Gardenias And His Last Goodbye

At my own engagement party, my fiancé, Franco, abandoned me. He left me standing alone in a room full of guests to rush to the side of another woman, Katina, the one he truly loved.

He called me a gold-digger, a parasite clinging to his family's name, and accused me of faking an illness just to get his attention.

But he never knew the truth. He never knew about the secret I carried-a terminal leukemia diagnosis I received just two days before he humiliated me.

He never knew that the night he called a drunken mistake, the night he spat on with disgust, had left me pregnant with his child.

And he certainly never knew that while he was tending to Katina's fake anxiety attack, I was in a sterile hospital room, alone, terminating our baby to have a fighting chance at a life he made sure was a living hell.

I thought my death would be the end of our story, a final, quiet release from his cruelty.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was back at our engagement party, the scent of gardenias filling the air, just moments before he would walk out and shatter my life for the first time.

Chapter 1

Elana Clements POV:

The scent of gardenias was supposed to soothe me, but it only tightened the knot in my stomach. I knew Franco didn't want to be here. Not with me. My engagement party. What a joke.

He stood across the ballroom, his gaze drifting over the crowd. Not at me, his fiancée, but searching. Always searching for someone else. His coldness was a familiar ache, a dull throb I had learned to live with. It didn't make it any less painful.

I watched him, my heart a hollow space in my chest. He said he loved me, but his eyes never met mine with the same warmth they held for… for her. I knew the truth, even if I refused to speak it aloud.

Then, his phone buzzed. A sharp, insistent vibration that cut through the polite murmur of conversation. Franco' s face, usually so composed, crumpled into a mask of panic. He didn't even try to hide it.

"I need to go," he muttered, already moving towards the door. His voice was a harsh whisper, filled with an urgency that had nothing to do with me.

I reached out, my hand grasping his arm. "Franco, wait. What's wrong?"

He yanked his arm free, as if my touch burned him. "It's… complicated. Someone needs me. More than you do right now." The words were like a slap, raw and bruising.

"But it's our engagement party," I pleaded, my voice barely audible above the music. "Everyone's watching. What will they say?" My dignity, what little I had left, was crumbling around me.

His eyes, usually the color of a stormy sea, were frozen. They held no warmth, no recognition. Just a chilling, vacant stare that pierced right through me. "You always make