing straight through it.

The color drained from my face. I stared at him.

Searching his face for some other emotion.

His eyes were calm. There was even a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re back early?”

“What is she doing here?”

“It was raining, her clothes got wet—”

The next instant, there was a sharp crack.

A red handprint bloomed across Liam’s handsome face.

He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, looked down at me, and said nothing.

Beside him, Vanessa shrieked.

When I raised my hand at Liam a second time, Vanessa screamed again and shoved me.

I instinctively shielded my stomach. My camera bag crashed to the floor.

I caught my balance and backhanded Vanessa across the face.

Liam’s expression turned ugly. He grabbed my wrist. “Claire Ward, if you’ve got a problem, take it out on me—”

I cut him off, digging my nails into my palms, fighting to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“Liam, would you believe that excuse?”

“If I were wearing matching pajamas with another man, would you believe it?”

Something churned in Liam’s eyes.

I kept staring at him. The same face, and not a single trace left of the man I’d loved.

After twenty-four hours of travel, my eyes were bloodshot and burning.

Something flickered in his gaze. He looked away, as if he were about to say something, then stopped.

He picked up a coat from the sofa and tossed it to Vanessa.

The coat was completely dry.

“Liam, I feel a little dizzy. Drive me home?”

Liam told Vanessa to wait outside. Then he looked at me, with the reckless calm of a man who’d decided he had nothing left to lose.

“She’s just a kid. I’m not letting her go home alone.”

Without waiting for my answer, he went upstairs, changed, and came back down.

I stood there as if I’d just woken from a dream.

The house I’d decorated so carefully had become his love nest with someone else.

These three years were a lie.

All of it was a lie.

A second lead is a second lead. The moment the heroine shows up, she’s all he can see.

Even though Vanessa had bullied him in high school, when he was in a wheelchair.

Even though he’d told me she was the person he hated most in the world.

At the front door, Liam stopped. His voice was level.

“When you’ve calmed down, we’ll talk.”

—

In the real world, I was in a coma.

I’d pushed a little kid out of the way of a car that ran a red light, and the car hit me instead. Neither the kid’s family nor the driver could pay my medical bills. Because my case was unusual, the hospital kept me on and kept treating me.

Eight years ago, the system found me.

The mission was a cliché: win over the obsessive, damaged second lead and stop Liam from turning dark, and I’d wake up in the real world.

Liam had a father who gambled and beat him and a mother who was gravely ill. His father had crippled him in elementary school, and he’d been bullied all the way through high school.

When I first appeared, he was cornered in an alley by Vanessa and her friends. They’d tipped his wheelchair over into the mud and stood around him jeering, telling him to get himself up.

I yelled that the cops were coming, and they scattered.

In the original book, Liam grew up cold and volatile. By the time the hero and heroine came back from studying abroad, he was a rising tech star. He’d gotten his legs fixed and become the biggest obstacle in their love story.

He loathed Vanessa. In the end he tried to kill her, failed, and was arrested—and his resentment ran so deep it made the whole world collapse.

The mission reward dangled in front of me like a carrot. No matter how many times Liam pushed me away and cursed at me, I never gave up.

After I showed up, Vanessa went abroad for school, right on schedule according to the book. She stopped targeting Liam, met the original hero overseas, and got on with her own plotline.

I stayed by Liam’s side. Every time my progress went up, I traded the points for money. I got him through college, and I paid to heal him.

Liam asked where the money came from.

I told him my parents had left it to me, and that they were gone.

Junior year of college, I was one percent away from completing the mission. By graduation, I still hadn’t moved.

I’ll admit I liked Liam. But I wanted to go home more.

Then came the turning point.

Liam had started a company early on with an upperclassman. Their product leaked before launch, and Liam was kidnapped. The ransom was three million dollars.

I traded every point I had for three million dollars to save him.

But the kidnappers changed their minds at the last minute, took me too, and raised their price. Liam found a chance and got us both out. We fell down a cliff, and the whole way down, he held me tight.

That was when the system told me: Mission complete.

I’d risked my life to save him, and in return he gave me the last piece of himself he’d been holding back.

I was an orphan, fresh out of high school, when the accident happened. I had no family.

Across two worlds, Liam was the person I was closest to.

I still remember the look in his eyes at the bottom of that cliff, raw and complicated.

He said he loved me. He swore he’d love me forever and never betray me, or else he hoped he’d die a terrible death.

He was badly hurt and spent three days in the ICU.

The system pushed me for an answer, and in the end, I chose to stay in this world.

I couldn’t bear to leave Liam.

The system made a long, hesitant mm, as if there was more it wanted to say, and told me to call if I ever needed it.

Liam’s forever lasted three years.

—

I called up the system.

It yawned. “I knew this day would come.”

My lips twitched. I didn’t say anything.

“If he tries to explain, whatever you do, don’t believe him.”

I blinked hard, holding back the tears.

“His explanation doesn’t matter anymore.”

The moment he chose to cheat, the moment he chose to sleep with Vanessa, he stopped being the man I loved.

Liam thought I couldn’t live without him.

He was wrong.

“If you return to the real world, everything Liam has will be reset. He’ll be back in a wheelchair—worse off than before.”

“Host, do you confirm your return to the real world?”

“Yes.”