Forty Five Wounds in the Ice

My soul, tethered to Spencer against my will, followed him home.

The home we once shared in Palo Alto now bore no trace of me.

Every corner was filled with the evidence of Amber and Spencer's life together.

"You're back?" The moment Amber saw Spencer, she glided over and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Spencer gently held her, resting his chin in the crook of her neck and closing his eyes, as if only her scent could bring him a moment of peace.

What a heartwarming scene.

Spencer had never been so intimate and natural with me.

"Does your hand still hurt?" Spencer took Amber's right hand, gently stroking her arm.

Amber smiled and shook her head. "It doesn't hurt anymore!"

Spencer looked at her with a pained expression. "Have you been taking painkillers behind my back again?"

"When Willow pushed you down back then, your arm was so badly injured. The injury still acts up, even now."

I floated in the air, wanting to scream, "It wasn't me! I didn't!"

Why was I convicted based on nothing but Amber's baseless accusations?

Spencer, you never believed me.

Before I started dating Spencer, I didn't know about his college sweetheart, Amber.

The year they graduated, Amber dumped Spencer for a Silicon Valley tycoon.

I met Spencer while pursuing my PhD at Stanford.

After we got together, he took impeccable care of me. All my friends called him the perfect boyfriend, and even I started to believe we would last forever.

But the year we were preparing to get married, Amber came back.

At first, Spencer told me, "Willow, she's just an old college friend. She's hit rock bottom, let's help her out."

I believed him. But I never expected I was letting a wolf in the door.

Spencer began to pull away.

I can't count how many times he abandoned me for Amber, even repeatedly postponing our wedding for her.

"Can't you stop acting like a lunatic?"

"Amber and I are just friends. Stop being so paranoid."

But would a "friend" abandon his fiancée in the dead of night, rushing to another woman's side just because she whispered, "I need you"?

Would he stay silent as his friends called her his new girlfriend?

I can still feel my heart shattering.

That day, Spencer and I had the most intense argument ever, only for him to throw these heartless words at me:

"Willow, are you insane?! If you dare give Amber a hard time at work over our history, the wedding is off!"

Disheartened, I applied for the expedition to Antarctica, hoping to use the six-month separation to give us both space to breathe.

But I never imagined that Spencer would use his connections to place the inexperienced Amber on the team as well.

That was the beginning of the nightmare.

It was only in the third week in Antarctica that I discovered I was pregnant.

To avoid troubling everyone, I kept the news to myself, planning to figure things out when I returned.

But I never returned.

Due to Amber's mistake, all of us were trapped outside the station.

The rest of the expedition team left Amber and me, the two women, at the camp, intending to search for help nearby.

But Amber tried to steal all the emergency survival equipment to escape alone.

When I discovered her, a struggle ensued, and all the equipment fell into an ice fissure.

"Are you satisfied now? Now no one can leave! It's all your fault!"

In the distance, a rescue ship was heading towards us.

Without a moment's hesitation, Amber grabbed a nearby rope and strangled me.

After I lost consciousness, she stabbed at me again and again with an ice axe. Fearing I would be recognized, she completely disfigured my face.

Her axe was colder than the Antarctic ice, slicing through my skin inch by inch.

Finally, with my last breath fading, she shoved me into the bottomless abyss.

"Go to hell, Willow. Once you're dead, Spencer will be mine. Besides, if you just disappear, I can pin the blame for this whole disaster on you."

Once she had cleaned everything up, she inflicted several deep cuts on herself and turned the tables, framing me:

"I'm so sorry! Willow ran off with the data... She said the price they offered was too good to refuse..."

"It's all my fault, I couldn't watch over those things."

And so Amber condemned me, claiming I had defected after stealing data.

Now, watching Amber lean against Spencer, reveling in the life that should have been mine, a furious rage boiled inside me.

Why should I be dead while she, the murderer, gets to live so well?

She took my fiancé, my house!

Amber leaned into his embrace. "It's okay. If this small injury could make you see Willow's true colors, I think it was worth it!"

"So Spencer, after we get married, don't go looking for Willow anymore, okay? Let the past be the past! I don't want that woman to disturb our lives again."

Spencer looked at Amber with heartache, his tone full of pity. "I've seen how the pain keeps you up at night."

"Whenever I think about it, I just wish I could find Willow and make her suffer the way you have!"

But Spencer, you already have.

Wasn't I the one you personally dissected?