Chapter 2Breaking The Script For My Love

After Sophie fell asleep, I pulled up a contact in my phone I hadn't touched in years.

I stared at Madeline’s name for a long time. I didn't call.

We had been apart for six years. In the beginning, we thought we could outrun destiny. My family had gone bankrupt overnight; hers had immediately moved to marry her off to a man named Victor. She had fought them. She had broken her engagement to Victor for me.

I thought we were going to be the exception. I thought the bankruptcy would pass, that we would be okay.

We got married in secret. We were happy, for a while.

Then, on the eve of Sophie’s birth, everything changed. Madeline was rushed to a different hospital by her family. When she woke up, the woman I loved was gone. In her place was a stranger—cold, indifferent, and eventually, cruel.

I didn't understand how someone could change so fundamentally between sunsets. The way she looked at me went from adoration to a visceral disgust.

Victor came to see me once. He was the one who told me the "truth" of our world. He spoke about "narrative corrections" and "protagonists." He told me that because the intended "Male Lead"—him—had arrived late, the world had to fix the mistake. The price of that fix was the reversal of the heroine’s feelings.

The more she had loved me, the more she was now forced to hate me.

Victor looked at me with a sickening kind of pity. Before he left, he asked, "Have you thought about what will happen to your child in a world that doesn't want you?"

I went numb. I didn't know who to hate. Madeline? She didn't even seem to own her own mind anymore. Fate? Hate is useless against a force you can't touch.

Around that time, my parents were in a catastrophic car accident. They were left in comas, likely brain-dead. I was spiraling, Victor’s words echoing in my head like a death knell. The world felt like a sick joke I was tired of playing.

One afternoon, I opened a high window in the hospital and looked down. Behind me, the baby in the crib started to wail.

A dark, intrusive thought took hold: If I leave, what happens to her? Will the world allow her to exist? Will Victor hurt her? Or will she be like me—discarded by Madeline, left to wither away in silence until she dies just to satisfy the plot?

I started shaking. I walked back to the crib, my hands trembling as I reached for her small neck. I wanted to take her with me. I wanted to save her from the life ahead.

But then, she stopped crying. She stared at me with those big, watery eyes, looking at me as if I were her entire universe.

The door burst open. Nurses and bodyguards swarmed in, shoving me away. I looked at my hands, horrified by what Victor’s poisonous whispers had almost driven me to do.

The news reached the Jackson family immediately. The patriarch demanded a meeting. They wanted the child.

I gave them everything. I signed the papers. I let go of the woman who hated me, and I gave up the daughter I was too broken to protect. I took two million dollars—just enough to cover my parents' medical bills for the rest of their lives—and I disappeared.

Madeline never showed up to the mediation. She couldn't even bear to look at me.

So, I accepted my role. I stayed in the shadows. I let her go, and I let myself go.

I was pulled back to the present by a soft weight pressing into my side. Sophie had rolled over in her sleep, tucking herself into my chest. She was snoring softly, her tiny hand clutching my shirt as if she were afraid I’d vanish if she let go.

I looked at her innocent face and let out a long, jagged breath.

If she knew her father had almost ended her life the day she was born, would she still be here? She’d be running for the hills.