Adrian did not release my wrist.

His thumb rested directly over my pulse, and I knew he could feel how violently it was beating.

“When did you fall?” he asked again.

“I don’t remember.”

“Where?”

“I was a child.”

“What age?”

I forced myself to look annoyed.

“Mr. Shen, are you interviewing my scar or treating your hand?”

His palm was still bleeding slightly from the fall.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he let me go.

“Get out.”

I stood immediately.

I had almost reached the door when he added:

“And send the butler.”

That night, Adrian didn’t ask for me once.

It should have relieved me.

Instead, I couldn’t sleep.

At two in the morning, I went downstairs for water and found the old butler standing outside Adrian’s study.

“What happened?”

He sighed.

“The young master hasn’t slept.”

Through the half-open door, I saw Adrian sitting alone beside the window.

On the desk in front of him was a small velvet box.

My chest tightened.

I recognized it.

The engagement ring.

Three years later, he still had it.

I turned away before he could notice me.

The next morning, his behavior changed.

No complaints about water.

No deliberate insults.

No impossible demands.

That frightened me more.

At breakfast, he watched me prepare his medication.

“Why do you always remove the white tablet first?”

My fingers paused.

“It upsets your stomach if you take it before eating.”

“Who told you that?”

“The medication instructions.”

“There aren’t any.”

I looked down.

He was right.

The bottles had been transferred into a weekly organizer.

I had remembered the habit from years ago.

Adrian’s eyes remained fixed on me.

I forced a shrug.

“Common sense.”

Later, during rehabilitation, the therapist asked me to help stabilize his shoulder.

Adrian suddenly said:

“Play something.”

I frowned.

“What?”

“The piano.”

There was an old piano in the rehabilitation room.

“I don’t play.”

His gaze hardened.

“Try.”

“I’m your caregiver, not entertainment.”

“I’ll pay double.”

Money.

The one weakness he knew I couldn’t deny.

I sat down reluctantly.

My hands hovered over the keys.

I deliberately played badly.

Two wrong notes.

An awkward rhythm.

Then Adrian spoke behind me.

“Enough.”

I stood.

His face was unreadable.

That evening, the butler approached me privately.

“Miss Su, did you know the young master’s fiancée played that exact piece?”

My heart sank.

“I played terribly.”

He looked at me strangely.

“That’s the point.”

I didn’t understand.

Then he explained:

“Miss Grace always made the same mistake in the seventh measure.”

My hands went cold.

I had forgotten.

Adrian hadn’t.

The next three days became a silent interrogation.

He asked how I liked my tea.

He casually mentioned restaurants Grace and he had visited.

He deliberately left a book on the table that I had once given him.

Every time, I pretended not to notice.

Until Friday.

I entered his room carrying lunch.

Adrian was holding an old photograph.

My photograph.

Before the fire.

I was smiling beside him beneath cherry blossoms, my face untouched, my hair falling over my shoulders.

He placed it on the table.

“Beautiful, wasn’t she?”

I swallowed.

“Yes.”

“Everyone said so.”

I began arranging his food.

“She disappeared on our wedding day.”

“I heard.”

“I searched every hospital.”

My fingers stopped.

“Every station.”

He continued.

“Every hotel.”

I couldn’t move.

“Three days later, I received information that a woman matching her description had been admitted after a fire.”

My blood went cold.

He knew?

“I arrived too late. She had already discharged herself under another name.”

I forced myself to breathe.

Adrian looked at me.

“I crashed on the way to the next hospital.”

There was no accusation in his voice.

That was worse.

“I woke up unable to feel my legs.”

I whispered:

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

I looked at him.

His eyes were red.

“I never said it was your fault.”

I had made a mistake.

I knew it immediately.

Adrian pushed the photograph toward me.

“Grace.”

My entire body froze.

I didn’t answer.

He repeated it.

“Grace Lin.”

“My name is Nora.”

“No.”

He rolled his wheelchair closer.

“You changed your voice slightly.”

I stepped backward.

“You hide your handwriting.”

Another step.

“You pretend not to know what medication I take.”

He looked toward my ear.

“But you forgot that scar.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“And you forgot the piano.”

“Stop.”

His voice broke.

“You’re alive.”

“Stop.”

“You were alive this whole time.”

“Adrian—”

His hand closed around the edge of the table.

“Say my name again.”

I realized too late what I had done.

For weeks I had called him Mr. Shen.

Now I had said Adrian.

His face collapsed.

“You are Grace.”

I ran.

Not dramatically.

Not elegantly.

I simply turned and escaped from the room.

But I had barely reached the staircase when Adrian shouted behind me.

“WHY?”

The house went silent.

I stopped.

The butler froze downstairs.

Adrian’s voice came again.

“Three years, Grace.”

I slowly turned.

He was in the doorway.

His hands were trembling on the wheels.

“I buried you every day for three years.”

My eyes filled with tears.

I had imagined this confrontation hundreds of times.

In every version, Adrian looked disgusted when he saw my face.

Instead, he was crying.

“I thought you would be happier without me,” I whispered.

His expression became almost unbelieving.

“Happier?”

I touched the scars along my cheek.

“Look at me.”

“I am.”

“No. Look.”

I stepped into the light.

“No makeup. No scarf.”

My voice shook.

“This is what remained after the fire.”

He stared.

I wanted disgust.

Pity.

Anything that would prove I had been right to leave.

There was none.

Only grief.

“You think I spent three years searching for your face?”

I couldn’t answer.

Adrian’s voice became hoarse.

“I was searching for you.”

The sentence broke me.

I covered my mouth.

“I couldn’t let you see me.”

“So you decided for me?”

“I was afraid.”

“And I wasn’t?”

His hand struck the armrest.

“I woke up without my legs and still asked where you were!”

I started crying.

For the first time since the fire, I allowed someone to watch me do it.

“I thought you would regret marrying me.”

Adrian laughed bitterly.

“I regretted only one thing.”

“What?”

“That I didn’t find you before you learned to hate yourself this much.”

I turned my face away.

He rolled closer but stopped before touching me.

“Did you really believe I became like this because you left?”

“Yes.”

“I became like this because I drove like an idiot in a storm.”

“But you were looking for me.”

“That was my choice.”

He stared at me.

“Your scars are not responsible for my legs.”

For three years, I had carried that guilt like another wound.

Hearing him say it did not erase it.

But for the first time, it loosened.

Then Adrian asked quietly:

“Why did you come here?”

I wiped my face.

“I didn’t know it was you.”

“And after you knew?”

I looked at his wheelchair.

“I needed the money.”

He almost smiled.

“Finally, an honest answer.”

“I need another surgery.”

His expression changed.

“For your face?”

“Yes.”

“How many have you had?”

“Seven.”

His jaw tightened.

“Do you want another?”

I didn’t understand.

“What?”

“Not whether the doctors recommend it. Not whether companies reject you. Not whether strangers stare.”

He pointed toward me.

“Do you want another?”

Nobody had ever asked me that.

I sat on the staircase.

“I don’t know.”

For years, reconstruction had stopped being about what I wanted.

It had become an entrance fee to society.

A price I believed I needed to pay before I was allowed to live again.

Adrian was silent.

Then he said:

“Then don’t decide today.”

I looked at him.

“What happens now?”

“Now?”

His eyes moved toward my caregiver uniform.

“You’re fired.”

I blinked.

“What?”

“I cannot employ my missing fiancée as my caregiver.”

“You can’t fire me! I need—”

“I’ll still pay your full contract.”

“That’s charity.”

“No.”

For the first time, a trace of the old Adrian appeared.

“It’s compensation for eighteen glasses of water.”

I laughed through my tears.

He smiled too.

Only for a second.

Then his expression became serious again.

“But Grace…”

“We aren’t going back to where we were.”

I knew what he meant.

Three years had changed us.

Love did not magically repair abandoned weddings, guilt, trauma, scars or paralysis.

“I know.”

“I’m angry with you.”

“You should be.”

“And you’re still impossible.”

“So are you.”

That time his smile lasted longer.

Six months later, Adrian underwent another rehabilitation program.

He still used his wheelchair most days, but with braces and assistance, he could stand for short periods.

I did not become his caregiver again.

I took a job with the rehabilitation foundation his doctor recommended—not because Adrian arranged it, but because the director actually read my résumé before looking at my face.

I postponed my eighth surgery.

Not canceled.

Postponed.

For the first time, the decision belonged to me.

And Adrian?

He never asked me to become the woman in the photograph again.

One evening, we returned to the garden where our wedding had been scheduled three years earlier.

He carried the old velvet box in his pocket.

When he opened it, I shook my head immediately.

“Adrian.”

“Relax.”

He took out the ring.

“I’m not proposing.”

I stared at him.

He smiled.

“I learned my lesson about deciding someone else’s future.”

Then he placed the ring in my palm.

“This belongs to the woman who disappeared.”

I looked down.

“And what about me?”

His eyes met mine.

“When you’re ready, I’d like to meet you properly.”

I started crying.

He sighed.

“Still too dramatic.”

I laughed and wiped my eyes.

Then I leaned down and hugged him.

Not because we had magically returned to the past.

We hadn’t.

The woman he had loved before the fire no longer existed.

Neither did the man who had waited for her at the altar.

But perhaps that was not the tragedy I once believed it was.

Because three years later, beneath the same trees where our wedding never happened, Adrian looked directly at the face I had spent years hiding and said:

“This time, Grace, don’t become beautiful for me.”

His fingers closed gently around mine.

“Just don’t disappear again.”