The Ring He Bit Away

Bella lived up in Vermont, so I was used to making the long drive north to see her.

But whenever I asked my fianc to come with me, his face would ice over and hed flat-out refuse. He claimed he hated the state, swore hed never step foot in it again, yet he never once gave me a reason why.

Until the week of our wedding, when a car accident took my pregnancy.

The very next day, I got a frantic text from Bella saying she was being harassed. Ignoring the searing pain in my abdomen, I braved a blinding snowstorm and drove four hours north.

But when I pulled up to her apartment building, I didn't find her alone. I found a tall, lean man gripping her tightly in his arms.

"Let me go! Are you out of your mind? Youre getting married, what the hell are you doing here?!" Bellas familiar, raspy voice carried through the frigid air. "When I dumped you six years ago, you should have stayed gone. You were never supposed to show up again!"

A memory violently surfaced: Bella, a few drinks in, constantly talking about the first love she hadn't been able to shake for six long years.

The mans voice was completely wrecked.

"Yeah, Im out of my mind. Im crazy enough to leave my fianc bleeding from a miscarriage just to come save you! Im crazy enough to buy a wedding ring in your size, to set the wedding date on your birthday... How could you be so cruel? How could you just walk away? She was only ever a placeholder for you."

Bella let out a sharp, self-deprecating laugh. "A placeholder? Youre pretty dedicated to the bit, considering you knocked her up."

"That was an accident. And she lost the baby today." The man framed her face with his hands, his tone turning fiercely possessive. "I am not letting you run away from me again."

Then, he turned slightly. I saw his profile.

I froze.

Every drop of blood in my veins felt like it turned to ice alongside the falling snow.

The man holding my best friend was my fianc, Calvin.

My fingers tightened around the canister of pepper spray I had brought to protect her.

My brain refused to process what my eyes were seeing.

Just a few hours ago, he had been sitting by my hospital bed, gently wiping a tear from the corner of my eye.

Helen, Im gonna go home and make that corn and rib soup you love so much, okay?

He had kissed the corner of my mouth. He said hed be right back.

So, it had to be a lookalike. It had to be a cruel trick of the light.

Hiding behind a snow-capped streetlamp, my numb fingers fumbled with my phone to text him:

[Calvin, where are you?]

A minute passed. No reply.

He had never, not once in our entire relationship, failed to text me back instantly.

Under the sickly yellow glow of the streetlamp, Bella shoved the man away.

"Get the hell away from me!"

The light hit his face perfectly. The slope of his nose. The faint, pale scar right between his brows.

The scar he got from a fistfight, protecting me.

It was Calvin.

My knuckles turned white around my phone.

His voice was terrifyingly cold. A stranger's voice.

"Don't flatter yourself, Bella."

"Telling me to get away? Who just threw herself into my arms crying that she was scared? Six years go by, and the second youre in trouble, Im still the first person you call. Is that the best you can do?"

Bella looked up, her eyes rimmed with red.

"I'm flattering myself?"

"Then why are you here? Calvin, why did you abandon your fianc who just had a miscarriage to rush up here?!"

She started to laugh, tears streaking her makeup.

"Does it make you happy seeing me this pathetic? Does it stroke your ego? Do you think I'm finally getting exactly what I deserve for everything I did to you?!"

Calvins jaw clenched so hard I thought it might shatter. He didn't answer.

Bella wiped her face and turned to walk away.

Calvin shot his hand out, wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

"Let go."

He didn't budge.

"Calvin, I said let go!"

He yanked her back, pulling her flush against his chest. She thrashed, hitting his shoulders, kicking at his shins, but he stood like a stone wall.

"That's not why I came."

Eventually, the fight drained out of her. She buried her face in his coat, her shoulders shaking violently.

"Do you think I wanted to call you?"

"Do you know that when that guy cornered me, the only thing playing in my head was you? You used to never let anyone lay a finger on me."

"Did you really think I've had a good life these past six years without you?"

He bowed his head, resting his chin on the crown of her hair.

"If you hadn't left, we would have had a kid by now. That was the plan."

"Why did you have to come back now?"

The street went dead quiet.

The icy wind sliced down the collar of my coat, turning my fingers and toes completely numb.

My phone screen stayed lit in my hand.

That text to Calvin remained unread.

My legs gave out. I slumped against the freezing metal of the streetlamp.

My chest felt like it was being crushed in a vice; the pain was so sharp I couldn't draw a breath.

Bellas epic first love. The one that got away. It was Calvin.

The phantom she drank to. The ghost she couldn't exorcise. She had told me the stories on loophow clumsily devoted he was, how he wrote her a letter every single day, how he gave up a full ride to a college overseas just to stay near her.

Then why did you break up? I had asked her once.

She had been slumped over my kitchen island, eyes bloodshot.

I was terrified of being poor. His mother offered me a check for five hundred grand, and I took the money and ran. He kneeled in the pouring rain outside my dorm for two days begging me, and I didn't even flinch.

Love doesn't pay the rent. I'm just an ugly, selfish person, Helen.

The first time I introduced them, the tension had been thick enough to choke on. They couldn't even look at each other. After that, they managed to avoid ever being in the same room again.

I never, in a million years, would have guessed the violent, burning history between them.

I was only seventeen when I met Calvin.

My teenage years weren't filled with prom drama or SAT prep. They were consumed by the terror of my stepfather knocking on my bedroom door late at night.

One evening, he got drunk and started trying to kick the door down.

I climbed out my window and ran. I walked into a dive bar, curled up in a corner booth, hugged my knees, and shook.

"You shouldn't be in here."

I looked up.

Calvin was standing over me, his dark eyes taking in my scuffed sneakers and oversized hoodie.

I stared at the older man in front of me and whispered, "What does 'should' even mean? Why are you in here?"

He slid into the booth across from me and pushed a glass of warm water across the table.

"Got dumped. Let's leave it at that."

"We promised each other forever, and she just tossed it in the trash."

We talked for hours. After that, meeting at that bar every Wednesday became our unspoken ritual.

The day my stepfather finally picked the lock to my room, Calvin was the one who kicked the front door off its hinges.

He stripped off his jacket, wrapped it tightly around my trembling shoulders, and tackled my stepfather to the floor. He hit him, again and again, until his knuckles were slick with blood.

Everyone in my family told me to keep quiet. He was the man of the house. My mother swore that if I called the cops, I was dead to her.

But Calvin was there.

He told me I never had to be afraid again. That he would handle it.

He hired a lawyer. He put my stepfather in a cell.

He moved me into his apartment and made sure I had a quiet place to study for my college exams.

It was the first time in my life I realized what it felt like to be protected.

My freshman year of college, I finally gathered the courage to ask him.

"Calvin, will you let me love you?"

He froze.

After a long time, he looked away. "What if, one day, someone else matters more to you?"

I got up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

"You are the most important thing in the world."

We fell together. And he was so, so good to me.

Anything I didn't know, he taught me with endless patience. The parts of the world I had never seen, he held my hand and showed me.

He used to say, Helen, dont ever feel less than. You have a heart most people couldn't even comprehend. Whatever you don't know, I'll teach you. We have time.

He knew about my night terrors, so he stayed on the phone with me every single night until I fell asleep.

He knew I loved roasted chestnuts, so he would drive across the city in the dead of winter just to find the one cart that sold them.

I truly believed no one on this earth would ever love me the way he did.

I thought we were going to build a quiet, beautiful life together.

But now.

He was standing right there. He had abandoned me in a hospital bed.

And he was desperately holding onto my best friend.

He had taught me so much.

How to study, how to defend myself, how to be careful with who I trusted.

But he never taught me this.

He never taught me what to do when I found out I had been sharing his heart with a ghost.

My mind was a chaotic mess of static.

One second, I saw him standing in my kitchen making me soup. The next, I saw his arms wrapped around her waist.

I heard his gentle, Ill be right back, colliding violently with his bitter, Why did you have to come back now?

I gripped my phone.

I had to give our six years a chance.

What if.

What if he just needed closure? What if he was still my Calvin, the boy who would bleed for me?

I hit his contact.

It rang three times before he answered.

"Helen? What's wrong?"

I opened my mouth, but my throat felt like sandpaper.

"Calvin. Where are you?"

A one-second pause on the line.

"Something urgent came up at work. I had to leave in a rush. I had the nanny finish the soup and bring it to the hospital. You need to eat, okay?"

I stared at the man standing thirty feet away.

His back was to me. His shoulders were dusted with fresh snow. He had his phone pressed to his ear.

"I can't eat it without you here."

His voice softened, adopting that tender, placating tone I knew so well.

"Sweetheart. I'll be back the second I'm done. How are you feeling? Does it still hurt?"

"Helen, when things settle down, I'm taking you on a trip. You've always wanted to see the California coast, right? We'll get a house in Big Sur for a few weeks. I just want to take care of you."

As he said those words into the phone, Bella lifted her head from his chest, her eyes bright red.

He raised his free hand and gently brushed a snowflake from her hair.

"Calvin," I breathed.

"Yeah?"

"Where exactly... did you have to travel for this work emergency?"

Bella suddenly wrenched herself out of his grip, limping backward.

He reached for her, panic bleeding into his voice on the phone. "Helen, I've got a crisis I need to handle here. I'll call you right back, okay?"

The moment my screen went dark, he grabbed Bella's wrist again.

She stared up at him, devastated.

"You're playing the doting fianc on the phone while holding my hand?"

"How do you stomach doing both at the same time?"

Yeah. Calvin.

How do you tell me you love me on the phone, then turn around and hold her?

Bella shoved him hard and tried to walk away on her injured leg.

He lunged forward and swept her entirely off her feet, cradling her against his chest.

"Your ankle is messed up. I'm taking you to the ER."

She gasped, then started fighting him.

"Put me down, Calvin, put me down"

He ignored her, striding toward his parked car.

"You're holding me, but you're wearing her ring! Its a literal flashing sign that you're marrying someone else!"

"How am I supposed to just accept you taking care of me?!"

He stopped dead in his tracks. He looked down at his left hand.

The day he proposed, he had been down on one knee, holding that ring, his hands shaking violently.

Helen.

I am only going to do this once in my life. Because I am only ever going to love one person.

On those cliffs overlooking the ocean, his sincerity had completely undone me.

I said yes.

He slid the ring onto my finger, his eyes welling with tears.

Never take it off.

No matter what happens, you never take this off.

It was the first time I had ever seen him cry.

And he had kept his promise. He never took his off. Not once.

Until now.

He lowered his head, clamped his teeth around the platinum band on his left ring finger, and slid it off.

"Stop fighting me, okay?" he whispered.

She stopped struggling, letting him gently place her into the passenger seat.

I stood rooted to the pavement. I couldn't move a single muscle.

The car slowly pulled out. As it drove past, he was barely six feet away from me.

If he had just turned his head.

He would have seen his fianc, who had just lost their baby, standing behind a streetlamp in a blizzard, shaking uncontrollably.

He would have seen the tears freezing on my cheeks, my blue lips, the phone crushed in my grip with his unread text still glowing on the screen.

He never turned his head.

I looked down at my own left hand.

My ring was still there.

An identical platinum band.

With the same initials engraved inside.

Calvin.

For the last six years, was I really just a stand-in? A warm body you used to fill the gaping hole she left behind?

Did you ever actually love me?

A vicious cramp tore through my stomach, a heavy, dragging weight pulling me down.

I collapsed to my knees in the snow, staring at the empty street where his car had disappeared. I knelt there for a long, long time.

My phone buzzed.

It was Bella.

[Helen, I made it to the ER. Don't worry about me.]

[I'm getting back together with him.]

[After all these years, I was so sure hed hate me. But he doesn't. The second I was in trouble, he dropped everything. When I saw him pin that guy to the ground, I realized he's still crazy enough to do anything for me.]

Tears hit my screen, blurring the text bubbles.

[He told me he waited six years for me.]

[Helen, I'm so happy.]

[You'll be happy for us, right?]

I have no memory of how I managed to drive to the hospital.

My hands were locked onto the steering wheel, trembling violently the entire way.

The fluorescent lights in the hospital corridor were blindingly white.

Through the small glass window of the hospital room door, I saw them.

Bella was propped up in bed, looking pale, her ankle heavily bandaged.

Calvin was sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding a small bowl of chicken broth.

"You need to eat," he murmured.

She turned her head away.

"Bella."

Her voice was muffled and bratty. "It's all grease. The calories are insane."

"I'm a model. If I gain weight, I lose my job. Who's gonna pay my bills then?"

He sighed, bringing the spoon closer to her lips.

"Haven't I booked enough campaigns for you? Still not enough? You can go back to hustling once you're healed."

The year Bella decided she wanted to model, I practically begged Calvin to pull some strings for her.

He hadn't even looked up from his laptop. She doesn't have the look for it. Why bother?

But he still made the calls. He took her from local catalog shoots to international runways.

Back then, I thought: He is so amazing. He cares about the people I care about.

Now, the reality slapped me in the face.

Was he doing it for me? Or was it because he could never let her go?

I had rarely seen Calvin act so submissive. Eventually, Bella leaned forward and took a sip of the broth from his hand.

"Remember that specific brand of oatmeal you used to eat in high school? After you left, I scoured every grocery store for it, only to find out the company went bankrupt." He offered her another spoonful. "But I bought the manufacturing plant. They'll start making it again soon."

Tears welled up in Bella's eyes. Her voice shook.

"Calvin... why are you being so good to me?"

He didn't answer.

Then, she raised her hand and smacked the bowl out of his grip.

The hot broth splashed everywhere. The ceramic shattered, pieces scattering across his shoes.

"Bella, what the hell is wrong with you?!"

"Calvin, do you have any idea how little I deserve this?!" she screamed.

"Helen's car accident... the miscarriage... I paid someone to do it!"

A bomb went off in my skull. A high-pitched ringing drowned out the world.

I braced my hands against the wall, my fingernails digging into the grout between the tiles.

The nightmare that destroyed my baby wasn't an accident.

The voices through the door continued.

"She's my best friend, but I still did it."

"Because I knew! I knew if it came down to a choice between her and me, I had to force your hand! I love you! I couldn't stand seeing you with her!"

"I abandoned you six years ago, and now I killed your baby. I am a monster. Are you still going to be good to me now?"

Bella's sobs were ragged and ugly. He didn't say a word.

The silence stretched out.

It went on for so long that I waited for the explosion.

I waited for him to scream at her.

I waited for him to demand justice for me, and for the child we lost.

Instead, he raised his hand and used his thumb to wipe away her tears.

"Stop crying."

She froze.

"Calvin, are you deaf? I said I planned it! I hired the guy who hit her"

"I heard you."

"Then why are you"

"You were exactly like this before I fell in love with you, weren't you?"

Calvin pulled her firmly into his chest.

She stopped fighting him. She collapsed against his heart, quietly weeping into his shirt.

And through that glass pane, I watched the whole thing.