On the Day of the Earthquake, My Fiancé Left Me for Another Woman Chapter 2

Her name was Audrey Vance. She started pre-med at Boston University in 2006 and had been working in the neurosurgery department at Mass Gen ever since graduating.

She came from a family of doctors, was currently thirty-four, three years older than Liam, and had started college at sixteen. That meant she was five academic years ahead of him.

Because it was so long ago, it was hard to find much information about Audrey's college days online. I only managed to piece together that she was a standout graduate, hailed by her peers as a child prodigy.

But recently, BU posted an announcement that Audrey was returning to give a guest lecture. The high-res photo attached to her bio showed a striking, radiant woman. That face perfectly aligned with the young, immature girl I had seen in Liam's family photo albums. The conclusion was glaringly obvious: Liam and Audrey grew up together.

When I first flipped through those albums, I was curious about the little girl who appeared so frequently from childhood through high school. Then, she just vanished from the photos.

At the time, Liam's tone was casual. He just said she was a neighbor, their families were close, so they took a lot of pictures. But after her family moved to Boston, they lost touch.

Audrey's guest lecture at BU was scheduled for Saturday, June 29th.

On that exact day, Liam and I had planned to go to a used bookstore to hunt for some rare editions.

Early that morning, before breakfast, he looked hesitant and distracted.

Finally, he told me that a doctor he deeply admired was giving a lecture at a university nearby, and he really wanted to go watch.

For some reason, my mind instantly flashed to the announcement I had seen about Audrey's lecture.

BU live-streamed all their guest lectures now. I sat in front of my computer for ninety minutes and watched the whole thing. The content was almost identical to every other "outstanding alumni" speech I had suffered through during my own college years.

It was the standard formula: her childhood dreams, her hard work in high school, her clear career planning in college, wrapped up with some motivational chicken soup for the wide-eyed undergrads in the audience.

She mentioned a few rare clinical cases she had encountered, but since she was still relatively young, her experience was mostly just observing senior surgeons.

If Liam was genuinely interested in those rare cases, reading the actual medical journals published by those senior surgeons would have been far more educational.

In short, there was absolutely no professional reason for Liam to waste his time listening to that lecture.

But thinking about it practically, they grew up together, and judging by the photos, they were close. It was perfectly normal to want to catch up and grab a meal after not seeing someone for years.

So why couldn't he just look me in the eye and tell me he was going to see her?

When Liam got home, it was already evening. Beneath his usual calm expression, I could sense a hidden, bubbling joy.

He immediately offered to take over the cooking. I leaned against the kitchen doorframe, arms crossed, watching this tall, incredibly fit man look effortlessly handsome while flipping a spatula.

"What did you have for lunch?" I asked him.

"Braised chicken," he replied.

"With a friend?" I pressed.

He glanced at me quickly. "Why do you ask?"

I smiled. "If a lecture was good enough to make you cancel our plans, it probably attracted other med school alumni too. I figured you might have run into an old classmate."

He turned off the stove. In the moment it took him to slide the food onto a plate, the joyful fish swimming beneath his calm surface suddenly went completely still. "Yeah, I ran into an old classmate. We caught up for a long time."

"What about you? Did you find the books you were looking for?" he deflected.

"No," I said, feigning disappointment. "I was only going to try my luck today anyway."

Liam was an incredibly smart and observant man.

If he hadn't been completely intoxicated by the joy of reuniting with the woman he had loved for a decade, he probably would have noticed something when he came home from the lecture to grab his car keys. My everyday slippers weren't by the front door.

Which strongly implied I was home.

I literally listened to the front door open and close. I watched through the living room security camera as he grabbed his car keys—something he rarely did, as he hated driving. And then, I checked the dashcam app on my phone and watched him drive Audrey Vance to the airport.

"Next time. I'll take a day off and go with you next time. We'll definitely find the books you want," he promised.