Chapter 6
I didn’t dare accept the bracelet, but Nathan just smiled and urged me not to turn it down. “We’re about to have our wedding anyway. Just take it. I won’t feel right unless you do.”
Everyone burst into laughter. But my heart ached, and tears started to fall. This was my second time here, yet it already felt more like home than the place I had lived in for 22 years.
Nathan had seen how I was mistreated, and he comforted me with genuine sympathy. “Don’t cry. Only someone totally clueless would fall for that vile woman.”
He told everyone what he had witnessed when he went to the Quinn residence looking for me, along with everything I had shared with him on the way over.
Nathan’s grandmother, Mrs. Stone Senior, was so furious, she slammed her hand on the table. “I could understand arranging someone to take Willow’s place in the marriage out of concern for Willow, but in just a few years, they let some outsider manipulate them into letting Willow be bullied like this?
“It just shows how unbelievably foolish those two guys from the Quinn and Webb families really are. Willow, you don’t need to worry about any of this. Just stay here at the Stone residence and rest. We will handle everything for the wedding.”
I hesitated, unsure if this was really the right thing to do.
Then, Nathan leaned in and whispered softly in my ear, “Don’t hesitate. As long as I’m here, no one in this family will dare mistreat you.”
His tone and expression gave me a strange sense of déjà vu, like I had heard it all before.
After everyone had left, I couldn’t hold back anymore and quietly asked him, “Nathan, have we met before?”
He looked a little disappointed. “You don’t remember?”
He explained, “When you were just born, I visited you with my grandma. You were just a baby back then, small and squishy, and you smelled like sunshine and baby lotion.
“On your third birthday, I gave you a gift. You forgot? It was a gold locket. My grandma said it would bring you good luck.
“I’ve been waiting for you to grow up ever since. I just didn’t expect to end up in that car accident… or that because of this engagement, you’d have such a hard time these past few years. That’s on me. But now that I’m awake, I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
His words caught me off guard.
“It was you?”
I did have a gold locket I had worn for as long as I could remember until Vanessa took a liking to it and snatched it away.
A few days later, I found it shattered in the trash. When I confronted her, she just shrugged. “It’s just a stupid pendant. I’ll buy you a new one.”
She opened her jewelry box, which was filled with expensive pieces, and told me to pick whatever I wanted.
“I don’t want any of these. If you didn’t even like it or care about it, why did you take my locket?” I said.
Her face twisted with rage as she snapped, “Because I can’t stand to see you happy. I want to take everything you love away from you!”
Thinking about it made me start quietly sobbing again.
Nathan panicked. He was worried that he had said the wrong thing.
Chapter 6
416 Bonus
Once he understood what had really happened, he gently patted my back in a soothing way and tried to comfort me, “She’s not wrong. It’s just a pendant. I can get you as many as you want.”
But I cried even harder. “It’s not about the pendant. I wore that for years. It meant something to me. It was something you gave
me.”
My third birthday was so long ago, the memories are all a blur now. All I could vaguely remember was a boy showing up that year with a gift.
Nathan gave me a soft smile. “I’ll keep bringing you gifts, okay? I’ll find all the best things in the world and give them to you. Willow, don’t cry anymore. Smile more, please.”
Our wedding was just seven days away. During that time, I stayed at the Stone residence.
Keith and John called me countless times, but I didn’t answer a single one.
