My Dead Best Friend’s Online Boyfriend Became My Husband

Before my best friend lost her battle with cancer, her single biggest regret was the online boyfriend she had never met.

She gripped my hand in her final hospital bed, crying as she begged me. Aria, he has severe depression. I'm so scared he won't be able to handle this. Please, log into my account for me. Just distance yourself slowly. Wait a long time, and then break up with him. Promise me.

With red-rimmed eyes, I promised her.

I took her dying wish to heart. For three entire years, I mimicked her tone, accompanying that man through a screen. I talked him down from his worst depressive episodes and supported him until his career peaked again. Then, I slowly began to pull away.

Today, I finally decided three years was long enough. It was enough time for him to let go of a romance that had already gone ice-cold.

I typed out the message and hit send. "We shouldn't contact each other anymore. Let's break up."

The exact second I tapped the screen, the private cell phone sitting on Sebastian's coffee table lit up.

Right there on his lock screen, the breakup text I had just sent flashed in plain sight.

"Aria, the water is perfect. Go ahead and soak for a bit. I'll be right out as soon as I dry my hair."

Sebastian's voice drifted out from the steamed-up bathroom, gentle and considerate as always.

I stood completely frozen in the middle of the living room.

My eyes were glued to the profile picture on his screen. It was the exact account I had been operating for three solid years.

We shouldn't contact each other anymore. Let's break up.

Word for word, it was exactly what I had just typed.

The bathroom door clicked open.

Sebastian walked out with a towel wrapped around his waist, rubbing his damp hair. When he saw me standing rigidly by the coffee table, his footsteps paused.

"What's wrong? You look incredibly pale."

He walked over, habitually reaching out to pull me in by the waist.

I took a violent step backward. My lower back slammed into the armrest of the sofa, the hard wood digging painfully into my spine.

His hands hovered awkwardly in the air.

"Aria?"

He followed my line of sight down to the glowing phone on the glass table.

His entire face instantly turned to stone.

The phone vibrated again. It was the custom notification sound he had set specifically for that account.

He lunged for the table, snatching the phone up. His thumbs were physically trembling as he unlocked the screen, staring at those words. He read them over and over, three times in a row.

"No." His voice was barely a whisper. "She wouldn't do this."

He started typing frantically. He would type a sentence, delete it, type another, and delete it again. He couldn't send a single word.

Then he pulled up the contact and hit call.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Deep in my coat pocket, my best friend's old phone sat completely silent. I always kept it on mute, terrified he might discover I was playing someone else's girlfriend online and misunderstand.

"Pick up. Please, just pick up the phone." His voice was shaking violently. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

I had never seen him lose his composure like this.

No, wait. I had seen it.

I had seen it in Stella's chat history.

When his depression had been at its absolute worst, he had begged me exactly like this, pleading with "her" not to abandon him.

But in the real world, the face he showed me was always perfectly composed, flawless, and utterly polite.

"Sebastian." I finally spoke.

He didn't even register my voice. He just kept hitting redial.

"Sebastian!"

He snapped his head up. His eyes were bloodshot, his face twisted in raw, volatile rage.

"Shut up!"

The words struck me like a physical blow.

I stared at him in pure shock for a second. Then, I let out a dry laugh.

He seemed to snap out of his trance. He quickly apologized, his tone instantly morphing back into that polite, detached mask. "I'm sorry. I just have something urgent to handle."

He brushed past me and walked straight to the closet, tearing through his clothes.

"What's so urgent?"

He was pulling his shirt on with such frantic force that a button popped off and rolled across the floor. He didn't even look at it.

"An emergency." He refused to meet my eyes.

"What emergency? We have our final wedding dress fitting tomorrow morning."

His movements stalled. He finally spared me a fraction of a glance.

There was zero guilt in his eyes. Only the deep irritation of being held back.

"Go to the fitting by yourself. Pick whatever style you want, I'll reimburse you."

"Reimburse me?" I repeated the words slowly. "Sebastian, do you seriously think there is anything more important right now than our wedding?"

His face turned completely frigid. He looked at me like he was analyzing a stranger.

"You've always been so mature, Aria."

"Why are you suddenly being so unreasonable?"

He didn't wait for my answer. He grabbed his car keys and slammed the front door behind him.

"Miss Lin, is your fianc too busy to make it today as well?"

Inside the luxury bridal boutique, the bridal consultant wore a tight, professional smile. Everyone in the room could read the pity hidden in her voice.

I sat alone in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling mirror.

This was the second time he had ghosted our fitting.

The hushed gossip of the boutique staff drifted directly into my ears.

"That's her. Just a freelance illustrator. Who knows how she managed to sink her claws into a top designer like Mr. Sebastian."

"He hasn't showed up to a single fitting. I'll bet money this wedding doesn't even happen."

I ignored them.

Inside the private dressing room, I pulled out my best friend's old phone.

The screen was flooded with hundreds of unread messages from Sebastian.

[Stella, why are you ignoring me?]

[Did I do something wrong? Tell me what it is. I'll change. I swear I'll change.]

[Just answer the phone. Please. Just for one second.]

[Stella, are you throwing me away?]

[I'm begging you, please don't throw me away.]

At the very bottom was a sixty-second voice memo.

I stared at it for a long time before my thumb pressed play.

He was choking back heavy sobs. I could hear the roar of a car engine in the background.

"Stella, I'm sorry. Please give me one more chance. I'll die without you. I will actually die."

The man who had told me to shut up last night, the man who called me unreasonable, was currently hyperventilating in tears through another screen.

A sharp knock hit the dressing room door.

"Miss Lin, a Mr. Cole is here to see you."

Cole. Sebastian's childhood best friend.

I hurriedly wiped my face, changed out of the heavy gown, and walked out.

Cole was lounging on the velvet sofa with his legs crossed. When he saw me, he pulled a sleek black Amex card from his wallet and slapped it onto the glass table.

"Here to pay the balance. The man is busy. He doesn't have time to sit around watching you play dress-up."

He stood up, walking into my personal space and lowering his voice.

"Let me give you some real talk, Aria."

"You know exactly why Sebastian picked you. You're obedient. You're low maintenance. You don't cause drama."

"He's giving you the title of his wife, so just sit quietly and enjoy the perks. Don't go looking for actual love. That fairy tale crap has absolutely nothing to do with you."

I raised my hand to slap him across the face.

He caught my wrist mid-air, his grip like a vice.

"Pissed off?" He squeezed my bones a little tighter. "Consider this a warning. Sebastian is in a really dark headspace right now, so don't push your luck. If you don't want this ring, there is a line of women out the door waiting to take your place."

He shoved my hand away. I stumbled back a couple of steps.

"The pin is his birthday. Pick whatever dress you want, you're only going to wear it once anyway."

He smoothed out the lapels of his suit and walked out.

I stood alone in the center of the massive, empty boutique.

In my pocket, my fianc was crying his heart out for an alternate version of me.

On the table sat the black card his best friend had thrown in my face.

"Miss Lin, are you satisfied with this gown?" the consultant asked carefully.

"No. Cancel the order."

I felt completely lightheaded by the time I took a cab home. I crawled into bed early, shivering under the covers.

In the middle of the night, a brutal, stabbing cramp ripped through my abdomen. Cold sweat soaked my pajamas in seconds, and black spots danced across my vision.

I blindly reached for my phone and dialled Sebastian's number.

It rang endlessly before he finally picked up.

"What." The background noise was unmistakable. It was an airport intercom announcement.

My heart plunged straight into my stomach.

"Sebastian. My stomach hurts so badly I can't stand up. Can you please come home and take me to the hospital?"

The line went dead silent for a few agonizing seconds.

"Aria, I'm dealing with an actual emergency right now. You are an adult. Just order a cab yourself."

An emergency.

His precious Stella wanted to break up. To him, that was a matter of life and death.

I lay curled on the hardwood floor, my fingers completely numb.

Operated by some dark, twisted impulse, I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out my best friend's phone, and typed three words.

[I want to see you.]

Send.

In the exact same second, I heard Sebastian screaming at a ticketing agent through the phone pressed to my ear.

"Change the flight! Change it right now! Give me the next flight to Seattle. I don't care what it costs, just put me on that plane!"

Seattle.

That was the random city I had picked years ago to make Stella's fake persona more believable.

He really was at the airport.

He was really abandoning me to bleed out on the floor, all to chase down a ghost.

"Sebastian." I spoke weakly into the receiver.

"What if I die today?"

His voice was a razor blade carved from ice.

"Stop threatening me with death. This dramatic personality of yours is genuinely suffocating."

Click.

I lay on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling. A fresh wave of agony shredded my abdomen, ten times worse than the last.

I curled into a tight ball, my consciousness slipping away.

Clinging to my last shred of sanity, I dialled 911.

"Perforated acute appendicitis! If she had arrived ten minutes later, the sepsis would have killed her!"

"Where is her family? We don't even have anyone to sign the surgical consent forms!"

The surgery took three hours.

I stayed in the hospital for three days.

Not a single call or text came from Sebastian.

Meanwhile, my best friend's phone was bombarded with hundreds of frantic messages every single day.

[Stella, I landed in Seattle. Where are you?]

[I've searched everywhere you told me about. Why won't you see me?]

[I'm sitting in that cafe you love. I'm going to wait here until you show up.]

I turned off the burner phone with zero emotion.

It was raining the day they discharged me.

I processed my own paperwork, hailed a cab, and rode back to the penthouse I had called home for three years.

I pushed the door open. Everything was exactly as I had left it.

I pulled out my suitcase and started packing.

I didn't cry. I didn't break anything.

The expensive clothes he had bought me were neatly folded and left in the closet. I only packed the cheap things I had bought with my own money.

In the study, I threw a dust cover over the easel and expensive paints he had gifted me.

Piece by piece, I meticulously erased every single trace of my existence from that penthouse.

When Sebastian finally walked through the front door, this was the scene he walked into.

He had waited in Seattle for three days. He never found Stella. He looked utterly destroyed. His jaw was covered in dark stubble, and his eyes were completely bloodshot.

When he saw me zipping up my suitcase, he froze.

"What are you doing?" His voice was gravelly.

I didn't answer. I leaned over, carefully moved the potted Monstera plant from the coffee table to the floor, and slipped the engagement ring off my finger.

It was a flawless pink diamond. He had slid it onto my hand himself the night he proposed.

He had looked me in the eyes and said, "Aria, marry me. Let me take care of you for the rest of your life."

I placed the ring right next to my house keys, perfectly centered on the glass table.

"Aria, I asked you a question!" His tone spiked with anger. He took two large strides across the room and grabbed my wrist. "What kind of tantrum is this now?"

I looked up at him.

"I'm not throwing a tantrum, Sebastian."

He flinched slightly. He let go of my wrist, rubbing his temples as he forced his voice to soften. "Fine. I admit I had a bad attitude the other night."

He pulled a premium credit card from his wallet and forced it into my hand.

"I'll double your allowance this month. Put the ring back on and stop making a scene."

Money. It was always money.

"That night, my appendix ruptured." My voice was eerily calm. "I almost died."

His fingers instantly went slack. Raw panic flashed across his face, but he quickly shoved it down.

"Was it... serious?"

"The surgeon said ten more minutes and I would have been in the morgue."

His lips parted. He struggled to form the words.

"I'm sorr"

"Save it." I pushed the credit card, the ring, and the keys back toward his side of the table. "I don't need your apology. And I have absolutely no intention of forgiving you."

I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and turned toward the door.

He lunged forward, wrapping his arms tightly around me from behind. His grip was desperate.

"Aria, please. Just listen to me. I swear to God, I had a massive emergency that night..."

"I know." I stared straight ahead. "Your precious Stella wanted to break up with you."

His entire body went rigid.

"How... how do you know about that?"

I pried his fingers off my waist, turned around, and offered him a polite smile.

"Because I've always known, Sebastian."

He took a half-step back, every drop of blood draining from his face.

Then, his expression shifted.

The panic vanished. It was instantly replaced by the ruthless, predatory coldness he used to crush his rivals in the boardroom.

"You investigated me?"

"It doesn't matter." I lifted my suitcase. "We are done. The wedding is canceled."

"Aria." His voice struck my back like a whip. "Have you actually thought this through?"

I didn't stop walking.

"What can you possibly do on your own? Draw little pictures? Can you even make rent in a month?"

My knuckles turned white around the suitcase handle.

"Once you walk out that door, you have no safety net."

I pulled the door open.

"You are going to regret this."

The hallway was dead silent. I dragged my suitcase toward the elevator and never looked back.