She Was Alive All Along

In my fifth year of climbing the mountains to search for my wife's remains, I fell into an ice crevasse by accident. As the cold dragged me toward unconsciousness, I opened my phone to Maddie Paisley's silent, years-untouched messenger thread, meaning to record a final goodbye. Instead, a wedding invitation popped up on the screen. [Ten years of devotion, and at last we've found our happy ending. We warmly invite our friends and family to join us as we marry!] [Groom: Jace Lowe] [Bride: Maddie Paisley] The background photo was a wedding portrait. My foster brother held her against his chest, his smile bright and tender. After I was pulled off the mountain, I ignored my frostbitten legs and sprinted for the hotel like a madman. The moment I pushed through the doors, I froze in place. My sister, Ashlyn Lowe, who had begged me with red eyes just the night before to give up the search, was cheering as she pulled the cord on a confetti cannon. "Jace, you finally won Maddie over. If you ever wrong her, I swear I won't let you off easy!" Below the stage, my parents sat in their formal wear, eyes brimming with proud tears. A voice spoke up behind me. "What are you doing here?" I turned and saw my childhood friend. My hand trembled as I reached toward him, ready to pour out how absurd all of this was. Instead, he just sighed. "Ronnie, go home. Everyone's tired of playing along with this. "Maddie faked her death just to get away from you. Jace waited five years for her, and that wasn't easy either. "It's their wedding today. Don't force your way in and play the homewrecker. You'll only embarrass everyone." With that, he walked past me, smiling as he crossed to the stage and handed the newlyweds a huge bouquet of flowers. "Jace, Maddie, congratulations!" Streamers rained down over my head. As I listened to the emcee up on stage shout for the groom to kiss the bride, my tears fell without a sound. So this was it. During the five years I had spent desperately searching for Maddie, she had been in love with another man the whole time. Everyone had known. They had all just chosen to hide it from me. Chapter 1 Ronnie's POV Stage lights converged on the platform above me. Maddie Paisley smiled tenderly and threw herself into Jace Lowe's arms. The tips of his ears flushed red. Petals rained down from the ceiling, and the two of them kissed as if nothing else in the world existed. I stood frozen, staring at the scene, my fingertips gone cold. I wanted to shout, to demand an explanation, but my voice caught in my throat the moment I scanned the crowd of familiar faces. I couldn't force out a single word. "Maddie and Jace have finally found their happy ending. You two had better take good care of each other!" The one holding up the train of the wedding dress was a girl from a poor family I had put through school myself, then found a job at the company. "Maddie, you'd better keep looking out for Jace from now on. Don't let some clueless outsider push him around again!" The one filming everything on a camcorder was my college roommate. When his parents died, I had stayed up three sleepless nights helping him handle the funeral, then lent him ten thousand dollars on top of it. "Don't worry, if some jackass ever lays a hand on Jace, I'll take care of it myself." The one in the groomsman's suit was Maddie's childhood friend. Just last week, when his wife was in a car accident, I had rushed over in the middle of the night to donate blood for her. He had knelt in the hospital hallway afterward, sobbing that I was the one person he owed his life to. When the kiss finally ended, everyone surged forward to congratulate the newlyweds. Jace rested a hand gently on Maddie's slightly rounded belly, his face soaked in happiness. Ashlyn raised a glass and clinked it against theirs, teasing them. "I'm the real hero behind this wedding going off without a hitch. You two owe me a night of drinking until we get totally wasted." I was the only one left standing in the shadows, my feet leaden, unable to take a single step forward. Tears blurred my vision. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. So everyone had known the truth this whole time. When Ashlyn had mentioned new information about Maddie's remains and, red-eyed, urged me to let it go, it hadn't been out of sympathy at all. She had just been keeping me busy so I wouldn't interrupt their beautiful love story. They had all known exactly how much these five years had cost me, searching for Maddie's body. How the news of her death had nearly driven me to end my own life. How I had climbed that mountain again and again until my eyesight started to fail. How the damp, cold weather still sent a lingering ache through my bones that never fully went away. Everyone had watched it happen and quietly agreed to keep it all from me, as if I were nothing but the villain who might ruin their grand romance. The tears finally broke free and hit the floor. As the ceremony wound down, the crowd started drifting toward the doors. I wiped frantically at my face, trying to disappear before anyone noticed me, but I still ended up meeting Maddie's startled eyes by accident. "What are you doing here?" she asked, the words slipping out before she could stop them. Five years apart, and she didn't ask how I had been. She didn't try to explain any of what had just happened. She only asked what I was doing here. I tipped my head back, choking down the tears, and let a bitter smile twist across my face. "If I weren't here, how would I ever find out my wife of five years, the one everyone told me was dead, was busy marrying someone else?" She said nothing, just stood there in silence. Beside her, Jace's eyes suddenly reddened. "I'm sorry, bro. This is all my fault. I fell in love with Maddie. Don't blame her." He walked toward me quickly. Then, where no one else could see his face, he leaned in and dropped his voice to a mocking whisper. "You're damn pathetic. Everyone kept you in the dark. "Your climbing rope didn't just snap on its own. That was Ashlyn. And the rescue team taking their time getting to you? That was Maddie's order. "Even the excuse everyone gave for missing your son's hundred-day celebration was that they were busy. They were actually all at my birthday party." My blood ran cold. The deep, needling ache in my legs was still spreading, but I couldn't feel it anymore. I started laughing, and tears spilled from the corners of my eyes. So every wound I had carried had been inflicted by the people I loved most. By the time I came back to myself, my fist was already flying toward Jace's face. Chapter 2 The instant Jace yelped, Maddie clamped down on my wrist and wrenched it aside. My lower back slammed into the corner of a table, and the pain brought tears to my eyes. "Ronnie, have you had enough?!" The furious shout stopped me cold. I stared at her, stunned. She was shielding Jace, glancing at him with a look of tender concern so familiar it made my nose sting with a sudden ache. Back in high school, Jace had once had me dragged into the equipment room and beaten within an inch of my life. My uniform had nearly been torn off my body, and he'd been about to press lit cigarettes against my skin when Maddie kicked the door open. She stripped off her own uniform jacket to cover me and pulled me out of there. She'd turned to the boys with murder in her eyes and warned them in a cold, level voice, "Whoever touches Ronnie again is going to answer to me." From then on, she'd looked out for me every step of the way. No matter how Jace tried to slander me, she stood in front of me and fought to clear my name, again and again. So later, when Maddie's first business venture failed and she sank into despair, I ignored everyone who told me not to get involved. I sold off every share and asset in my name to help her rebuild. At the celebration party after her company finally turned things around, Maddie cupped my face in her hands in front of everyone, her eyes soft with affection. "Ronnie, I promise you the wedding of the century." But happiness never lasts. Three months later, instead of a wedding, I got the news that Maddie had gone missing in the mountains. I begged every god I could think of, over and over, that as long as Maddie was still alive, I'd trade my own life for hers without a second thought. But the truth was that somewhere I'd known nothing about, the wedding we'd promised each other had already found a new groom. I forced my trembling, aching body upright, and accidentally hit the projector switch behind me. Photos began lighting up the big screen one after another. The moment I saw them clearly, I froze in place. On March twelfth, the day an avalanche had buried me and left me broken and bleeding, unconscious in a hospital bed for three days straight, Maddie had taken Jace to Rocke Isle to watch the sunrise. On July nineteenth, the anniversary of when Maddie and I first got together, I'd been so depressed I nearly couldn't go on, standing on the edge of a rooftop more than once. That same night, Maddie had rented out an entire private island and lit up the sky with fireworks until dawn, just to make Jace smile. While I spent every day and night on that mountain, searching every inch for a body, the two of them had been locked in each other's arms in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, lost in each other. The last clip on the screen showed the whole Lowe family gathered happily in one room, celebrating Jace's birthday with him at the center of it all. The pampered golden boy pressed his palms together in front of the candlelight, then glanced shyly at Maddie beside him. "It's our fifth anniversary together. I want a big, beautiful wedding." Maddie pressed a reverent kiss to his forehead, looking at him the way a queen might look at a prince she adored. "Of course. Whatever the prince wants, the prince gets." Her eyes were full of tenderness, the exact same way she used to look at me the day I confessed my feelings for her. Tears blurred my vision and fell without a sound. "Stop watching." Maddie sighed and switched off the projector. "Ronnie, no one can help how feelings change. Just let it go." I let out a broken, humorless laugh, then screamed at her, half out of my mind. "How feelings change? Maddie, we had over ten years together. How could you just fall for someone else that easily?" By the end, all that was left was a strangled sob. I stumbled toward her. "Say something." "Enough! Ronnie, you've completely lost your mind! Maddie is your sister-in-law now. Whatever happened in the past should stay there!" Ashlyn seemed to snap back to herself all at once. She shoved me back, her eyes red with fury, speaking through gritted teeth like I was her worst enemy. We were blood siblings, born of the same mother. But the sister who had always sworn she'd protect me for the rest of my life was telling me someone else was the sibling she cherished most. I choked back my tears and let out a bitter laugh. "Right, I've lost my mind. How else would I have let all of you make a fool of me for five straight years?" Ashlyn's whole body went rigid, but her voice stayed hard. "You know the truth now. So you should just walk away, quietly." I was about to argue when my mother, who had stayed silent until then, suddenly spoke up. "Ronnie, you've had the status of the Lowe family's eldest son your whole life. Haven't you taken enough from Jace already, growing up? Just let him have this one thing." I stared at her, unable to believe what I'd just heard. This was the same woman who had once wrestled a knife out of my bare hands when I was in so much pain I wanted to end it all, who had held me while she cried and told me over and over, "Ronnie, you still have me." Right now, it was like she'd become a completely different person. My childhood friend clicked his tongue. "Ronnie, you've made your point. Don't ruin someone else's happiness. Are you seriously trying to be the other man here?" I looked up and swept my gaze across every face in the room. All of them stared back at me like I was the enemy, their eyes full of nothing but disgust for the uninvited guest I'd become. My chest ached with a sharp, stabbing pain. My whole body shaking, I looked straight at Maddie. "Is that what you think too?" Chapter 3 Maddie let out a soft, weary sigh, her eyes full of helplessness. "Jace waited ten years for me, ever since he was young and naive. Now I finally have his child. I can't let him and our baby down. "I really am sorry. Whatever you want as compensation, just name it." Compensation. As if five years of suffering could be settled with a payout. I laughed, tears blurring my eyes. My voice came out strangely calm. "Fine. I'll step aside and let you have your happiness." I slid off the plain band that had carried fifteen years of love and flicked it onto the carpet. Then I turned and walked out. As I left the hotel, my phone rang. It was the hospital. "Mr. Lowe, your son's condition has flared up again. The doctor needs you to come in and sign some paperwork." My legs nearly buckled under me. Without a moment's hesitation, I hailed a cab and headed straight for the hospital. By the time I finished signing and walked into the room, my son lifted his pale little face from the pillow and asked in a soft voice, "Dad, did you find Mom this time?" Looking into Oliver's hopeful eyes, my throat tightened instantly. "No," I said. "I didn't." "Ollie, if Dad stopped looking for Mom and took you somewhere she'd never be, would you forgive me?" His small hand, cold as ice, reached out to touch my cheek. "Don't cry, Dad. Wherever you go, that's home to me." The tears came all at once. I finally made up my mind. I pulled out my phone, opened the offer letter sitting in my inbox for an overseas transfer, and accepted it without a second thought. For five years, I had chained myself to that mountain for Maddie's sake. From here on, I wasn't going to keep wandering in circles anymore. After I got Oliver settled to sleep, I put some medicine on my aching legs, then took a cab to my parents' house to grab my documents. Maddie's disappearance had thrown everything into chaos, and I still had things there I'd never moved to the house we were supposed to share. I was just about to knock when I heard laughter and chatter drifting out from inside. My hand froze on the door handle. I took a breath and let myself in quietly. I passed through the living room, where a huge family portrait hung on the wall. The whole Lowe family was crowded around Maddie and Jace at the center, all of them beaming. They were a family. I wasn't part of it. I swallowed down the ache and looked away, but the whole house was full of evidence of the two of them being in love. A pair of cutesy matching couple mugs, the same ones Maddie had once told me were too childish for her to use. A giant teddy bear that had gone viral online, a "Maddie loves only Jace" tag hanging from its neck. No wonder my parents never let me come home without warning them first. They'd known about Maddie faking her death all along, and they'd just stood by and let me suffer for five years. A cold shiver ran through me. I walked faster, wanting to grab my things and get out as quickly as I could. But as I passed the dining room, the laughter inside cut off abruptly. Everyone turned to look at me at once, and just as quickly, they fell silent, their guards up. Jace was the one to break the quiet, his voice warm and inviting. "Since you're here, why don't you stay for dinner? I haven't had much of an appetite lately, and Maddie's been practicing her cooking just for me. You probably haven't tried it yet." So Maddie, who had always hated the smell of cooking oil, was suddenly willing to spend hours in the kitchen for someone else. Back when I'd caught a fever after getting soaked in the rain at midnight, all because I'd been out making connections for her company, she couldn't even be bothered to make me a bowl of plain porridge. I mumbled a refusal. "No thanks." I headed straight upstairs, leaving Ashlyn's outburst behind me. "What's your problem? Jace was just trying to be nice to you!" I pushed open the door to my old room and froze. It had already been turned into a nursery. Baby supplies, bought and ready, were stacked in every corner, each one covered in notes of well-wishes from everyone in the family. Every single item had been chosen with love and anticipation for a baby who hadn't even been born yet. But when I'd once insisted on saving my fragile, newborn son, everyone around me had told me the same thing: Maddie was already dead. Just let him go. My chest twisted with a raw, aching pain. I blinked back the sting in my eyes and stepped inside to search through the room. I'd barely found what I needed when Jace's voice sneered from behind me. "You really can hold it together, can't you, Ronnie?" I said nothing and turned to leave, but he wasn't done. His eyes darkened. "Tell me something. You were born better than me, you did better in school, you're better looking, you even landed a better partner. So what exactly did I do to deserve losing everything to you?" He smiled. "Well, it doesn't matter now. All of it's mine. And your short-lived son can spend the rest of his life playing sidekick to mine." Rage exploded in my chest. Before I could react, I saw a flicker of malice in his eyes right before he threw himself backward. "Ow! Ronnie, I was just trying to talk to you. Why would you push me? My head hurts so bad." His wailing filled the room. A second later, a hand cracked across my face without warning. Ashlyn's voice roared, "Ronnie, if anything happens to Jace, I will never forgive you!" Maddie wrapped her arms around him and turned to Ashlyn, her voice ice cold. "Don't bother with him. That's just who he is. We'll settle the score with him later. Let's get Jace to the hospital first." Chapter 4 They left in a hurry. Not one of them stopped to consider that I hadn't pushed him. My cheek still burned, the sting sinking straight into my chest. I clutched my documents, my expression numb, and headed out to catch a cab back to the hospital. The moment I walked into the room, I saw relief written all over the doctor's face. "Mr. Lowe, we found a heart for your son! As soon as payment clears, we can start the surgery right away!" For one moment, pure joy washed over me. I stumbled toward the payment window, but my card kept getting rejected, one attempt after another, for insufficient funds. The second it registered, my blood ran cold. Maddie was the only person who knew my password. I called her thirty-one times. Every single call got hung up on. A nurse rushed over, her face tight with worry. "Mr. Lowe, Oliver's condition is getting worse. If we don't replace that heart soon, he won't make it." Frantic, I was about to leave the hospital to track her down when I spotted Maddie standing right outside the ward. My chest clenched. My vision went red. I lunged at her like a man possessed and grabbed her by the collar. "Maddie! Where's the money in my account?" Her voice stayed level. "I gave it to Jace for a house. You turned him down once already. The least you can do is offer him some compensation." I broke down completely, sobbing. "How could you take that money? Don't you know Ollie's heart condition just flared up and he needs surgery?" Something flickered in Maddie's eyes. She grabbed my hand in a panic. "What? Where's Ollie right now?" "Ronnie, I know you're upset that Maddie bought me a house, but how could you lie to her about this?" It was Jace, carefully supported by Ashlyn as he approached. When his gaze met my disbelieving stare, a flash of mockery crossed his face. "I just saw Ollie running around, full of energy, begging a nurse to let him borrow her phone to play games." That single sentence lit Maddie's temper instantly. She let go of me, her voice turning cold as ice. "Ronnie, are you really this shallow and greedy?" My chest seized with pain. Tears blurred my eyes. "That's not true. Ollie really is—" She cut me off, her eyes full of contempt. "That's enough. If Ollie really is gone, then you brought that curse on him yourself. Don't blame anyone else." With that, she didn't hesitate for even a second before turning and walking away with Jace. I leaned against the cold wall, my hands shaking as I dialed one number after another. "Riley, can you lend me some money? My son—" The line clicked dead. I went down the list, from my parents to my friends, and every single one of them turned me down. They all said the same thing: Maddie had sent word that no one was allowed to lend me a cent. The last call I made was to my childhood friend. I could hear the sound of poker chips clicking in the background. He scoffed. "Ronnie, never thought you would one day beg me for something. When you got that graduate school spot instead of me and you were riding high, did you ever once think about me losing my job? No way in hell you're getting a single cent out of me." I stood frozen. The line went dead. Then came the doctor's voice, quiet with regret. "I'm sorry, Mr. Lowe. We did everything we could." My eyes went blank, and I slid down the wall until I hit the floor, completely broken. The last person in this world who had ever truly loved me was gone now too. Maddie's message finally came through, far too late. [Ronnie, the marriage certificate is still legally yours either way. Let's give Jace the ceremony and the small things as compensation. That's only fair. Don't cause any more trouble after this. The three of us will go back to how things were.] I never replied. A week later, a courier package arrived at the front desk of Paisley Group's headquarters. I boarded a plane to the airport, my son's urn held in my arms. The moment the plane lifted off, my phone rang without stopping, over a hundred messages flooding in. I calmly pulled out the SIM card and snapped it in half between my fingers. The world finally went quiet. 'From now on, you and I are worlds apart, and we will never cross paths again.' Chapter 5 Third-Person POV A pale streak of light cut across the sky. Inside the Paisley Group's executive office, Maddie sat at her desk, drifting off more than once. Her pen hovered over the page, leaving small blots of ink where it stalled. She had always been sharp and focused at work. This kind of distraction was completely unlike her. Her eyes kept landing on her bare ring finger, as if it had been scalded. She'd slipped her wedding ring off the night she married Jace. She knew perfectly well this was the marriage she had wanted for ten years. Of the fifteen years she and Ronnie had spent together, she had spent the last ten of them falling for Jace instead. He was sweet and guileless as sunshine. She had known for years that Ronnie was a habitual liar who used his position as the family's eldest son to bully Jace, who had no one else to depend on. But that night in the honeymoon suite, looking at Jace's handsome, bashful face, all she could think of was how pale and broken Ronnie had looked outside that hospital room. Unsettled, she had pushed Jace away and made an excuse to hide out at the office. She had been holed up there for a full week now. And in that week, the message she had sent Ronnie trying to patch things up had never once gotten a reply. "Ms. Paisley, there's a package for you. It's from your husb— uh, Mr. Lowe. Do you want to see it?" Her assistant's hesitant voice cut through her thoughts. Maddie's brow eased. She figured Ronnie must have finally given in and come looking for her. After all, he'd raised Oliver on his own and spent five straight years searching for her. Even after learning she'd gone through a wedding ceremony with his foster brother, surely he couldn't bring himself to leave her. Without bothering to correct her assistant's phrasing, Maddie tore the package open, eager. Then the moment she recognized the handwriting, the confident smile on her face froze solid. Divorce papers. The words sat there on the page, mocking her. Her chair scraped back and hit the wall with a dull thud. Maddie crushed the crisp white document in her fist, her expression darkening like a storm about to break. She pulled up her phone and opened her chat thread with Ronnie, firing off a furious message. A second later, an exclamation mark popped up, followed by a line of text: [Message undelivered. Recipient has blocked you.] Instead of getting angrier, Maddie actually laughed scornfully. "Ronnie, still playing these little games to get my attention." She took a deep breath to steady herself, then told her assistant, "Put together some gifts he and Oliver would like. Have the car ready. We're going to the medical center downtown." Cedarview Medical Center was, after all, one of the best hospitals in the entire country, and Oliver still needed care there. There was no way Ronnie, however angry he was, would skip visiting their son. He was probably still waiting for her to show up and apologize in person, sometime this week. Her assistant hesitated. "There's a meeting scheduled about the partnership with the Lowes... your husband seems to be counting on this deal." Maddie didn't miss a beat. She was already walking toward the door. "Cancel it. From now on, Ronnie is the only husband I recognize." The car sped through the streets and reached the hospital in no time. Maddie stepped out carrying a bouquet of sunflowers in one arm and a brand-new game console in the other. Before she'd left the hospital that day, she'd caught a glimpse of which room Oliver was staying in. So once she got inside, she didn't even need to stop and ask. She walked straight to the seventh floor without a single wrong turn. Just as she stepped off the elevator, she overheard a passing doctor sighing to a colleague. "Poor Ronnie, I really can't help but feel sorry for him. Spent five years searching for his wife's remains, and now that they finally found a heart for his son, the kid just... died, because they couldn't cover the bill. "And here's the real kicker: on that very same day, the Lowe family's other son had a wedding so extravagant it went viral across the entire country. Same last name, completely different lives."