Chapter 1

Duan Yingze and I had been passionately in love for seven years.

Yet no one believed we would ever end up together.

Everyone knew he was only with me because my face looked almost exactly like that of his first love.

When we first began dating, he would often lose himself staring at me. Drunk and dreaming, he would gaze at my face and murmur, “Mengmeng, I love you.”

But He Meng had gone abroad and married long ago.

My name was Song Shiwei.

So the woman he loved was not me.

I did not care.

Whenever he called me by the wrong name, I patiently corrected him again and again.

He enjoyed fine wine, so I searched the world for rare bottles for him.

He liked me in white dresses with long black hair, so I never dyed it again, and my wardrobe became a sea of pale-colored gowns.

Everyone said I loved Duan Yingze beyond reason.

More than a few friends urged me to stop wasting myself on him.

He Meng had once saved his life.

His first love. Married to another man. His savior.

She had every possible advantage in the first-love stakes.

“Duan Yingze loved her so fiercely back then that everyone knew about it. The day He Meng married someone else, his heart stopped. He nearly died in that hospital bed.”

“Weiwei, this may sound cruel, but Duan Yingze is only with you because your face reminds him of He Meng.”

“You two don’t have a future. End it while you still can.”

I ignored them all.

For seven years, I devoted myself to him without wavering.

Perhaps, in the end, I moved him.

On my twenty-seventh birthday, he proposed.

Beneath the lights, dressed in a white suit, he went down on one knee. He was so handsome it took my breath away.

“Weiwei, will you marry me?”

His eyes were full of tenderness.

He almost looked as though he loved me.

My gaze brushed the corner of his eye, and I smiled softly.

“Yes.”

That night, he held me tight and whispered that he loved me over and over again.

I thought he meant it.

But three days before the wedding, when every arrangement was already in place, He Meng got divorced.

And Duan Yingze did not come home that night.

I called him ceaselessly.

The only reply I received was a text.

“He’s asleep. What do you want?”

A photograph was attached.

He Meng’s black hair spilled over her shoulders. Kiss marks covered her pale neck, and a faint flush still colored her cheeks.

Duan Yingze lay asleep in her arms.

One glance was enough to tell me what they had done.

My heart trembled. I typed back,

“Where is he?”

A voice message arrived at once. “Still won’t give up? Then come see for yourself.”

An address followed.

It was He Meng’s home.

She was the one who opened the door when I arrived.

Wearing a revealing nightdress, she looked me up and down and gave a contemptuous laugh. “You really do look like me. No wonder Yingze agreed to date you.”

“But now that the real woman is back, it’s time for a second-rate substitute like you to leave the stage.”

Her tone dripped with arrogance.

I frowned. “Where is he—”

Before I could finish, Duan Yingze emerged from behind her. He held a coat in his hands and draped it over He Meng’s shoulders with easy intimacy.

“Mengmeng, you’ll catch cold wearing so little…”

The instant he saw me, his hands stopped. “Weiwei? What are you doing here?”

Duan Yingze was fully dressed. He did not look remotely like a man who had just woken up.

Nothing like the picture.

I understood at once.

He Meng had staged the entire thing.

She wanted to provoke me into making a scene, putting herself at a disadvantage so she could play the victim and win Duan Yingze’s sympathy.

But she clearly had not expected me to remain so calm.

I looked up and, sure enough, saw disappointment in her eyes.

Duan Yingze noticed where I was looking and stepped between us. His voice was cold and hard. “Weiwei, I’ll take you home.”

I glanced at him, then turned to leave.

Before I could take another step, however, He Meng caught Duan Yingze’s hand and gazed at him pitifully. “Aren’t you going to stay with me? I’m scared.”

I looked back.

Duan Yingze looked at me, then at He Meng.

At last, he pulled his hand from hers. “I’ll take Weiwei home first.”

In that moment, he chose me.

As if I mattered more to him than He Meng did.

But as he drove me home, his mind was clearly elsewhere. Then the shrill ring of his phone shattered the silence.

“Duan Yingze, get to the hospital now! Mengmeng tried to kill herself!”