Chapter 3The Fake Engagement: Photoshopping My Happily Ever After

I woke up in a cold sweat at 4:00 AM. Unable to go back to sleep, I went into the office early.

The power in the third-floor breakroom was out, so I took my mug down to the second floor.

Just as I reached the landing between floors, someone pushed open the fire-escape door, chatting with the person behind them.

"With prices this high, you really dropped that kind of cash on diamonds for her?"

Diamonds. The word set off alarm bells in my head. I quietly stepped back and hid in the shadow of the stairwell.

A familiar voice sighed. It was Liam.

"Honestly, man, I'll level with you. I Photoshopped it."

His tone was heavy, like he was carrying the weight of the world.

"You know my background. I grew up with nothing. I can't afford the kind of rings Chloe expects. I just wanted to save face for her. She's always saying that once people see you in an outfit, it's basically secondhand. I figured if I Photoshopped the jewelry and everyone saw it, it's practically the same as her owning it."

"But... she threw a massive fit over it."

The man across from him was silent for a moment before speaking.

"I always thought she was just a bit overly ambitious."

"I never realized she was this shallow."

"You've got the patience of a saint."

Liam's voice was filled with nothing but helpless resignation.

"What can I do? We've been together for years. I just have to take the hit."

I peeked through the gap in the stairwell. Standing across from Liam, smoking an e-cigarette, was David—the senior manager who mentored me when I first joined the company.

David was notoriously strict and unsmiling. When I was first assigned to his team, I had actually complained to Liam about him. Liam had convinced me to stick it out, saying that a year under David was worth three years under anyone else.

Surprisingly, the first time David met me, he smiled. "You're Chloe? I remember the portfolio you submitted. Great work."

He dropped his harsh exterior and patiently mentored me. To me, he was both a teacher and a friend.

But not long after, at the company retreat, Liam—who had agreed to keep our office romance a secret—suddenly grabbed my hand during an all-hands meeting, announcing our relationship to the entire firm.

Shortly after that, David abruptly removed me from his core project team.

When I chased him down to ask why, he just pressed his lips together and said coldly, "I don't keep team members with ulterior motives."

He had looked at me with such ice in his eyes, as if I had committed an unforgivable crime.

Yet right now, David was patting Liam on the shoulder like a brother.

"If you hadn't warned me back then that Chloe was a flight risk and planning to leak our core data, I never would have guessed she was that kind of person," David said darkly. "You really can't judge a book by its cover."

"Are you seriously going to marry a woman like that?"

"Listen, Liam. I have a friend from grad school. If you want..."

Under the dim fluorescent lights, I stared blankly at Liam's shadowed face.

The core project data had always been securely stored on my encrypted laptop. I had never leaked it. The only time it was ever vulnerable was one weekend when Liam claimed his hard drive crashed and borrowed my laptop to "work overtime."

After I was kicked off the team, Liam was mysteriously drafted onto it the very next quarter. He quickly got a promotion, got a raise, and paid off the rest of his student loans.

"No," Liam said, suddenly looking up, brushing away the gloom. "I've made up my mind. I'm going to take responsibility for Chloe for the rest of my life."

"No matter how awful she is."

Looking at the fierce, self-righteous expression on Liam's face, a massive question mark exploded in my head.

Why?

My brain was a tangled mess. Tiny details I had forgotten over the years suddenly rapidly unspooled. Then, as the motion-sensor lights flickered off—

It all made sense.