The Scar He Left: Finding True Love

For three years, I was Colton’s hands and feet. I wiped the sweat from his brow and taught him to walk again after the accident that nearly killed him.

He promised me a future.

But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Charlie, returned from Paris, I became nothing.

"She was just the crutch I needed to walk to you," I heard him tell her.

At his recovery party, Charlie shattered his late father’s cherished wooden puzzle box and blamed me. She shrieked that I had poisoned her soup out of jealousy.

Colton didn't hesitate. He didn't check the security footage. He didn't ask for the truth.

He gripped my jaw, his fingers digging into my cheeks, and forced the scalding broth down my throat.

"Eat it! Prove you're not crazy!"

He roared while I choked on blood and blisters, the hot liquid searing my skin. He chose the woman who abandoned him over the woman who saved his life.

I took the severance check, deleted every photo, and vanished into the night.

Six months later, I was accepting an award for my new rehabilitation clinic in Australia, wearing a diamond ring given to me by a man who treats my scars like gold.

Colton stood in the back of the auditorium, looking like a ghost. He had finally discovered that Charlie was a fraud who faked her "spiritual journey" to get illegal plastic surgery.

He came to beg for forgiveness.

But when our eyes met, I didn't feel anger. I didn't feel love.

I turned my back on him and walked into the light.

Chapter 1

Aminda POV

Three years of my life-one thousand and ninety-five days of devotion-evaporated in the span of a single sentence overheard through a crack in the mahogany door.

"She was just the crutch I needed to walk to you, Charlie."

I stood frozen in the hallway, a tray of Colton's favorite organic kale smoothies trembling violently in my hands.

Just an hour ago, I was the woman who had dabbed the feverish sweat from his brow, held him when he screamed from the white-hot agony of nerve regeneration, and declined a triple-salary offer from a prestigious clinic in Zurich just to see his rehabilitation through to the end.

I thought I was his savior.

I'd foolishly convinced myself I was his future.

Only yesterday, during a grueling session on the parallel bars, his legs had given out. I had caught him, my small frame buckling under his inert weight. We had sunk to the floor together, his heavy, ragged breathing mixing with mine. He had reached up, his calloused thumb brushing the tears from my under-eye.

"When you get me walking again, Aminda," he had whispered, his voice rough with a vulnerability he showed no one else, "I owe you a future."

That sentence had been the fuel that kept me burning the midnight oil, researching experimental nerve therapies until my vision blurred.

Now, standing outside his study, that fuel turned into acid in my veins.