I Let Her Ruin Herself Chapter 14
He’d claimed the Spencer’s guest room as his own, and he was never going to let Taylor apply to school again.
Over four years, she gave birth to three daughters.
In those same four years, Hannah and I went from friends to lovers.
She was careful and kind, but she wasn’t afraid to push back when my plans got too reckless. She was my partner.
After graduation, we met each other’s parents.
A few days before my twenty-second birthday, we applied for a marriage license at the county clerk’s office. On my birthday, we had a simple civil ceremony at the courthouse.
I slipped a ring onto her finger.
“So,” I said, “want to do the rest of our lives together?”
“Isn’t that question a little late?” she laughed.
When the next World Cup came around, I used my memory and data modeling contests to expand my capital.
I poured the money into the short-video app we were developing. Hannah handled operations, creator contracts, and the ad system. I focused on product design and the recommendation engine.
Four years later, our app was on the phone of nearly every young person in America. The company had grown from a small team into a multinational corporation.
Forbes listed me among the ten richest people in the country.
I was twenty-eight years old.
In my last life, I died at twenty-eight.
In this one, I could walk without a cane. I had a wife and two healthy children.
Hannah was no longer the high school girl who got nervous just speaking in a hospital doorway.
She was the group’s chief operating officer. We had weathered product failures, financing disputes, and regulatory scrutiny, building a global platform together.
Every day, I loved her more than the day before.