A Rift Exposed Your Deadly Lies

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It was Chases eighty-eighth failed therapy session.

Suddenly, the fire alarm screamed. Thick, acrid smoke began to pour into the clinic from the hallway.

And, once again, Chase let go of my hand. He grabbed my best friend, Freda, who was crying in a panic, and dragged her toward the exit.

Leaving me behind. Alone in the rising flames.

That was when the air in front of me shimmered. A glowing, holographic projection materialized amidst the smokea window to a morning three years ago, the day Chase was supposed to leave for his business trip.

"Don't go to Cascadia," I rasped, the words burning my throat as I desperately tried to speak to his past self. "There's going to be an earthquake..."

In that past timeline, he and Freda would end up trapped beneath the collapsed ruins of a hotel for two agonizing weeks. That survival ordeal would trigger what the doctors called a "suspension bridge effect"a severe, deep-seated trauma bond. From then on, whenever Freda was in even the slightest danger, his brain would short-circuit, forcing him to protect her at all costs.

Over the next three years, he would abandon me ninety-nine times because of that reflexive, sickening instinct.

"Don't go, Chase... please," I pleaded through the smoke of the present, my eyes stinging with tears.

But the past Chase only tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his face hard and unyielding as he slammed his foot on the gas.

"I have to go. Freda is waiting for me."

My breath hitched in shock.

"Actually, I'm not even going for work," he muttered, his voice carrying a dark, shameless confession. "The night I proposed to you, Freda got naked and climbed into my bed. We've been sleeping together for the last six months. Cascadia was our plan. One last wild trip together before I married you."

My blood ran cold. My throat felt as if I had swallowed a handful of razor blades; I couldn't make a sound.

Suddenly, a deafening blast shattered the air, and a massive piece of the concrete ceiling crashed down, crushing my leg. The agony shot straight through my bones, tearing a blood-curdling scream from my lips.

In the projection, the past Chase flinched. He heard me. He saw me. Yet, his fingers trembled as he dialed Freda's number over and over.

"Pick up, Freda! God, please don't let anything happen to you!"

His eyes were bloodshot, consumed entirely by the terrifying prospect of losing her. He didn't care about the agony screaming from my side of the temporal rift. He pushed the speedometer to its limit.

The flow of time between our two eras was asymmetric. Within moments, he had arrived at Freda's side. The earth shook violently beneath them, and the hotel collapsed, burying them in the rubble.

Finding Freda breathing and unharmed, Chase couldn't restrain himself. He pulled her into a desperate, ferocious kiss. Between their tangled breaths was the choked sob of a man who had nearly lost his entire world.

"Thank God you're okay!"

That kiss was a jagged shard of ice, slicing through the tear in space and plunging straight into my heart. My leg was pinned, the smoke ruthlessly invading my lungs. I couldn't hold on any longer.

Before darkness claimed me, I heard the past Chase yelling frantically at my projection.

"Ella! You're in the future, you must know how we get out of here! Tell me! Don't play dead! Hey... speak to me!"

When I finally woke up, Chase was kneeling by my hospital bed, just as he had ninety-eight times before, repeatedly slapping his own face.

"Ella, I'm so sorry!"

"Why can't I control myself? How could I leave you behind like that?"

"I'm a monster!"

"During the next therapy session, I'll tell the doctor to use electroshock. I don't care what it takes, I have to fix this sickness!"

He gripped my hand, hot, heavy tears spilling from his bloodshot eyes. In the past, I would have cupped his face, wiped away his tears, and begged him not to resort to such extreme measures. But now, as his warmth seeped into my palm, it triggered nothing but a wave of violent, sickening nausea.

I pulled my hand away, cold and hollow. I desperately wanted to believe that the conversation with the past Chase was a hallucination born of smoke inhalation. But the glowing projection floating in the hospital roomshowing him and Freda huddled together under the ruinstold me the brutal truth.

The man I loved and the woman I called my best friend had betrayed me three long years ago.

Freda burst into the room, tears streaming down her face as she hammered her fists against Chases chest, sobbing and screaming at him for leaving me behind again. She looked exactly like the fiercely protective best friend I had always believed she was.

Then, she knelt beside Chase. But beneath the edge of the hospital sheets, I saw Chase secretly reach out and grasp her hand. She glared at him in warning, but he held on stubbornly, his thumb tenderly rubbing her bruised knuckles.

I couldnt bear to think about how many times these silent, stolen glances had happened right under my nose. How could I have been so blind? For years, I was the fool in their play.

I pulled the thin blanket over my head, shutting them out.

Chase let out a heavy sigh, and eventually, the room grew quiet as they left.

Only then did I let myself break. I sobbed into the pillow, my chest tight, gasping for air under the suffocating weight of the betrayal.

In the ruins of three years ago, the past Chase was woken up by my crying.

"Ella, you're finally awake."

"It was just a little smoke and a fractured leg. Did you really need to be in a coma for two weeks?"

"Are you faking it? Doing this just to punish Freda and me?"

"How can you be so heartless?"

His voice was weak from dehydration, but every word felt like a deliberate blow to my ribs.

"Freda is fading fast. Tell me, how do we get rescued?"

Past Freda stirred, her voice barely a whisper. "Chase... I was never allowed to hold you openly in the real world. Dying in your arms like this... I don't have any regrets."

Chase sobbed. "Don't talk like that. You're not going to die. Freda, the moment we get out of here, we're getting married. I love you!"

He held her face, pressing his lips to the ugly burn scar on her arm.

That declaration of love burned through me, peeling away whatever skin I had left. That scar... it was from our college days, during a winter night we went out for hotpot. A waiter tripped, and a pot of boiling broth came flying toward Freda and me. Chase had reacted instantly, pulling me out of harm's way. Freda had scrambled to dodge, but her arm took the brunt of the scalding liquid.

Afterward, she had laughed it off, teasing him: "Chase, you only protected Ella. Are you secretly in love with her?"

Chase had admitted it on the spot. And that was the day I realized I loved him tooa man whose heart beat entirely for me. But when did that heart begin to drift?

The memory dissolved as past Chase snarled at my projection, his eyes filled with a terrifying, venomous hatred.

"Ella, let me tell you something. If Freda dies, I won't live another day. And you will be the one who murdered us!"

I stared at him for a long time. In the end, my morals won over my despair.

"The rescue team will pass by your section today," I said quietly. "Keep banging on the pipes. Don't stop. Not even for a second."

Eventually, they were pulled from the rubble. Neither of them ever said thank you.

During my five days in the hospital, present Chase never left my side. He took care of me with meticulous devotion. Meanwhile, in the holographic projection, past Ella was taking care of past Chase in the exact same way.

Two different eras, yet we looked like the picture-perfect couple, destined to grow old together. But his heart had already been hollowed out.

That near-death experience in the ruins had only welded Chase and Freda closer together. Their promise of "one last time" was forgotten. I watched, day after day, as they met in secret.

They climbed the snow-capped peaks of Aspen, letting the falling snow dust their hair until they looked like an old couple who had aged together. They walked hand-in-hand through the rain-slicked, historic streets of Charleston, listening to street musicians under the warm glow of gas lamps. They went diving in the turquoise waters of Maui, exchanging rings deep underwater, witnessed only by the swirling schools of tropical fish.

I had been on that Maui trip. I remembered the hotel walls being impossibly thin. Back then, I had waited up for Chase, my face flushing at the muffled sounds of passion filtering through the wall, entirely ignorant of the fact that my fianc was the star of the show next door.

Back then, I had listened like an innocent child. Now, I was forced to watch every sordid detail. The rhythmic movement of their bodies, the low, breathless moansit was a slow, agonizing execution of my soul.

I couldn't take it anymore. I screamed, grabbing anything within reachwater glasses, medicine bottlesand hurled them violently at the holographic projection.

Freda walked into the hospital room at that exact moment, and a flying plastic pitcher struck her forehead.

Chase's eyes flared with pure, unadulterated rage. He lunged forward, grabbing my arm, and dragged me off the hospital bed, throwing me brutally onto the shattered glass on the floor.

"Ella, what the hell is wrong with you?" he roared. "We've been tip-toeing around your pathetic tantrums for days! When is it going to be enough?"

I looked up at him through a blur of tears, a bitter, hollow laugh escaping my lips. "Finally decided to drop the act?"

Chase frowned. His eyes flickered down to my arm, where shards of glass were embedded in my skin, and a brief shadow of regret crossed his face. But before he could speak, Freda shrieked.

"Blood! Chase, I'm bleeding!"

Chase immediately spun around, lifting her into his arms. When he reached the door, he paused, trying to justify his cruelty. "You hurt Freda. I can't just leave her. I'll hire a nurse to watch you."

He was telling me he was leaving to be with her. I sat on the freezing floor, numb, as tears silently tracked down my face.

On the day I was discharged, Chase didn't show up. I navigated the paperwork alone, hobbling back to our house on crutches. When I pushed the front door open, a sliver of light revealed a scene in the backyard.

Freda was sitting on the wooden swing Chase had built for me with his own hands. Chase was kneeling in front of her, his ear pressed gently against her stomach.

His voice was softer than I had ever heard it. "Hey there, little one. I'm your daddy."

A bomb went off in my brain. My heart seemed to stop beating entirely as a cold draft swept through the house.

Inside, they were bathed in domestic bliss. Freda was smiling, her fingers casually twirling through Chases hair. Everyone knew Chases hair was his sacred boundaryno one was allowed to touch it. Once, in the heat of passion, I had playfully run my fingers through his hair. He had instantly frozen, pulled away, and ignored me for ten days.

Yet here was Freda, ruining his styled hair with absolute freedom, and he only smiled up at her.

So this was the difference between love and obligation. It was a sharp, burning ache in my chest.

Fredas smile faded slightly as she murmured, "What if Ella gets pregnant? Will you still love our baby?"

"Of course I will," Chase promised, kissing her hand. Then, his voice took on a mocking, disdainful edge. "Besides, Ella's body is useless. We haven't used protection in years, and she's never conceived. Honestly, I don't think she's even capable of having a child."

My fists clenched, my nails digging into my palms until they bled.

He was right. I couldn't have children. But what he didn't know was that we had once had a child.

Three years ago, when he was trapped in those ruins, choosing to face death with Freda, I had clawed through the shattered concrete and brick with my bare hands, searching for him until my fingers were raw and bleeding. An aftershock hit. I was buried under a collapsing wall. That was when I lost our baby, and with it, my ability to ever carry a child again.

I had kept the truth from him because I didn't want him to carry the guilt. And now, he and Freda had a child of their own.

I watched as Chase kissed Fredas hotpot scar, his eyes shining with devotion. "Freda, marry me."

Her eyes welled with tears. "I can't. What about Ella?"

Chases brow furrowed. "Freda, when are you going to start thinking about yourself? After we got rescued, I wanted to tell her the truth, but you stopped me. I respected your wishes, but I couldn't bear to be indifferent to you. So I faked the trauma responses, using the suspension bridge effect as an excuse, just so I could openly choose you whenever danger struck..."

The world went completely white. My limbs grew ice-cold.

Those ninety-nine times he had left me behind... they weren't involuntary panic attacks. They were deliberate choices.

He had lied to me. Over and over again.

I slammed the door open. Chase flinched, but the surprise on his face quickly dissolved into a smug sigh of relief.

"Well, since you heard everything, I might as well tell you the rest... Freda and I have been together since the night I proposed to you."

When I didn't scream or cry, his brow furrowed. Then, a slow, ugly realization dawned on him, and he smirked.

"You already knew, didn't you? I forgot. Three years ago, when we had that little cross-time chat, you were in the middle of that clinic fire. You saw it all."

My throat felt as though it were stuffed with dry cotton. "So... you've just been waiting for me to find out?"

"Exactly. Freda wouldn't let me come clean, but I knew that once three years passed and we had that conversation, the secret would be out anyway."

My eyes burned. The faded wedding countdown cards and monogrammed banners still hanging on the wall felt like a mockery. Chase had postponed our wedding three years ago under the guise of his mental illness. I had spent three years replacing the faded decorations, waiting for him. I was the only one playing house.

In the holographic projection, the past Ella was hugging him tightly, whispering, "Chase, I'll wait for the day you make me your wife."

But the past Chase in the projection wasn't looking at her. He was staring directly through the spatial rift, looking at the present-day me. His lips curled into a sneer, and though there was no sound, I could read his lips perfectly.

He mouthed: Idiot.

The last string of my sanity snapped. I lunged forward and slapped Chase across the face with every ounce of strength I had left. My entire body shook with violent, uncontrollable rage.

Freda rushed forward, trying to grab my arm. "Ella, let me explain"

"Don't touch me!" I shrieked, violently shoving her away.

She let out a sharp scream, losing her balance. She fell backward, her lower back crashing hard against the sharp corner of the wooden console table. Almost instantly, a dark crimson stain began to spread down her legs.

Before I could comprehend what had happened, Chases boot slammed brutally into my chest, kicking me backward. I crashed heavily against the glass-front cabinet. The heavy ceramic vase on top wobbled and fell, shattering directly over my head.

Stagnant, dirty water drenched me, and a flying shard of ceramic sliced a deep gash across my cheek, blood dripping down my neck. Chase stared at me, his eyes wide with a murderous, animalistic fury.

"Ella, you psychopath!" he screamed. "She is your best friend! If you have a problem, take it out on me! What did she ever do to you? If anything happens to Freda or our baby, I swear to God I will destroy you!"

He scooped Freda into his arms and bolted out the door, never once looking back.

In the projection, the past Chase gently kissed the forehead of a sleeping Freda. Then, he turned his cold, dead eyes toward me.

"You dared to hurt Freda," he whispered, his voice dripping with venom. "I think you need a lesson."

He walked over to the safe, pulled out a small glass urn, and lifted the lid of the toilet bowl. It contained the ashes of my parents.

My breath caught. My heart stopped. "Chase, what are you doing? Stop!"

The sound of flushing water echoed through the room. I threw myself at the projection, screaming, but my hands sliced through the light, catching nothing but empty air. I could only watch as the last physical remnants of my parents were swept down the drain.

My chest felt as though it were being torn open. I howled in absolute, primal agony.

Past Chase let out a soft, cruel laugh. "Don't worry. You're the one who made a mistake, but I'm not cruel enough to make present Ella suffer just yet. Tomorrow, I'll sweep up some fireplace ash and put it in the urn. She'll never know the difference."

I screamed until my throat bled. "Chase! Why are you so heartless? Who did my parents die trying to save?"

His face shifted slightly, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his features. He opened his mouth to speak, but the projection suddenly sputtered and vanished. The temporal window that had haunted me for weeks was gone, leaving only the quiet, empty room.

I looked at the framed photo of the three of us sitting on the table. With a ragged cry, I raised my crutch and smashed it to pieces, the glass scattering across the floor like the ruins of our lives.

I packed my bags and dragged myself to the door, only to run straight into a wild-eyed, disheveled Chase.

He grabbed me roughly, dragging me toward his car. "Freda is hemorrhaging. You have the same rare blood type. You're going to save her. You owe her this."

"What about what she owes me?" I screamed, thrashing against his grip. "What about what you owe me? How are you going to pay me back?"

Chase clamped his jaw shut, saying nothing as he forced me into the passenger seat.

In the hospital, tube after tube of blood was drained from my body. Chase stood outside the operating room, his entire frame shaking. When the doctor stepped out and announced they couldn't save the baby, Chase reeled. The next second, he lunged at me, his fingers wrapping around my throat, squeezing with terrifying force.

"This is your fault! You killed my child!"

I was too weak from blood loss to fight back. The oxygen in my lungs quickly evaporated, and darkness began to edge into my vision. Just before I passed out, Freda was wheeled out on a gurney, her face pale, her voice a fragile whisper.

"Chase... don't hurt Ella. It's not her fault. I'm the one who should apologize."

Chases expression remained dark as he dragged me to her bedside. He kicked the back of my knees, forcing me to crash onto the cold linoleum floor in front of her.

"Even if she forgives you, you'll stay on your knees," he snarled.

Freda scolded him softly, then leaned forward, pulling me into a weak, sisterly embrace. But as her lips brushed against my ear, her voice turned razor-sharp, dripping with venomous amusement.

"You still don't know how your parents died, do you, Ella?"

My body went rigid.

"They walked in on Chase and me in college," she whispered. "I panic-pushed them down the stairs. To protect me, Chase set the house on fire to burn the evidence, telling you they died saving him. Oh, and by the way... they were still breathing when he lit the match. They were burned alive."

The very last thread of my sanity snapped. I went wild, my fingers clawing at her throat, squeezing with every ounce of hatred left in my broken soul. Even Chase couldn't pull me off. In desperation, he grabbed a heavy red fire extinguisher from the wall and slammed it against the back of my head.

The world spun. I touched the back of my head, my hand coming away dripping with hot, dark blood. My tears had long since run dry. I stood up, numb and silent, and limped out of the hospital, leaving them behind forever.

I watched Ellas limping figure disappear down the hospital corridor, and for a fleeting second, it felt as though something vital was being ripped straight out of my chest. I took a step to chase after her, but Freda let out a sharp cry of pain behind me, pulling me back to her bedside.

That night, though my body sat next to Freda, my mind was entirely consumed by Ella. Her empty, hollow gaze haunted me.

And then, the air in the room shimmered. A familiar glow cast itself across the hospital wallsa time-space projection, just like the one from three years ago.

A figure materialized within the light.