Category: English

1 The day the doctors told me I wouldn’t live past twenty-five, the girl who had spent our entire childhood trying to outrun me stopped keeping score. Kendall Wright—who used to challenge me for top honors in every advanced class, who argued over the rules of every board game we ever played, whom I used to tease until she shoved my shoulder—suddenly softened into someone entirely unrecognizable. When I playfully called her a tyrant, her lower lip trembled, and her eyes welled with tears. She spent the next three years curating the world for me. She dragged me out to the coast at four in the morning to watch the sunrise. She bought expensive lanterns and released them into the summer night sky, their amber glow reflecting in her damp eyes as she announced to our entire circle of friends: “I don’t care how much time he has left. Jesse Albright is the only man I’m ever going to marry.” Then came our twenty-second year, and with it, Darren Cole. Darren was everything I was losing the ability to be: sun-drenched, broad-shouldered, radiating an effortless, incandescent vitality. Kendall went on roller coasters with him. She sat across from him in greasy twenty-four-hour diners at two in the morning, eating spicy noodles and laughing until her ribs ached. She rode bikes with him through torrential summer downpours, soaking her clothes, shrieking into the storm. She lived an entire, vibrant youth with him—the kind of youth my deteriorating body could never offer her. When I finally caught them, Kendall fell to her knees at the foot of our bed, her forehead pressed against my shins, weeping as she begged for a three-month grace period before transferring him away. “It’s only three months with him, Jesse,” she sobbed, clutching the fabric of my trousers. “I only want three months to get him settled. But I have three whole years left with you.” On the night of my twenty-second birthday, the bakery box sat unopened on the kitchen counter. The candle remained unlit. Kendall never came home. I stood by the second-floor bay window of our Chicago brownstone, watching the street below. Under the halo of an amber streetlamp, she and Darren stood in the steady drizzle. They embraced, pulled apart, lingered, and embraced again—an agonizing choreography of reluctance. Finally, Kendall grabbed the lapels of his denim jacket and pulled him down into a kiss so desperate, so drenched in rain and longing, that it looked as though parting would tear the skin from their bones. The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. The three-month promise had officially expired. Standing in the dark, watching the water pool on the glass, I finally let go. I stopped waiting for Kendall to become the girl who once cried at the thought of losing me. I turned away from the window just as the heavy oak front door clicked open. Kendall slipped inside, stepping out of her wet leather boots. The faint, unmistakable scent of cedarwood cologne drifted into the entryway. Darren’s signature scent. Seeing me standing silently in the shadows, she startled. “Jesse? Why are the lights off?” I said nothing. She quickly pulled off her damp scarf, her voice rushed, preemptively defensive. “Darren’s landlord came home drunk tonight and started pounding on his apartment door. The kid was terrified. He called me in a panic, and I had to go over to handle the building manager and make sure he was safe.” The hall sconce cast a sharp, sterile glare across my hollowed-out face. I offered a faint, bloodless smile. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me anymore, Kendall.” She froze, completely caught off guard. In the past, whenever Darren’s name entered a room, I didn’t even need to speak; the raw, bristling agony radiating off me was enough to set her on edge, provoking frantic arguments and guilty tears. Now, I was as flat and still as frozen water. I simply didn’t possess the physical or emotional stamina to create a ripple. My quiet detachment unsettled her. She crossed the hardwood floor, raising a tentative hand to stroke my hair. “If I don’t explain, you’ll just lock yourself away and suffer in silence. You’re the person I’m building my life with, Jesse. Your feelings matter to me. How could I not explain?” I instinctively tilted my head away. Her hand remained suspended in the empty air between us, fingers curling slowly into an awkward fist. “Darren is completely alone in this city,” she whispered, her voice dropping into that pleading, placating cadence she always used when she knew she was in the wrong. “He has no family here, no safety net. Anyone in his position would panic. His transfer paperwork is almost finalized, Jesse. But he doesn’t know anyone else, and I have to make sure the lease dispute is settled before he leaves. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I just abandoned him.” She peered into my eyes, searching for a trace of the old jealousy. “Just give me a few more days. Please?” I stared at the residual panic flickering in the depths of her hazel eyes. “Okay.” The tension in her shoulders visibly uncoiled. She reached into her wool coat and pulled out a small, navy velvet box. “Happy twenty-second birthday, Jess. I had this custom-made through an independent jeweler months ago.” She unclasped the leather strap and fastened it around my wrist. “It looks beautiful on you.” She didn’t notice—or perhaps she had simply forgotten—that the tiny star-shaped engraving near the dial was an exact replica of the vintage watch Darren had proudly featured on his social media feed three weeks ago. When Kendall turned toward the master bathroom to run a bath, I raised my arm, unbuckled the watch, and laid it on the console table. Then, slowly, I slid off the platinum band from my left ring finger. She had flown to Florence the summer we turned eighteen to commission that ring. She had pressed it into my palm behind a sunlit cathedral and told me, Jesse Albright, you are the only husband I will ever want in this life. At four in the morning, a muffled voice memo drifted through the thin bathroom door from her phone. Darren’s voice, thick with tears: “…I had a nightmare that he was banging on my door again. I’m so scared…” Without a second of hesitation, Kendall swung out of bed, stepped onto the balcony, and leaned against the railing. Her voice drifted through the drafty glass, impossibly tender: “Don’t be scared, Darren. I’m right here. It was just a bad dream…” I lay flat on my back in the dark, the deep, gnawing ache in my marrow radiating through my ribs, making it impossible to breathe, let alone sleep. That gentle, rhythmic tone had once belonged exclusively to me. It was the voice she used to coax bitter pills down my throat, the voice she used to wipe away my tears during my worst flare-ups, the voice that promised the sun would rise tomorrow no matter how dark the night felt. Now, every syllable she poured into another boy’s ear felt like a clean, calculated incision into a heart that was already disintegrating. When daylight broke, I began clearing the bedroom. I took the framed photographs off the wall, one by one, wrapping them in tissue paper and tucking them into the bottom drawer of my desk. Among them was a faded snapshot from when we were fifteen. It was the first time she had ever reached across the grass to take my hand; in the photo, my face was burning crimson, my eyes glued to my sneakers. On the back, in her sharp, loopy handwriting, she had penned: The hand I took at fifteen is the hand I’ll hold until the day you die. Since Darren entered the picture, Kendall hadn’t reached for my hand once. At noon, right on schedule, Kendall rushed home from the office to cook lunch. It was a ritual she had maintained for years—no matter how demanding her schedule as a junior partner became, she insisted on feeding me herself. Today, she prepared braised beef with stewed tomatoes, my lifelong favorite. I chewed a mouthful. It tasted of nothing. Dust and salt. After setting down her fork, she popped two small white pills from my prescription organizer and pressed them into my open palm. “Time for your meds, Jess.” I swallowed them with lukewarm water. A sudden, metallic warmth surged up the back of my throat. I turned my head, coughing violently into my fist, dark crimson flecks spattering across my fingers and the white linen napkin. Before Kendall could react, her phone on the dining table buzzed with an incoming voice note. Darren’s voice spilled into the room, loud and clear: “Kendall, I’m going through the Q3 spreadsheet, and the numbers aren’t balancing at all…” Kendall’s gaze flicked to my blood-stained hand, then instantly shifted to her vibrating screen. Her brows drew together in a knot of sharp, overwhelming irritation. “Get some rest, Jesse,” she said, already reaching for her trench coat. “I have to run back to the office and sort this out.” She didn’t wait for my answer. The heavy front door slammed shut behind her. I sat alone on the cold leather sofa, staring at the empty wall until the afternoon light grayed out and vanished into dusk. Today was supposed to be my quarterly oncology follow-up. Kendall had forgotten. I hailed a cab to Northwestern Memorial by myself. In the sterile, fluorescent examination room, Dr. Mercer studied my latest CT scans, his breath hitching in a heavy, practiced sigh. “Jesse… the malignant cells have aggressively metastasized throughout your lymphatic system and bone tissue,” he said quietly, his eyes avoiding mine. “We’re looking at months, maybe weeks, if the internal bleeding continues. You need to get your affairs in order.” Walking out of the hospital pavilion into the biting December wind, I pulled out my phone and refreshed my feed. Darren had posted a photo carousel thirty minutes earlier. New apartment all settled! the caption read, complete with a celebratory emoji. Huge thanks to someone special for taking me out for an amazing steak dinner to celebrate~ In the photo, Kendall’s hands were captured in soft focus, meticulously slicing a cut of prime rib and sliding the plate toward the beaming young man across from her. Just then, my father’s name flashed across the screen. “Jesse, how did the scan go today?” my dad asked, his voice warm and eager. “It went fine, Dad.” “Kendall mentioned a few months back that she was planning that massive round-the-world trip for you two. She told me she was taking you to Iceland for the Northern Lights and booking a chalet in the Swiss Alps for your birthday. Are the flights and hotels all set? I want to make sure you’re properly bundled up.” Listening to the boundless hope in my father’s aging voice, the fragile dam inside my chest gave way completely. A choked, ragged sob tore through my throat. “Dad…” I gasped, tears instantly freezing against my cheeks. “Kendall… she loves someone else.” I hung up, standing motionless as Chicago’s first heavy December blizzard settled over my bare head and shoulders. Looking out at the blinding wall of white, an old memory unspooled. In years past, whenever the temperature dropped below freezing, Kendall would fuss over me like a mother hen—wrapping my wool scarf twice around my neck, tucking my thumbs into lined gloves, pulling a beanie over my ears, scolding me softly: You’ve always been fragile in the cold, Jess. If you catch a chill, your joints ache all night, and I can’t stand seeing you hurt. A snowflake caught on my eyelash. I blinked, and it melted into a tear, tracking a hot line down my jaw. A grotesque, absurd thought crept into my mind: Why did I have to find out? If I had remained blind, then right up until the moment my heart stopped, Kendall would have remained that fierce fifteen-year-old girl who held my hand in the grass. She would have remained the devoted partner who sat by my hospital bed for seventy-two straight hours, clutching my fingers, whispering that she couldn’t survive a world without me. I could have slipped into the dark cradling that beautiful lie. Instead, the illusion had cracked, leaving behind a stranger whose betrayal was laid bare in every careless glance. Over the next week, the disease accelerated with terrifying speed. My hair came out in thick clumps every time I ran a brush through it; the deep, unrelenting bone pain made sleep impossible. Kendall, assuming I was unconscious under heavy painkillers, spent every midnight on the balcony, her headset on, laughing softly into the phone as she played online games with Darren. That bright, lilting laugh was like shards of glass scraping against my bare nerves. On Thursday afternoon, Darren arrived at our front door under the pretext of delivering urgent contract files. He walked into our living room in his pristine white sneakers, doing a slow, theatrical turn around the space. “It’s so incredibly cozy in here,” he remarked, glancing around the room with wide, innocent eyes. “No wonder Kendall never wants to stay late at the office anymore. You have such a wonderful sanctuary, Jesse.” I ignored him entirely, keeping my eyes fixed on the book in my lap. Darren drifted toward the coffee table. With a theatrical “Oops!”, his elbow clipped my open weekly pill organizer. The acrylic box clattered to the floor, sending my remaining, highly specialized chemotherapy and pain capsules scattering across the rug. He gasped, dropping to his knees in an exaggerated panic, his heavy sneakers deliberately grinding three of the brittle capsules into fine white powder. “I am so, so sorry!” he stammered, his hands fluttering helplessly. “I’m such a klutz, I didn’t mean to—” Hearing the commotion, Kendall emerged from the home office down the hall, her brow furrowed. “What happened?” Darren instantly retreated behind her, shrinking like a wounded fawn. “I accidentally knocked over Jesse’s medication… Kendall, did I ruin everything? Are these impossible to replace?” Kendall glanced down at the crushed white residue on the floorboards. Her voice was flat, devoid of the panic that once defined her whenever my health was threatened. “It’s fine. It’s just medicine. We can always order more from the pharmacy.” Years ago, when a supply chain issue delayed a vital pain management drug, Kendall had driven through a blizzard across three different counties, pounding on pharmacy windows until she secured a bottle. I wondered if she even remembered that girl. Everything had shifted. That evening, the accumulated internal damage triggered an acute, massive hemorrhage. I collapsed onto the cold bathroom tile, my vision swimming in dark gray static, blood soaking through the front of my shirt. Using the final shred of strength in my fingers, I dialed 911, gasped out our address, and then, trembling uncontrollably, tapped Kendall’s contact. A pathetic, desperate part of me still craved the past. I wanted to hear her voice—the voice that used to wrap around me when the agony was too great, telling me, Don’t be afraid, Jess. I’m right here. I’ve got you. The line rang four times before clicking open. Darren’s bright, energetic laugh crackled through the receiver: “Kendall’s in the middle of trying to win me that giant plush bear at the arcade! Jesse, is there something I can pass along to her?” In the background, the cheerful, bouncing synthesizer music of an entertainment complex pulsed loudly. The phone slipped from my limp fingers. The world dissolved into black. When I opened my eyes, the sterile smell of antiseptic and the rhythmic beep of a cardiac monitor filled the room. Kendall was sitting in the vinyl armchair beside my bed. On the sleeve of her beige wool sweater, a faint, sticky smudge of pink cotton candy was still visible. Dazed, trapped in the muscle memory of ten years of illness, my hand instinctively drifted toward hers, seeking comfort. The moment my fingertips brushed her cuff, she jerked her arm away as if burned. “Why did you do that to Darren?” she hissed, her eyes blazing with cold fury. “Did you post that video online?” I lay pinned against the thin hospital mattress, a hollow, bitter laugh catching in my throat. How pathetic was I? Ten years of slow deterioration, and I still hadn’t learned that the woman sitting before me had long since ceased to be the person who guarded my life. Seeing my silence, Kendall thrust her phone inches from my face. “He’s completely alone in this city! I was already in the process of transferring him to our London branch! Why did you have to unleash this kind of cruelty on him?” On the screen was a viral clip. My father had marched into the lobby of Kendall’s corporate headquarters during lunch hour. Confronting Darren as he stepped out of the elevator, my father had slapped him across the face, his voice cracking with grief as he yelled: “You shameless piece of trash! Destroying an engaged man’s life while he lies dying!” The video had exploded across local social media. Darren was labeled a corporate climber and a homewrecker; thousands of vitriolic comments flooded his profiles. Kendall took a sharp, ragged breath, her voice shaking with righteous indignation. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Darren was standing on the ledge of his balcony this morning. He nearly jumped!” “I didn’t… film that,” I whispered, my voice barely carrying over the hum of the oxygen machine. “I didn’t post it…” Before I could finish, Kendall’s phone lit up with Darren’s name. She didn’t spare me another glance. She stood up, her face tight with disgust. “You need to think long and hard about who you’ve become, Jesse. Stop causing drama.” The door swung shut with a hard, final click. The online fallout metastasized into a firestorm. Internet sleuths quickly unearthed Darren’s employment records, exposing his rapid promotions under Kendall’s direct mentorship. Accusations of workplace misconduct and predatory behavior piled up by the hour. To shield him from the barrage—and to salvage his reputation at any cost—Kendall posted a public statement on her personal and professional channels that midnight. The attached image showed her and Darren standing shoulder-to-shoulder under the bright lights of Navy Pier, smiling radiantly. Darren Cole is my partner, she wrote. Please cease this targeted harassment immediately and leave an innocent man alone. The digital tide reversed instantly. I became the vindictive, manipulative ex-fiancé weaponizing my illness for sympathy; my father became an abusive, unhinged bully. Hundreds of direct messages flooded our accounts—death threats, graphic insults, and vile, doctored photos. Lying in my hospital bed, my trembling hands began compiling a rebuttal. I uploaded twenty years of archives: high school graduation photos, medical proxy documents, our joint lease agreements, the custom ring receipt from Florence. My thumb hovered over the Publish button. The door to the private room burst open. A dull thud echoed against the linoleum. Kendall—proud, untouchable, brilliant Kendall Wright—was on her knees before my hospital bed, her spine ramrod straight, her palms flat against the floor. “Jesse,” she pleaded, her eyes rimmed in red. “I am begging you. Delete the post. Don’t publish it.” I stared down at her, tears spilling silently over my cheekbones. “They are sending death threats to my father, Kendall! They are calling him a monster! What is wrong with you?” Kendall averted her eyes, unable to meet my gaze. “Darren just graduated college last year, Jesse… He doesn’t have your resilience. If you publish this, his career is over before it even starts. He will be blacklisted across the entire industry.” She crawled a few inches closer, reaching up to clutch the metal guardrail of my bed. “I am begging you. Trade our twenty years together for his life, just this once. Let him have this. Once the dust settles, I swear to God, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you.” I looked down at her bowed head. I remembered our sophomore year of high school, when three older boys had cornered me behind the bleachers because of my weak lungs. Kendall had thrown herself into the fight, getting shoved into the muddy gravel, her knees bleeding through her jeans, refusing to back down until campus security arrived. Now, she was on her knees, weaponizing those twenty years of shared history to demand that I remain a silent, obedient punching bag for another man’s comfort. “Why?” The word scraped out of my chest, raw and ragged. “Why him?” “Because I can’t bear to see him broken,” she whispered. I can’t bear to see him broken. The phrase drove into my chest like an ice pick. She had shielded me for years, only to decide that I was the one who could be sacrificed without consequence. I glanced down at my phone screen. Someone had superimposed my father’s face onto a funeral headstone with the caption: Die faster, old freak. Without another word, I pressed Publish. “Jesse Albright!” Kendall surged to her feet, her face contorted in sheer, unadulterated fury. “Do you truly have to destroy his life to feel satisfied?! When did you become so utterly venomous?!” She turned on her heel, slamming the door so hard the glass pane rattled in its frame. The following morning, my father suffered a catastrophic hemorrhagic stroke brought on by acute hypertensive stress. He never regained consciousness. He died without ever seeing the public record corrected. He died without ever knowing that I had secretly finalized our travel itinerary—the dream trip he had talked about for twenty years, the one he sacrificed to pay for my treatments. He had wanted to see the mist rising over the mountain lakes, wanted to touch the snow of the far north, wanted to buy me a string of blessed prayer beads from an alpine monastery to pray for my recovery. I had booked every ticket. I never got the chance to tell him. Discharging myself from the hospital against medical advice, I forced my failing body through the motions of arranging his cremation and memorial service alone. It was the first time in my adult life that I had handled a crisis without Kendall. Before this, she dispensed every medication, prepped every meal, and even cupped her warm hand over my eyes each morning so the harsh sunlight wouldn’t trigger my migraines. How tragic that the first skill I learned in her absence was how to bury the only family I had left. On the night of the wake, sitting alone in the empty funeral home, I unlocked my phone. Darren had posted a new photo. He was standing beneath the snow-capped peak of Mount Rainier, Kendall beside him holding an umbrella over his head, her smile soft, protective, and serene. Thank you for pulling me out of the dark, the caption read. A moment later, an unknown number sent a short video file to my inbox. The footage was taken inside Kendall’s office weeks earlier. My father was sitting in the leather guest chair, his posture bent, his voice cracking with humiliation: “Kendall… Jesse only has a couple of years left. I am begging you as a father… just be good to him while he’s still here…” On the recording, Kendall was silent for a long, agonizing beat before answering in a cold, professional tone: “Mr. Albright, I have my own boundaries to protect.” Watching that cold silhouette on the screen, I let out a dry, wheezing laugh until tears blurred my sight. The same girl who had once knelt before my father, promising that Jesse was the only person who would ever hold her heart, was the very person who had pushed us both off the edge of the cliff. Back at the brownstone, I packed a single duffel bag and called a car for O’Hare International Airport. As I pulled up to the terminal, a text from Kendall popped onto the screen: Jesse, Darren fell into a severe depressive spiral because of the online mob. I had to get him out of the city to clear his head. As soon as we get back to Chicago, I will make everything right between us. I promise. I opened her contact card. With steady fingers, I blocked her cell, deleted her messages, purged her from my social channels, and erased every shared digital footprint. At the security gate, I stopped and looked through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the Chicago tarmac. The snow was falling with a quiet, suffocating violence, threatening to bury the entire city in white. For the time I had left, I was going to live for my father. And for myself.

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1 My sister told me there was a dog at her place that needed feeding. It turned out to be a blind woman. For two weeks, I lived under the impression that my sister, Serena, was a high-functioning psychopath. I fed this woman, I “walked” her, and I supervised her baths. She went from screaming at me to get out, to silently pressing the leash into my palm. I thought I was taming a stray, a broken creature that had lost its mind. Until the middle of the night, when I felt her tongue dart out to lick the back of my hand. Terrified, I ducked into the hallway and FaceTimed Serena. “The person you’re keeping here is crossing lines!” I hissed, my voice trembling. “She just licked me!” Serena stared at the background behind me for a long, agonizing minute. Her silence was deafening. “Miles,” she finally said, her voice small. “That’s not my house.” “What are you talking about?” “I sold that place three months ago. Didn’t I tell you? I moved to the North Side.” She swallowed hard, her eyes wide with realization on the screen. “You broke into someone’s home… and you’ve been treating a stranger like a pet for fifteen days.” “You’re dead,” she whispered. “You are absolutely finished.” It started when I moved to the city for a new job. To save on rent, I’d called Serena to see if I could crash at her place. She was away on a business trip and told me to just grab the key from under the planter. “Look after the new puppy while you’re there,” she’d said over the phone. “He’s a black lab mix, a bit temperamental and shy around strangers. If he acts up, don’t be afraid to be firm. He needs to know who’s boss.” When I arrived at the old brick walk-up, I found the key exactly where she said it would be. I let myself in. The layout was exactly as I remembered from a visit years ago. “Puppy? Come here, boy!” I whistled, dropping my bags. I heard movement in the master bedroom. Smiling, I pushed the door open. “Who’s a bad boy? Who wants a treat?” The room was dim, the heavy velvet curtains drawn tight. The air felt heavy, stagnant. A woman stood by the window in a thin silk nightgown. Her hair was ink-black, spilling over her pale, sharp shoulders. Around her ankle was a sleek, glowing electronic band—a medical telemetry monitor, I assumed. Her eyes were wide, beautiful, and completely vacant. She didn’t look at me; she looked through me. “Who are you?” she rasped. Her voice was like dry leaves. I closed the door, my heart skipping. I pulled out my phone and re-read Serena’s text. New puppy. Black hair. Needs to be restrained. It all clicked in the most horrific way possible. I took thirty seconds to accept the fact that my sister was a kidnapper. She had abducted a sophisticated, blind, and heartbreakingly fragile woman. But Serena was family. And I had just signed a contract for my dream job in this city. I couldn’t call the police without ruining both our lives. I decided I would “care” for this poor soul until Serena got back, at which point I’d convince her to turn herself in. Assuming the role of the “kidnapper’s accomplice,” I didn’t dare reveal my name. I told her I was the new help. “Get out,” she spat. Her temper was vile. But then again, if I were chained up in a dark room, I wouldn’t be winning any congeniality awards either. I called Serena back, trying to sound casual. “What’s the… guest’s name? I want to make sure she’s comfortable.” “Are you losing your mind?” Serena laughed. “It’s a dog, Miles. Don’t personify it. Just call it ‘Dog.’ It’ll wag its tail if you have food. Don’t be a weirdo.” I felt a cold shiver go down my spine. Serena had even stripped her of her name. How had my sister, the girl who grew up in a small town and worked her way to the top of the corporate ladder, become this cruel? Was the city this soul-crushing? I couldn’t bring myself to call a human being “Dog.” I scoured the apartment and found a set of IDs in a mahogany desk. The woman in the photo was radiant, her eyes full of life and authority. Her name was Sloane Whitaker. According to the ID, she was from a wealthy family out of Chicago. Serena had dragged her hundreds of miles away. My sister was a monster. Once I settled into the “nanny” persona, Sloane stopped asking questions. She would sit on the edge of the bed for hours, a ghost in a silk shroud. The fridge was empty except for expensive red wine. She was skin and bones, her collarbones protruding like wings. I went to the grocery store with a hat pulled low, dodging every security camera. If Serena was going to prison, I was at least going to make sure Sloane didn’t starve first. I cooked a three-course meal and invited her to the table. Sloane’s face remained a mask of cold fury. The light on her ankle monitor pulsed red. The display on the bedside hub, which I’d figured out how to read, showed her status: Agitated. “Did they not tell you the rules?” she asked, her sightless gaze fixed on a corner of the ceiling. “I didn’t ask for food. Leave.” “They?” I whispered. My hand shook as I set the plate down. Serena wasn’t alone. She was part of a syndicate. In the dim light, I saw the faint scars on Sloane’s arms—bruises from walking into furniture, and sharper marks that looked like they’d been inflicted on purpose. I felt sick. Sloane didn’t notice my inner turmoil. She reached out and swept the plate off the table with a violent crash. “Are you deaf? I said get out.” Despite her blindness, she carried an aura of such immense power that I actually flinched. The sins of the sister, I thought. I had to make amends. I had to keep her alive so she could testify later. “Please eat,” I said, my voice soft but firm. “If you don’t eat, you won’t have the strength to run when the time comes.” The monitor showed her health vitals at an all-time low. Red lights everywhere: Irritation. Disgust. I was desperate. I called Serena again. “The ‘puppy’ won’t eat. It’s being stubborn.” Serena groaned. “Then force it! When I’m home, it’s always leaning against my leg, wagging its tail. Why is it being so difficult with you? It’s a designer breed, Miles. Do not let it lose weight or I’ll have your head.” I went back in with a fresh plate. Sloane tried to swing at it again—for the sixth time. She was so weak she was trembling, her skin a sickly translucent grey. Something in me snapped. I grabbed her wrists, pinning them gently but firmly to the table. “If you don’t eat,” I growled, trying to sound like a hardened criminal, “I’ll make you regret it.” Sloane lifted her head. Even blind, her gaze was piercing. She let out a low, mocking laugh. “You think you can talk to me like that? Do you even know who I am?” I was exhausted and stressed. “I know you’re a ‘bad dog’ who needs to be punished.” She froze. I think no one had ever spoken to her with such raw, unpolished bluntness. In her shock, she actually let me guide a few spoonfuls of soup into her mouth. I watched her swallow, her throat moving elegantly. “You…” she whispered. “Just eat,” I said, my voice softening as I patted her back. “I’m not like the others. I’m one of the good guys, okay?” During the struggle, some soup had spilled onto her dark nightgown, clinging to her skin. I realized she was a mess. Sloane couldn’t see the state she was in. She looked lost, her dignity frayed. “You’re a mess,” I said. “Go clean up. I’ll be in the other room.” After “feeding the pet,” I went to the guest room to look over my onboarding materials for my new job. I was starting at a subsidiary of Whitaker Industries. I didn’t look too closely at the corporate hierarchy; I was just a mid-level analyst. I’d never see the top brass anyway. I called Serena to report. “The ‘dog’ threw a fit, but I got some food in her. She’s in the shower now.” Serena screamed through the phone. “Are you insane? It can’t bathe itself! It’s terrified of water! It’ll drown, you idiot! Go get it out of the tub!” I dropped the phone. The bathroom had been silent for too long. I sprinted in and slammed the door open. A shadow was slumped in the oversized marble tub, submerged under the water. “No, no, no!” I lunged forward, slipped on the wet tile, and went flying. I landed hard in the tub, water splashing everywhere, essentially sitting in her lap as I yanked her head above the surface. “Don’t you dare die on me! My career! My life! My sister!” Sloane gasped, coughing violently as she hit the air. Her lungs burned, her chest heaving against mine. Her eyes, clouded with steam and water, locked onto mine. I didn’t think about modesty. I just hauled her out, dripping and shivering. “It’s okay, it’s okay. From now on, we’re doing sponge baths. Or you stand up. No more tubs.” She was slick with soap and water. As I tried to get a grip on her to carry her to the bed, she shoved me away. Her face was flushed a deep, burning crimson. “Get out!” she rasped. “I’m fine!” “You almost drowned!” I shouted back, refusing to budge. We sat there in a stalemate on the bathroom floor until I let out a loud, wet sneeze. Sloane took a shaky breath, bracing herself against the wall as she felt her way out of the room, avoiding my limbs with practiced grace. She stood in the center of the bedroom, shivering, trying to find her composure. “I don’t know who sent you,” she said, her voice trembling with rage. “But leave. Now.” The cold air hit her, and she suddenly remembered she was wearing nothing but droplets of water. She froze. “…Can you see me?” I looked at her, my expression flat. “I’ve been an adult for a long time, Sloane. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Now, dry off. I’m staying right here to make sure you don’t collapse.” Her ankle monitor went into a frenzy. Anger. Shame. Humiliation. I played dumb. I watched her fumble for a towel and retreat under the covers. “I’m telling them to fire you,” she muttered. But I’d already hidden the landline. I’d cut the Wi-Fi. Serena was a sloppy kidnapper, I realized. She’d left her victim with too many ways to reach the outside world. I was just fixing her mistakes. Sloane, exhausted by the calories and the trauma, finally started to drift off. I sang her a lullaby—the one Serena told me the “puppy” liked for its insomnia. Sloane looked like she wanted to strangle me with her bare hands, but eventually, the darkness claimed her. Serena had mentioned the “dog” sometimes stopped breathing in its sleep. So, I dragged a chair to the corner of her room and watched her all night, only closing my eyes when her breathing was rhythmic and deep. The next morning, I pulled the curtains open, letting the Chicago sun hit her face. She looked beautiful and utterly miserable. “Good morning, sunshine,” I said. “Time for some Vitamin D.” Sloane stiffened, clutching the duvet to her chest. “You slept in here? All night? You’re a predator.” She reached for something heavy on the nightstand to throw at me, but I’d already padded all the sharp corners with foam and moved any potential weapons. I was protecting her. Her hand landed on a plush toy—a squeaky purple eggplant I’d bought at the store. She squeezed it. Her face went cold. “What is this?” “A toy,” I said encouragingly. “I thought you might be lonely. I’m here to give you the affection ‘they’ denied you.” She ripped the plushie’s head off. She stood up, storming toward the sound of my voice. “Get out of my house. Right. Now.” “It’s our house now,” I said with a sigh, patting her cheek. “We’re both stuck here. We’re both homeless in our own way.” My alarm went off. Time for work. I ducked under her arm and headed for the door. “I’ve set up a camera,” I lied (it was just a baby monitor). “Behave. If you make a mess, I’ll have to be firm when I get back.” The monitor on her ankle turned a violent, pulsing red. At work, I checked the monitor on my phone. I’d bought one of those cheap $10 robotic balls that rolls around the floor. Sloane was surprisingly well-behaved; she only punched her pillow a few times before sitting quietly on the edge of the bed. I rolled the robot up to her foot and bumped it. “Lunchtime. It’s in the microwave. Go heat it up.” “No.” “Do it, or I’ll make the robot play ‘Baby Shark’ on a loop.” She stood up, cursing under her breath, and felt her way to the kitchen. When she finished the first bite of the pasta I’d made, I triggered a pre-recorded sound of thunderous applause through the robot’s speakers. “You fed yourself! Good girl! Incredible!” Sloane’s voice was icy. “Shut. Up.” Later, she headed for the bathroom. Serena had warned me the “puppy” was still working on “potty training,” so I rolled the robot right to the door. “Aim true,” I chirped through the speakers. “If you miss, I’m making you scrub it tonight.” Sloane: “…” By the end of the second week, Sloane was looking healthy. The hollows of her cheeks had filled out. Her health index was climbing. Her emotional monitor was usually calm, except for the “red zones” when I supervised her hygiene. I bragged to Serena. “The ‘pet’ is doing great. She’s put on about ten pounds. She’s actually quite sweet when she isn’t trying to murder me.” “Ten pounds?!” Serena shrieked. “Miles, you’re turning my dog into a pig! If I come home to an obese animal, you’re dead! Put it on a diet. Now!” Fine. Body management it was. I went into the bedroom at 2:00 AM. Sloane was asleep. I gently slipped a silk sleep mask over her eyes—a “muzzle” of sorts, to keep her focused. She woke up, startled. “What is this?” “Owner’s orders,” I whispered. “We’re going for a walk.” “Who gave you that order?”

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1 My name is Sadie. I was in the middle of fastening the delicate strap of my stiletto in the foyer when a floating line of blood-red text sliced through the air right before my eyes. Is this doomed mother seriously going to the party? She’s walking right into the trap Derek set to pay off his gambling debts. The second she hits the expressway, her brakes will fail, and she’ll be crushed into scrap metal. My fingers froze against the leather buckle. What in the hell was this? Before my brain could fully register the shock, the air in front of me seemed to rupture. A deluge of glowing, translucent commentary began scrolling frantically across my field of vision like live chat on a screen. If she doesn’t die, how does the plot move forward? The moment she’s gone, Harrison completely loses his mind. And little Toby, losing his mom so young, grows up into an utterly twisted supervillain. Derek only came back to the States to steal Harrison’s core tech patents. He lured Sadie out to use her as leverage, which leads to the fatal crash. God, this woman is painfully blind. A cold knot tightened in my stomach. Derek was a degenerate gambler? Industrial espionage? A staged car crash? Honestly though, this whole tragedy is Harrison’s fault for being such an emotionally repressed coward! He’s the undisputed Sovereign of Beasts—a literal, apex-tier white snow leopard with lethal combat power—and he’s so terrified his wife will think he’s a freak that he refuses to reveal his true form! Right?! Sadie actually adores animals, but Harrison lied through his teeth, pretending to have a lethal fur allergy, which forced her to give away the stray calico cat she’d had for five years. Now they just spend every single day playing the brooding billionaire and the detached trophy wife. It’s ridiculous. The one I cry for is poor baby Toby. The little guy is half-beast, and because he can’t fully control his tiny ears and tail yet, his dad makes him wear long sleeves and bucket hats in the dead of summer. The poor kid is so insecure; he genuinely believes his own mother despises him. My heart aches for Toby. After Sadie dies, Derek torments him for years. Growing up starved of love, he eventually snaps as an adult and tries to burn the entire city to the ground. My hand, still clutching the Porsche key fob, began to tremble uncontrollably. Toby was my three-and-a-half-year-old son. Harrison was my husband of four years—a man with severe germaphobia, whose ties were always knotted immaculately to the collar, and who had established an ironclad rule that not a single stray hair of any species was permitted inside our home. He was… a snow leopard? A majestic, pure white snow leopard? And my son was a baby cub? I swallowed hard. What the text didn’t know—what no one knew—was that I didn’t just like animals. I was a hopeless, incurable addict for anything soft, fluffy, and four-legged. Four years ago, when Harrison turned pale and looked like he was suffocating at the mere sight of my sweet rescue cat, I had wept as I packed her things and drove her to my mother’s house. And now, the universe was casually informing me that the man sharing my bed every night was an enormous, gorgeous, living plush toy capable of burying me in fur? To hell with Derek’s welcome-back party. What kind of gutter trash was Derek to think he could take precedence over me burying my face in an oversized cat? I tossed the car keys onto the credenza with a clatter, kicked off the stilettos, ripped the silk scarf from my neck, and marched barefoot back toward the living room. The central air was humming, keeping the vast, minimalist space crisp and cool. Harrison was seated on the charcoal leather sofa, dressed in a bespoke slate-gray shirt, silver-rimmed glasses resting on his sharp nose. He was reviewing quarterly financial reports on his tablet, looking impossibly aristocratic, untouchable, and frigid. A few feet away on the imported wool rug, little Toby was quietly stacking wooden blocks by himself. Despite the sweltering July heat outside and the climate-controlled chill inside, the poor boy was bundled in a thick black bucket hat, pulled low, alongside a tight long-sleeve UV-block shirt and heavy trousers. Whenever I had asked Harrison why he swaddled the boy so aggressively, he would reply without looking up, “He has a delicate constitution and an underdeveloped immune system. A slight draft will make him ill.” At the time, though my heart had ached for Toby, the polite distance of our arranged marriage and Harrison’s uncompromising authority had kept me silent. I had bought his excuse. Now, seeing Toby’s flushed, sweaty little cheeks beneath the brim of that wretched hat, a sharp pang of fury and guilt pierced my chest. Immune deficiency my ass. He was hiding his ears and tail. “Haven’t you left yet?” Harrison asked, looking up at the sound of my bare footsteps. His gaze swept over my bare throat where the scarf had been, then traveled down to my bare feet on the hardwood. His brow knit together almost imperceptibly, his tone maintaining its customary, cool detachment. “Isn’t Derek waiting for you at the marina?” Normally, his aloof indifference would have provoked a sarcastic remark from me before I slammed the front door behind me. Instead, I stood there, staring intently at the crown of his dark hair, vividly picturing a pair of plush, snow-white feline ears popping through those styled strands. “I’m not going,” I said, walking over and dropping onto the sofa beside him. Harrison’s finger froze mid-swipe on the screen. “You’re not going?” He turned his head, a rare, fleeting flicker of bewilderment passing through his steel-gray eyes before it was replaced by guarded composure. “I thought he had something vital to give you.” “He’s a con artist,” I replied casually, picking an apple from the fruit bowl and taking a crisp bite. “I just found out he’s drowning in foreign gambling debts. The only reason he reached out was to kidnap me and extort a ransom out of you.” Harrison’s expression hardened instantly. The ambient temperature in the room plummeted. A lethal, terrifying glint flashed beneath his wire-rimmed lenses—a sheer, suffocating menace that belonged exclusively to an apex predator at the top of the food chain. Holy crap! The snow leopard is bristling! Harrison already sniffed out that Derek was dirty and had twelve undercover security details trailing Sadie’s car! This man is so stubborn. He’s hopelessly in love with his wife, gets violently jealous if another man even breathes in her direction, but insists on playing the untouchable CEO. The glowing text floated by, providing real-time commentary. I suppressed an eye roll, an overwhelming surge of curiosity bubbling beneath my ribs. Ignoring Harrison’s icy facade, I turned my gaze down toward the rug. Hearing my voice, Toby’s small frame trembled visibly. He shrank back toward the corner of the sofa, his tiny hands clutching the brim of his bucket hat in white-knuckled terror, his large, tear-bright eyes peering up at me with timid hesitation. “Mommy…” his voice was softer than a whisper, fragile and cracking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get the rug dirty…” Seeing him so terrified of offending me, so convinced he was an unwanted burden, made my throat tighten with an agonizing ache. What had I missed while playing the part of the distant, career-focused wife to match Harrison’s coldness? In this child’s world, suffocating inside layers of heavy fabric every day wasn’t just physical misery; it was the crushing psychological terror that his own mother would discover he was a monster. I stepped off the sofa and dropped into a crouch directly in front of him. “Toby, sweetheart, aren’t you hot?” I softened my voice to a gentle hum, reaching out to brush a damp strand of hair from his flushed temple. Toby was entirely unaccustomed to such warmth. His eyes widened like saucers, his tiny mouth parting in frozen shock, forgetting to breathe. Then, panicking, he shook his head furiously, tugging the hat further down over his brow. “N-No! Toby isn’t hot!” I let out a soft sigh. “Lying isn’t for good boys, honey. Your face is drenched in sweat. Let’s take off the hat and go wash up, okay?” I reached for the brim. “Sadie!” A sharp, thunderous shout cut through the room. Harrison surged to his feet, his tablet clattering heavily against the rug. He closed the distance between us with terrifying, inhuman speed, his hand clamping around my wrist. His grip was ironclad, the heat radiating from his palm unnaturally searing. “Don’t touch him,” Harrison’s voice was strained, the legendary composure that commanded boardrooms cracking to reveal a raw, desperate panic. “He… he has a severe viral rash on his scalp. It’s highly contagious. Keep your hands away.” Lie. Keep digging that hole, Harrison. I wrenched my wrist from his grip, standing up to look him dead in the eye. “A rash? What kind of rash is contagious through a hat?” I stepped into his personal space, challenging him. “Harrison, I am his biological mother. If my son is sick, I’m not allowed to look at him?” Harrison’s throat worked, his jawline locked tight enough to shatter bone. “We have private pediatricians on retainer,” he said, looking away, his voice stiff with an authority that was visibly crumbling. “Just don’t touch him.” Look at the poor dad panicking! This is the hardest phase of half-beast maturation to control. The second that hat comes off, a pair of leopard ears is going to spring right out! Harrison is terrified out of his mind. Beastkind has always been ostracized in human society. He’s convinced Sadie will be utterly disgusted and walk out on them forever. Reading the text and looking at Harrison’s tense, cornered expression, I felt an unexpected wave of tenderness. For all his billions and absolute power, this man was terrified of losing his family. Which made it all the more necessary to rip the band-aid off right now. “I’m looking,” I declared. Without giving him time to react, I dropped low, darting past his outstretched arm. “Let Mommy see this rash, Toby!” “Sadie, no!” Harrison gasped, reaching out, but he was a fraction of a second too late. I caught the brim of Toby’s bucket hat and yanked it straight upward. A soft, muffled sound broke the silence, like spring-loaded velvet finally snapping free from confinement. The air in the room froze. Rising proudly from Toby’s silky dark hair were two rounded, pure white ears, tipped with exquisite silver-gray leopard rosettes. As the boy’s chest heaved with rapid breaths, the velvety ears gave two incredibly sharp, instinctive twitches. Holy. Mother. Of. God. It was the most adorable thing I had ever seen in my life.

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1 I walked out on the love of my life when he loved me the most. That afternoon, he had been lying in a hospital bed, tears spilling down his bruised temples as he begged me not to walk out the door. I didn’t look back. Seven years vanished into that silence. Tonight, my best friend had dragged me to a crowded downtown bar, and I had drunk myself into oblivion—all because, earlier that afternoon, I’d caught a glimpse of a familiar broad-shouldered silhouette on the street. Just as my consciousness began to slip away, a low, familiar baritone cut through the pulsing bass in my ears. “Stop drinking.” I froze. I forced my heavy eyelids open, looked up, and found him standing right in front of me. It was really him. The thumping club music was hammering against my skull by the time Garrett Cole guided me through the heavy glass doors into the biting night air. From the moment he grabbed my wrist inside to the moment we hit the sidewalk, he hadn’t said a single word beyond those first two. The crisp autumn wind washed over my face, cutting through the alcohol haze just enough to wake my senses. “Nina… Nina’s still inside,” I stammered, pulling weakly against his grip. His profile was rigid, his jaw set in a cold, unbothered line. “You barely have enough sense to stand, and you’re worrying about someone else?” He tilted his head slightly, gesturing behind us. I looked back. Nina was already being supported out by another guy, staggering toward a cab. “Where are you staying?” he asked, his voice flat. I gave him the name of a midtown boutique hotel. I had only arrived in the city a few days ago and hadn’t found an apartment yet. Without another word, he opened the rear door of a sleek black sedan, helped me into the back seat, and walked around to the driver’s side. He has a car now, I thought numbly, leaning my head against the cool leather. Back in high school, he used to ride an old, squeaky road bike to my street corner every morning just to give me a lift to school. The winters back then were brutal. I would tuck my hands into his coat pockets, pressing my face tight against his back to block the wind. One morning, when we pulled into the school bike racks, he looked at my wind-chapped red cheeks. I gave him a silly, shivering grin, and he reached out, gently pinching my cheek with gloved fingers. “First thing I do when I grow up is buy a car,” he had murmured, his breath misting in the cold. “So my Nora never has to freeze again.” Later that same week, he showed up with a fleece headband, thermal earmuffs, and a thick woolen scarf, bundling me up until I could barely turn my neck. With him around, winter had never felt cold at all. The car’s heating vents hummed softly, filling the cabin with warmth and a faint trace of cedar and fresh laundry—a scent that belonged entirely to him. I leaned back into the shadows of the seat, quietly, greedily breathing it in, letting myself drown in a familiarity I had no right to touch. Garrett had always been soft-hearted beneath his quiet exterior. He shouldn’t have taken me out of that bar. He shouldn’t have let me into his car. He shouldn’t have driven me home. I didn’t deserve any of it. When he pulled up to the curb outside the hotel, I gripped the seatbelt, looking at the back of his head. “Do you… have a girlfriend now?” “None of your business,” he replied without turning around. He walked me through the lobby and up the elevator, leaving me at the door of my room. Just as he turned to leave, he muttered, “No.” It took my alcohol-dulled brain a solid minute to realize he was answering my question. When I finally opened my eyes, the digital clock on the bedside table read two in the afternoon. My head throbbed with a dull ache. I pushed myself up and noticed a tall glass sitting on the nightstand. The water inside had gone stone cold. I took a tentative sip—it was faintly, delicately sweet. Brown sugar water. Exactly the way Garrett used to make it. I drained the entire glass in one breath, my throat tight, then dragged myself into the shower. Steam filled the bathroom as my phone buzzed with a text from Nina asking if I’d made it back in one piece. I typed a quick reply, turned off the screen, and stared blankly at the empty glass by the bed. I had always hated plain water when I was a teenager. To get me to stay hydrated, Garrett would always stir a spoonful of brown sugar into my thermos before class so I’d drink it without complaining. Tears blurred my vision before I could stop them. I had sworn to myself that I would never disrupt his life again. So why did the universe have to cross our paths now? He hadn’t left a contact card, but I had his ten-digit phone number carved into my memory. My trembling fingers dialed the numbers on the keypad. To my utter shock, the line connected. “Hello? Who is this?” His voice was brisk, professional, entirely distant. “Garrett,” I whispered. “It’s Nora.” A brief, icy pause followed. “Is there something you need?” “About yesterday… thank you. Are you free sometime? I’d really like to take you out for dinner.” “Did you lose your memory, Nora?” I froze, words catching in my throat. “I’m not that generous,” he said, his tone razor-sharp. “Forgiving and forgetting isn’t something I do.” The line went dead with a harsh click. I lowered the phone slowly, staring at the blank screen. He was right. Garrett Cole despised betrayal more than anything in this world. I knew that better than anyone. How could I ever expect him to forgive me? I didn’t know why Garrett had been at that bar two nights ago, but like a moth drawn to a flame, I decided to go back. I told myself it was just a long shot—maybe, just maybe, I’d run into him again. I sat alone at a corner high-top, watching the stylish crowd sway under the dim neon lights to the pulsing rhythm of the music. Being a woman alone at a bar invariably invites unwanted attention. “Hey beautiful. Flying solo? Can I buy you a drink?” A guy with bleached-blond hair and an unbuttoned silk shirt slid onto the stool next to mine, flashing a practiced smirk. “No, thank you. I’m waiting for someone,” I said evenly, keeping my tone polite. “Waiting for who? Why wait when you’ve got me right here?” His voice dropped into a sleazy drawl, and he leaned in, his fingers reaching out to touch my chin. I flinched and pushed my chair back, standing up immediately. “What’s the rush? I’m not gonna bite.” The blond guy scowled, stepping closer, cornering me against the bar counter. Just as I raised my hands to shove him off, a strong hand gripped my wrist from behind and pulled me firmly behind a broad shoulder. “Get lost,” Garrett’s voice cut through the air, icy and lethal. The blond guy bristled, puffing out his chest. “Who the fuck are you? Telling me to get lost?” Terrified that a brawl would break out, my fingers instinctively caught the fabric of Garrett’s jacket sleeve, holding on tight. “Look at what she’s wearing,” the guy sneered, trying to save face. “She came here looking for attention, didn’t she?” In reality, I was wearing an oversized knit sweater and plain dark jeans. “What she’s wearing has nothing to do with you,” Garrett snapped, his eyes darkening with dangerous intensity. “Don’t flatter yourself. You look like a pathetic clown.” Before the blond could throw a punch, two bulky bouncers appeared out of nowhere, grabbed him by the collar, and hauled him toward the exit. Garrett turned around to face me. “Are you hurt?” I shook my head quietly. “Coming to a place like this by yourself?” I could hear the sharp edge of anger vibrating beneath his words. “I wanted to see you,” I whispered. “See me for what?” “I wanted to buy you dinner.” He let out a short, mocking laugh. “Nora, I haven’t even asked—how are things going with you and Tyler Hughes?” All the color drained from my face. My lips parted, but it took several agonizing seconds before I could force a sound past my vocal cords. “We… we broke up. A long time ago.” “Broke up? So that’s why you came looking for me?” His gaze bore into mine, cold and unsparing. “Didn’t you move across the Atlantic to study fine art? What brought the great artist back down to our level?” He didn’t raise his voice, but every word felt like a tailored blade, slicing straight into my chest. “I… I moved back for good. I’m not leaving again,” I stammered, my hands fidgeting helplessly at my sides. “I didn’t reach out because we broke up, I just… I—” “Enough, Nora. Don’t come back here,” he said, cutting me off with a chilling finality. “In fact, I’d prefer it if I never saw your face again.” I stared at him, my vision blurring, clutching onto my desperate stubbornness like a lifeline. “Can I please just buy you dinner?” Garrett didn’t answer. He turned on his heel and walked away, his broad shoulders retreating into the crowd. He had forgotten. Back in high school, whenever we had petty arguments, even when I was completely in the wrong, I was always too stubborn to admit it. I loved watching his exasperated, flustered expression. But those moments were rare; Garrett almost never lost his temper with me unless I did something reckless and hurt myself. There was a steep grassy slope near our high school that turned into a slick, icy slide every time it snowed. Garrett had strictly forbidden me from going near it, but I snuck off during lunch break with a couple of classmates anyway. I went down too fast. The hem of my winter coat snagged on the sled base, and I took a violent tumble all the way to the bottom. I ended up with a bloody nose, scraped knees, and a huge tear in my favorite jeans. That was the sight that greeted Garrett when he came running over. He carried me on his back all the way to the nurse’s office, his jaw clenched, refusing to say a word no matter how much I sniffled. “Garrett, why are you ignoring me? Look how badly I’m hurt,” I had whined, lightly thumping his shoulder. “I’m bleeding and you’re still mad at me!” He set me down gently on the examination cot before finally speaking. “The nurse will be here in a minute.” He grabbed a damp paper towel and carefully wiped the blood from my face and chin. That was when I saw it—his eyes were rimmed with red. “I told you not to go there. Why don’t you ever listen?” “Everyone else was doing it!” I argued stubbornly. “And did everyone else end up bloody on the ground?” His tone was harsher than I’d ever heard it, and I burst into tears. “You’re yelling at me!” Garrett rubbed his temples, completely defeated. “Do you admit you were wrong?” “No!” He gave up and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t until dusk, when the hallway emptied out, that I tugged on his sleeve and whispered, “Garrett… I’ll buy you dinner. Please don’t be mad at me anymore.” He had burst out laughing, ruffled my hair with a fond sigh, and said he’d be the one paying. Ever since that day, “Let me buy you dinner” was my secret white flag. It meant: I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please hold me. I walked out of the bar feeling hollow, sitting down on the cold concrete steps outside. His rejection was entirely reasonable. If he had welcomed me with open arms, he wouldn’t be the Garrett Cole I knew. But I wasn’t going to give up. It had taken me seven grueling years to earn the right to stand anywhere near him again. Back in my hotel room, exhausted beyond measure, I opened the messaging app on my phone and searched his number to send a friend request. Request note: I just want to thank you for helping me out twice. Can we please talk? Status: Declined. I stared at the screen, took a deep breath, and sent another. Request note: If you don’t add me, I’ll go back to the bar tomorrow to find you. Status: Accepted. A second later, a voice message popped up on the screen. I tapped it, and his voice came through the speaker, tight with irritation: “I told you not to step foot in that place again.” I quickly typed back: Then I won’t go. A friend recommended an amazing Italian bistro downtown. Would you let me take you there? A few minutes ticked by before he sent two curt words: Time. Location. He had agreed. But I knew him—he only said yes because he found me insufferably persistent and wanted to shut me down once and for all. I had made myself a nuisance to him again. I sent over the reservation details. It was an upscale, hard-to-book spot that Nina had pulled strings to get me a table at, using her connections with the owner. When Nina had asked who was important enough for me to ask for such a favor, I had simply said, “An old debt I need to repay.” What I didn’t say was: It’s penance. Between preparing for the dinner, I spent my days touring rental listings. My arrival in this city had been sudden, but I had no roots anywhere anyway. Wherever Garrett was, that was where I needed to be. On the evening of our reservation, I arrived forty minutes early. Garrett walked through the restaurant doors exactly five minutes before the scheduled time. “Garrett! You’re here,” I said, offering him a bright, eager smile as he sat down across from me. He gave a slight, indifferent nod, offering no reaction to my greeting. As the courses were served, the silence between us grew heavy. “Thank you,” I ventured softly. “For stepping in both times at the bar.” “That place belongs to Logan Evans,” he said, pausing slightly as he cut into his steak. “You remember Logan, right?” I nodded quickly. “Of course I remember. Logan was always trying to copy your calculus homework.” The air between us instantly thickened with an uncomfortable tension. I mentally kicked myself. Don’t bring up the past, I had warned myself repeatedly before leaving the hotel. Bringing up old memories now only highlighted the wreckage between us. “Right,” Garrett said with a dry, humorless smirk. “Funny how a trip across the ocean actually improved your memory.” Back in high school, I had been hopeless at memorizing literature passages. Garrett used to sit beside me on the bleachers, reciting the lines into my ear over and over until the words stuck in my head. “I never forgot,” I murmured, staring down at my plate. “None of it.” Garrett set his fork and knife down with a soft clatter. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, his sharp eyes pinning me in place. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Nora. What do you actually want from me?” I looked straight into his dark, guarded eyes and said the words that had been burning inside me for years: “Garrett, I want to pursue you again. Will you give me a chance?” Garrett’s hands slowly clenched into fists on the tablecloth. “On what grounds? You think you can just walk in and out of my life whenever it suits you?” “I… I love you,” my voice cracked, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. “I won’t leave this time. I swear to you, Garrett, I’m never leaving again.” Bang. His fist slammed down against the sturdy mahogany table, rattling the silverware. “Nora, don’t you dare say that word to me,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, trembling growl. “Don’t ever contact me again.” He pushed his chair back and stood up to leave. Panic seized my chest, and I rose instinctively, reaching out across the table. “I mean it! I know what I did to you back then was unforgivable, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Just give me one more chance… please?” My voice fractured entirely. Hot tears spilled over my lashes, rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t keep the composure I’d practiced in the mirror all afternoon. We used to love each other so purely, so fiercely. Garrett stopped in his tracks. He turned and looked at me. The silence between us stretched, agonizing and heavy. It felt long enough for a lifetime of grief to pass, yet short enough that I barely had time to memorize the sharp angles of his face before he looked away. A bitter, self-derisive chuckle escaped his lips. “Fine, Nora,” he said coldly. “Let’s see what kind of game you’re playing this time.”

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1 I have an anxious attachment style. The clinicians call it relational hyper-vigilance, but in plain terms, I simply cannot breathe without the certainty of being loved. I need the weight of another person’s presence in the room just to feel tethered to the earth. So when Daniel asked for a divorce again, the world inside my head collapsed into static. I lost all reason. I seized the glass kettle from the counter—water still bubbling furiously inside—and shattered it against the hardwood right at his feet. Boiling water and jagged shards exploded across the floor, scalding his leather shoes. “You’re going to see her again, aren’t you?” I screamed, my voice shredding in my throat. Daniel didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at the mess on the floor. He just stood there, tall and agonizingly composed, looking at me with the weary patience one reserves for an unruly child. “Valerie can only be here today,” he said evenly. “I have to go.” A year ago, Daniel had asked for a divorce for the first time, all for the sake of a cocktail waitress he had picked up in some downtown lounge. Back then, I had fought like an animal backed into a corner. I refused to sign, made scene after humiliating scene, and ended up brawling with both of them until the police arrived and an ambulance hauled them to the emergency room. During those dark weeks, Riley stayed on my couch every single night, holding me while I shook. My mother went even further—she stood on the railing of her fifth-floor balcony, threatening to jump if Daniel didn’t break it off and come home to his marriage. In the end, Daniel had yielded. He cut off all contact with Valerie. He returned to being the attentive, devoted husband he had always been. I honestly believed our life had weathered the storm and returned to its rightful axis. Until this afternoon. He brought up the divorce as casually as the weather, turned on his heel, and walked out the front door. I tailed him. I kept three car lengths behind his sedan through the gray city traffic, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. Before I pushed open the heavy wooden door of that private suburban dining room, I had braced myself for every conceivable horror. I expected cheap perfume, stolen kisses, the brazen vulgarity of an affair laid bare. Instead, the scene through the crack in the door turned the blood in my veins to ice. Valerie was seated at the head of the long table. My mother was sitting directly beside her, her face soft with an aching, maternal tenderness I hadn’t seen in years, carefully peeling shrimp and placing them onto Valerie’s plate. Daniel was kneeling slightly by Valerie’s chair, his fingers wrapped tightly around both of her hands. “Valerie, please don’t go back to that other world,” Daniel murmured, his voice trembling with a raw, desperate reverence. “Just stay here. Stay with us.” Valerie let out a soft, melancholic sigh. “I can only cross over for twenty-four hours once a month, Daniel. Just being able to look at all of you… it’s enough for me.” Across the table, my best friend, Riley, was dabbing at her mascara with a linen napkin. “They say love conquers all,” Riley choked out through her tears. “It’s all Laurel’s fault. If she didn’t cling to you like a parasite, you two wouldn’t have to suffer like this!” My mother’s voice cracked as she chimed in, wiping her eyes. “Thank God you grew up safe in that other reality, my darling. I had to fake that ridiculous suicide attempt just to keep Laurel from digging any deeper. It terrified her, but I’d do anything to keep you safe. Anything. If we could find a way, we’d cross over just to be with you…” My hands dropped from the brass door handle. The strength drained out of my body all at once. Riley’s sleepless nights by my side. My mother’s desperate threats of death. Daniel’s sudden, quiet repentance. None of it had been about saving me. It had all been an elaborate, coordinated barricade constructed to shield another woman from my wrath. My agony, my terror of abandonment, the frantic desperation that had nearly driven me out of my mind—it had all been a punchline. A necessary performance to keep their precious Valerie safe. A heavy tear fell from my chin, splashing hot against the back of my hand. At that exact second, a voice—neither male nor female, reverberating from nowhere and everywhere—echoed directly against my ear. “Do you want to cross into the other timeline? Back to the family that truly loves you?” I dug my nails into the meat of my palms. The sharp, grounding sting of torn skin was the only thing stopping me from kicking that door off its hinges and screaming until my lungs gave out. The voice lingered, humming in the cold air behind my neck. I lowered my head and stood in the silent hallway for what felt like an eternity. “Yes,” I whispered. I had fought and begged and humiliated myself for an entire year. I was exhausted down to the marrow of my bones. If this was what they wanted, they could have it. “Tomorrow evening. The basement of the Southside Club. That is the point of confluence.” The voice dissolved into silence. I took one slow step backward, then another, retreating down the carpeted stairs until the shadows swallowed me whole. When I stepped outside into the raw November wind, the cold air rushed down the collar of my coat, freezing my ribs, freezing the breath in my throat. I have no memory of how I drove back to the house. When I pushed open the front door, the apartment was warm and quiet, filled with the Scandinavian oak furniture and custom brass fixtures Daniel had spent months picking out for me. I curled myself into a tight ball on the corner of the sofa, clutching a velvet throw pillow until it was soaked through with my tears. Eventually, my thoughts grew heavy and blurred. I slipped into a dream. In the dream, my mother was holding my hands, the corners of her eyes crinkling with unconditional warmth. It was the year I had collapsed during my senior year of college, failing my honors thesis and spiraling into a clinical depression so severe I couldn’t get out of bed. She had walked away from her director position at an international marketing firm—torpedoing a twenty-year executive career—just to move into my apartment. She cooked three meals a day from scratch, carrying the trays to my bedside and feeding me spoonful by spoonful. “Don’t cry, Laurel,” she had whispered back then, brushing the matted hair from my forehead. “If you can’t work, you don’t work. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.” And Daniel. Daniel, who suffered from severe claustrophobia. I remembered the afternoon our apartment elevator stalled between the sixteenth and seventeenth floors during a summer blackout. He had been trembling uncontrollably, his skin clammy, hyperventilating in the suffocating heat. Yet when he heard me begin to weep in panic, he had forced his entire body into stillness, wrapping his arms around me like a shield and holding me in the pitch black for three straight hours. “I’m here, Laurel. Don’t be afraid. Nothing is going to touch you.” He used to track my cycle on his calendar. If I so much as pressed a hand against my stomach, he would hover by the bed with hot water bottles and pain medicine, sweat beading on his forehead from pure worry. That love had been solid. It had wrapped around me like a weighted blanket, heavy and suffocatingly safe. “You actually had an older sister,” my mother had mentioned offhandedly one Sunday afternoon years ago over tea. “A terrible childhood fever took her when she was five.” That forgotten sentence suddenly roared in my ears, shattering the dream into fragments. The memory twisted, shifting violently to the first time I caught Daniel cheating. It had started with minuscule anomalies: the passenger seat of his car pushed three inches forward; his phone placed consistently face-down on the nightstand; the faint, metallic scent of an unfamiliar laundry detergent. The day I finally confirmed my suspicions, my hands shook so violently I dropped my keys three times in the driveway. I followed his car to a boutique hotel downtown. When I forced open the unlatched door of room 402, their bodies were still tangled together on the white sheets. I had grabbed the heavy ceramic bedside lamp by its cord and swung it with everything I had. Daniel’s reaction had been instantaneous. He didn’t try to defend himself; he whipped the heavy down comforter over Valerie, rolling his entire frame over hers, encasing her in a human vault. My fists, my slaps, the brutal ceramic base of that lamp—every single blow landed on Daniel’s spine, his shoulders, the back of his skull. From beginning to end, Valerie hadn’t suffered a scratch. Daniel took the beating without a sound, then raised his head, his eyes bloodshot and terrifyingly cold, pointing a shaking finger at the door. “Get the hell out!” he had snarled. Standing over them, watching him shield that woman with his very life, I had choked on my own breath. Back then, drowning in agony, I had vowed that I would never let them have their happy ending. Never. My eyes snapped open. Cold sweat had soaked through my silk pajamas. Sometime while I was asleep, a heavy wool throw had been draped over my shoulders. Daniel was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, leaning forward, looking down at me in the dim living room light. For one fleeting, treacherous second, I thought the nightmare was over and we were back in our old life. Then the air shifted. The faint, unmistakable scent of night-blooming jasmine drifted from his collar. It was Valerie’s signature perfume. I stared at him, my voice completely flat. “I agree to the divorce.” Daniel froze. His eyes narrowed slightly, searching my face for the familiar signs of an impending theatrical breakdown—the trembling lip, the manic gleam of a woman testing his boundaries. When he found none, his expression softened into practiced indulgence. He leaned in, wrapping his arms around me through the blanket, pulling me firmly against his chest. “Stop talking out of anger, Laurel,” he murmured into my hair. “We aren’t getting divorced.” “I was out of line earlier. I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” he continued in that soft, soothing baritone he used whenever I was on the verge of a panic attack. “I made those glazed braised short ribs you love. Come to the table and eat a little, okay?” He coaxed me with the practiced ease of a master handling a skittish pet. My fingers gripped the edge of the sofa cushion, the fabric biting into my skin. Seeing that I remained silent, he patted my head gently, stood up, and walked into the kitchen to reheat the food. I watched his tall, broad-shouldered silhouette disappear through the doorway. My gaze fell upon his phone, lying unattended on the glass coffee table. Ever since his theatrical repentance a year ago, that phone had remained completely unlocked—a performative gesture of total transparency. A soft chime echoed in the quiet room. I reached out and tapped the screen. The notification center was entirely empty. My fingers hesitated. I dragged down the settings menu, navigated the internal storage, and uncovered the hidden dual-profile interface. A secondary messaging application popped onto the screen. There was only one pinned contact. The display name was simply: Wife. My breath caught in my throat. A dull, throbbing ache spread from the center of my chest outward to my fingertips. Wife. Then what was I? I clicked into the thread. Valerie: Daniel, stop fighting with Laurel. I can only come through for one day a month anyway. For the other twenty-nine days, just let her keep you company in my place. Daniel’s reply had been sent three minutes ago. Daniel: I only want you… Every time I have to be sweet to her, I feel like I’m betraying you. Valerie: Be good. My fingertips were numb as ice. I scrolled upward through the history. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages. An endless, sprawling archive of his devotion. “A cold front hit the city today. Is it cold in your world?” “I walked past that boutique florist on 4th Street. They had the white jasmine you love. I hate that I can’t send them to you.” He wrote her multi-thousand-word letters. He recorded ten-minute voice memos late at night when I was asleep beside him, whispering how much he missed her, how agonizing the separation was. He had given all of this to me once. Completely and without reservation. That was why his sudden betrayal a year ago had nearly driven me insane. And now, he had transferred every single drop of that devotion onto another woman. With an intensity that far surpassed anything he had ever felt for me. Before I closed the application, my eyes caught two familiar profile pictures under the shared media tab. My mother. And Riley. I opened my primary account to check their feeds. Nothing. I closed my eyes, swallowing the bile rising in my throat. Of course. They had both blocked me from their secondary circles. I clicked into my mother’s recent post via the hidden profile. The photo showed Valerie leaning over a porcelain bowl of steaming chicken soup. The caption read: “God has finally shown mercy. My sweet girl is home at my table where she belongs.” And Riley’s post. A close-up selfie of her and Valerie, their cheeks pressed together, both of them beaming at the camera. The caption read: “The best big sister anyone could ask for. No matter the distance between worlds, I’ll always be in your corner.” Daniel had liked the photo and left a comment: “She didn’t have much of an appetite at lunch. Make sure she eats something sweet.” I stared at those glowing pixels until my retinas burned. For the first time, I looked closely at Valerie’s face without the veil of blinding rage. The tilt of her brow, the curve of her jawline—she really did look remarkably like the faded photographs of my mother in her twenties. She truly was my sister from that other timeline. Then what about the Laurel in that other world? Was she happy? Was she alive? And why did Valerie have to tear through the fabric of dimensions just to rip away every single thing that belonged to me here? “What are you looking at so intently?” Daniel walked out of the kitchen carrying a steaming porcelain dish of short ribs. When his eyes landed on the bright screen in my hand, the gentle smile on his face vanished. He froze for perhaps half a second. Then, without a hint of panic or shame, he unclipped his linen apron and set it casually on the back of a dining chair. “So you found it,” he said, his tone dropping into a cool, level cadence. “I found it,” I rasped. “Well, since you know, there’s no point in playing games anymore.” Daniel used a pair of tongs to place a tender, glazed rib onto the small plate in front of me. “Valerie doesn’t get to stay in this world for long. I don’t want her burdened with unnecessary guilt.” “She’s spent the entire year feeling like she ruined our marriage,” he continued smoothly. “It eats away at her. So, Laurel, you’re going to cooperate.” I looked down at the rib on my plate. The rich, sweet aroma made my stomach violently heave. “And if I don’t?” Daniel set the tongs down with a sharp clack. He was still smiling faintly, but his eyes were empty. “You don’t have a choice.” “Your mother is on Valerie’s side. Riley is on Valerie’s side. If you try to make a scene, the only person who ends up humiliated and alone is you.” He leaned across the table, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly intimate whisper. “You can’t survive without us, Laurel. You know that better than anyone.” I used to, I thought, looking right through him. Not anymore. Less than twenty minutes later, the front door buzzer chimed frantically. My mother and Riley hurried into the foyer, out of breath, having clearly sped over the moment Daniel sent the alert. They carried themselves with an uneasy mix of hostility, hyper-vigilance, and patronizing guilt—treating me like a volatile explosive that needed to be disarmed before it damaged something valuable. My mother crossed the living room in brisk strides, catching both of my hands in hers. “Laurel, sweetie, Daniel explained everything to us on the phone,” she said, her voice trembling with manufactured warmth. “You can’t hold this against Valerie.” “You have no idea how hard her life was over there,” my mother pleaded, squeezing my fingers tightly. “Her family fell apart, and she had to drop out of school, working three jobs just to survive. She barely made it out alive.” “Can’t we just show her a little compassion? Can’t you share a little bit of the love you get every day?” Riley pushed forward, her tone sharp with long-simmering resentment. “Don’t be so damn selfish, Laurel! Valerie is here for one day a month. Is it really going to kill you to step aside for twenty-four hours? You have Daniel for the other twenty-nine days! You get everything!” I pulled my hands out of my mother’s grip. “A year ago,” I said, my voice eerily quiet, “wasn’t she the home-wrecking slut who ruined my life?” I looked directly at Riley, then at my mother. “You called her a parasite. You helped me track down that hotel room. You wanted to ruin her.” I tilted my head. “How did she suddenly turn into the saint of this family?” My mother’s face went rigid. Riley’s voice spiked an octave higher. “That was a complete misunderstanding! Daniel’s drink was spiked that night at the lounge—Valerie was set up just as much as he was! She was a victim!” A memory of the raw chat logs flashed across my mind. The very first exchanges between Daniel and Valerie, where she had brazenly admitted to slipping something into his bourbon for quick cash, and Daniel had pinned her against the VIP booth wall, threatening to destroy her if she ever came near him again. They had hated each other at the start. I didn’t bother bringing it up. What was the point of presenting facts to people who had already rewritten reality just to absolve themselves? “Whatever you say,” I said, standing up from the sofa and walking toward the entryway. Daniel moved with startling speed, planting himself squarely in front of the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” “I told you. Whatever you want. I don’t care anymore.” My mother lunged forward, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist from behind. “Laurel, stop acting crazy! Are you going to go hunt down Valerie? I’m begging you, leave your sister alone!” Riley blocked the hallway beside Daniel, her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed with disdain. “Oh, stop the dramatic act, Laurel. Someone with your pathetic need for attention? You expect us to believe you don’t care? You’re heading straight to the Southside lounge to ambush her, aren’t you?” I looked at the three of them. The hollow, drafty cavity that had sat in the center of my chest for months finally cracked wide open and fell away. There was no pain left inside it. Just empty space. Daniel grabbed my wrist, twisting it just enough to force me backward, shoving me roughly into the guest bedroom. “Since you can’t behave like an adult, you can sit in here and clear your head.” The heavy oak door slammed shut, and the lock clicked from the outside. I leaned my forehead against the cool painted wood and spoke in a clear, measured voice. “I really don’t care.” “I’m not going to touch her. And I’m done begging for your love. Let me out.” Riley’s sneer came through the wood. “Who are you trying to fool? You can’t even go a single afternoon without Daniel calling to check on you. You’d die without us.” My mother sighed heavily. “Laurel, stop throwing a tantrum. Just reflect on your behavior in there. Tomorrow, once Valerie is safely gone, we’ll unlock the door.” Their footsteps receded down the hallway toward the kitchen. I slid down the door until I was sitting on the hardwood floor, drawing my knees to my chest. It didn’t matter. In less than twenty-four hours, I would have a real home. A home with people whose love wasn’t a calculated transaction. I wouldn’t need their scraps anymore. I lost track of how much time passed in the dark. Eventually, the faint electronic chime of the front door smart-lock drifted down the corridor. “Daniel? Mom? Riley? Are you guys still awake?” The three of them scrambled toward the entryway in an instant. “Valerie! What are you doing out in this weather? Why didn’t you call Daniel to pick you up?” My mother’s voice was dripping with anxiety. “I just… I needed to see Laurel,” Valerie said, her voice wavering with a delicate, fragile tremor. “This is all my fault. If I don’t apologize to her face-to-face, I won’t be able to live with myself.” “You don’t owe her an apology!” my mother cried. “None of this is on you!” “She’s right, Valerie,” Riley added urgently. “Laurel is completely unhinged right now. Don’t go near her, she might actually hurt you.” “No… Laurel is a good person. She’ll understand.” Soft footsteps approached the guest room. The brass lock clicked, and the door swung open. Valerie stood framed in the light of the hallway, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Daniel, my mother, and Riley hovered half a step behind her, a protective human phalanx ready to intervene. “Laurel, I’m so sorry,” Valerie whispered. She took two steps into the room, closing the distance between us. Then, keeping her back to the three people in the hall, she leaned down, her lips brushing past my ear. Her voice dropped into a razor-thin, venomous murmur. “I never suffered a day in that other world, little sister.” My breath hitched. “You died years ago over there,” Valerie whispered, the corners of her mouth curling into a cruel, triumphant smirk. “Mom and Dad gave every single penny of their estate to me. I only came across to see what it felt like to take everything from you all over again.” A blinding spike of rage erupted behind my eyes. My right arm snapped upward on pure instinct. Yet, an inch before my palm could connect with her cheek, I forced my muscles to lock. I couldn’t do it. If I struck her, I would be handing them the exact weapon they wanted. In their eyes, I would become the monster they had already decided I was. I exhaled sharply and began to pull my arm back down to my side. At that exact fraction of a second, Valerie threw her head back and let out a blood-curdling scream. She threw herself backward, slamming her own body hard onto the floorboards. “Laurel! What the hell is wrong with you!” Daniel tore into the room like an animal. His hand closed around my throat with crushing force, slamming the back of my skull violently into the drywall. The impact sent a white-hot flash of nausea exploding through my head. “Laurel Hayes! You vicious, evil little creature!” My mother charged forward, her palm swinging across my face with a sickening crack. Riley helped Valerie up from the floor, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders, looking at me with undisguised disgust. “You make me sick, Laurel. You really do.” Daniel released his grip on my neck. Seeing my chalk-white face and the way my knees buckled, a flicker of startled hesitation crossed his eyes. “She’s only here for one day,” Daniel said, his voice ragged, trying to steady his own breathing. “You couldn’t even give her one damn day?” “Tomorrow, after she leaves, I’ll spend the entire month making it up to you. You can scream, you can break things, you can do whatever you want. But not tonight. Sit in here and think about what you’ve done.” He turned away. “Valerie, let’s go.” They ushered Valerie out of the room, their murmurs of comfort fading down the hall until the heavy front door slammed shut behind them. I slid down the wall, curling onto my side on the cold floor. A sharp, tearing cramp seized my stomach, and cold sweat broke out across my forehead and chest. By midnight, the fever had set in. My skin was burning up, but my teeth were chattering so hard they ached. The pain in my abdomen felt like a serrated knife twisting through my organs. I fumbled across the floor for my phone and dialed Daniel’s number. It rang for nearly a minute before the line clicked open. In the background, the energetic thrum of a high-end lounge playlist competed with the bright, sparkling laughter of Valerie and Riley clinking glasses. “Daniel…” I wheezed, my voice barely audible above the noise. “I’m burning up… my stomach… please…” The line went quiet for two beats. Then came Daniel’s deep, exhausted sigh. “Laurel, stop it. Go into the bathroom, take some ibuprofen, and go to sleep. I’ll be back first thing in the morning to stay with you. Don’t ruin tonight. Just be good, okay?” The line went dead. I stared at the black screen. The last tear slipped down my temple, drying instantly against my feverish skin. Gritting my teeth against the blinding pain in my gut, I dialed 911. Twenty minutes later, the local paramedics forced the front door and carried me out on a stretcher. By late the following afternoon, I had discharged myself against medical advice. The Southside Club sat in an industrial zoning pocket south of the river, an old brick warehouse converted into an underground venue. I used the concrete wall for balance, walking down the damp, poorly lit basement stairs one agonizing step at a time. In the center of the cavernous concrete cellar, a ring of iridescent blue light pulsed quietly in the air, rippling like oil on water. Four figures stood before the shimmer. Daniel held Valerie tightly against his chest, his eyes rimmed with red. My mother held Valerie’s left hand, weeping into a handkerchief, while Riley openly sobbed against Valerie’s shoulder. “Valerie, come back earlier next month,” Daniel whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. “We’ll be waiting right here.” “Why can’t the rest of us just cross over with you…” my mother wept. Valerie nodded meekly, playing the dutiful, tragic martyr to the very end. They clung to one another in an agonizing tableau of grief and devotion, as if parting on the threshold of death itself. I stood in the deep shadows of the stairwell, watching them. My heart was completely still. Not a ripple. Not an ache. I pushed off the wall and walked straight toward the pulsing blue vortex. “Who’s there?!” Daniel spun around instantly. My mother and Riley turned, their tear-streaked faces hardening the moment they recognized my silhouette. Daniel’s brow furrowed in furious disbelief. “How did you find this place? Haven’t you caused enough damage for one weekend?” My mother stepped forward, pointing an accusatory finger at my face. “Are you really going to push your sister until she dies? Get the hell back home right now!” I didn’t slow down. My boots struck the concrete in a steady, unbroken rhythm. My right foot crossed directly into the blue light. Daniel’s face drained of color as he realized what was happening. “What are you doing?!” “You can’t go through there!” he yelled, lunging forward. “We tried it dozens of times! It doesn’t work for people from this side!” The atmospheric vortex inside the blue ring suddenly surged, whipping my dark hair across my face. I looked at the three of them, and for the first time in an entire year, a genuine, completely unburdened smile touched my lips. The gravitational pull seized my chest, dragging me forward into the light. “Maybe it didn’t work for you,” I said softly, my voice carrying clearly over the hum of the portal. “Since you all love her so much… you can have each other in this world.” “As for the other one…” Before I could finish the sentence, the blue light flashed blindingly, and their horrified, frozen faces vanished into the dark.

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When tickets for the express train to New York went on sale, Bruno habitually ordered two. One for himself. One for Isla. Only after locking in their seats did he turn to me and ask, “Callie, did you get your ticket?” I froze. On his screen, his seat was right next to Isla’s. When I opened the app a second later, the only remaining seat on the train was in the adjacent car. I stared at the seat number, a sudden, hollow laugh catching in my throat. From our summer trips to college orientation, whenever there were three of us, they were always a pair. I was always the odd one out, running to catch up behind them. Not long after, Isla dropped a picture of a lease agreement into our group chat. Under the tenant column were two names: hers and Bruno’s. She tagged me with a cheerful emoji. “Callie, Bruno said it’s safer for you to live in the dorms. But you can always come over to our place for dinner on weekends!” “Our place.” Something sharp pricked my chest. I hadn’t even stepped foot onto a college campus yet, and I had already been locked out of his future. A moment later, Bruno sent me a private text. “Don’t overthink this. Isla renting an apartment on her own isn’t safe. I promised her parents I’d look after her. Don’t make a scene over something so minor.” I stared at the phrase “something so minor”. Slowly, I opened the university portal on my phone. The Columbia University enrollment confirmation page was still active, waiting for my final click. I hit back. I navigated over to the late-clearing admissions portal for University College London. This time, I stopped chasing their train car. And I stopped chasing Bruno’s life. … Canceling my enrollment at Columbia still required me to hand over paper forms in New York. The day the train departed, the station was packed. Bruno and Isla sat side by side, one car ahead of mine. Before we left, he’d promised to help me with my heavy luggage. But after passing through ticket control, he went straight ahead, finding Isla’s seat and lifting her small wheelie bag onto the overhead rack with practiced ease. I was stuck one car back, dragging two oversized suitcases through the narrow aisle. People bumped past me, muttering complaints under their breath. I texted him, asking if he could come help me for a second. Ten minutes later, he replied: “Isla gets motion sick. She just fell asleep.” “My mom specifically told me to keep an eye on her on the way down. I can’t move right now.” I looked at the screen, my hands and feet turning ice-cold. In the end, I had to stand on my tiptoes and hoist the heavy bags up myself. The weight was too much; my wrist gave out, and the suitcase slammed down, sending a shot of numbness straight up my arm. A woman sitting nearby caught the edge just in time, preventing it from hitting anyone. I thanked her profusely, my voice shaking. A minute later, Isla posted a photo in the group chat. In the picture, Bruno was kneeling in front of her, carefully draping his jacket over her shoulders. On the fold-down tray sat a paper cup of hot milk and a box of non-drowsy Dramamine. That box of medication was something I had tucked into his backpack that morning, worried I might feel sick on the ride. I tagged him in the chat. “Could you bring me a Dramamine pill? I’m feeling really nauseous.” Two minutes later, his private text arrived. “You’ve never gotten motion sickness before.” “Just drink some warm water.” I turned off my screen and looked out the window. The dull ache in my chest fermented slowly with every rattle of the train tracks. Halfway through the trip, a heavily intoxicated man sat down in the empty seat next to me. Reeking of cheap whiskey, he kept leaning over, his elbow brushing against me, even reaching out to touch my bag whenever the train lurched. My stomach churned with anxiety. I dialed Bruno’s number. The first time, no one answered. The second time, he hung up on me. Immediately after, a text popped up: “Isla just fell asleep. Stop causing drama.” “Stop causing drama.” Those four words felt like a bucket of ice water poured over my head. In the end, a conductor noticed the situation during her walk-through and reassigned me to a safer seat. It was near midnight when we pulled into Penn Station. Bruno held Isla’s hand as they walked off the platform ahead of me. Watching their fingers intertwined, I suddenly remembered the night of our high school graduation. The summer breeze had been soft that evening. He had held my hand just like that on the school rooftop, whispering softly, “Callie, once we get settled in New York, we’ll make it official.” We had been inseparable since sophomore year. Everyone assumed it was only a matter of time before we put a real label on it. Now, he was holding someone else’s hand, never once turning around to see if I was behind them. Without looking back, Bruno called over his shoulder, “Isla’s blood sugar dropped. I’m taking her straight to the apartment to rest.” “Take a cab to the dorms yourself.” With that, he hailed a yellow cab, shielded Isla as she slid inside, and sped off into the night. I stood in the freezing wind, dragging two massive bags, waiting thirty minutes in the taxi line. The night was pitch-black, and my driver got confused by the road construction, taking a wrong turn into an unfamiliar, deserted industrial strip. Terrified, I texted Bruno my real-time location. The message sank into an abyss. No reply. It wasn’t until my resident advisor noticed I hadn’t checked in and sent two upperclassmen out to locate me that I finally made it to the temporary dorms. My phone battery was down to one percent when his text finally arrived: “Let me know when you arrive. Don’t make people worry.” I stared at that belated burst of concern, a wave of dark irony washing over me. A second later, a push notification popped up on my screen. “UCL Clearing Application: Preliminary Review Passed.” I stared at the prompt asking “Do you wish to proceed?” for a long time. Then, I tapped “Confirm”. …… The next morning, Bruno sent me a text. “Come over for lunch.” My high school transcripts, passport copy, and registration documents were still packed in the side pocket of his suitcase—documents I needed to officially withdraw from Columbia and send to London. I had no choice but to go to their rented place. Bruno opened the door. He punched the passcode into the keypad right in front of me, not even bothering to cover the screen. A string of six beeps. I recognized those numbers instantly. It was Isla’s birthday. My mind flashed back to graduation night, when he had promised that when we had our own place in New York, the front door code would be the date we officially became a couple. Now, the apartment living room was filled with new, spotless furniture. By the window sat a sleek wooden desk—the exact model I had drooled over months ago. Today, it was cluttered with Isla’s makeup mirrors, luxury perfumes, and Polaroid prints. The refrigerator door was covered in sticky notes. “Isla doesn’t eat onions.” “Isla needs warm oat milk in the morning.” “Isla is terrified of the dark—leave the hallway light on.” Every single note was written in Bruno’s unmistakable, neat handwriting. I pointed at the fridge, my voice surprisingly steady. “What am I to you, Bruno?” Bruno paused, his hands resting on his hips. “My parents set this place up for Isla. She’s a girl alone in a huge city with no family. I’m just staying here temporarily to look out for her.” “You can come over whenever you want, of course. But Isla’s a light sleeper, so just let us know in advance before you pop in.” “Let us know in advance.” I looked him dead in the eye. “And what about me? I’m alone in a dorm room on the other side of town. Do you ever worry if I’m scared? If I’m safe?” Bruno frowned, annoyance slipping into his tone. “You’re in a university residence hall. You have roommates, an RA, building security. What could possibly happen to you?” “Isla is different. She hasn’t had parents around since she was a kid.” “Callie, stop being so petty about everything.” The words died in my throat. Isla was our high school classmate, the daughter of a long-time friend of the Lawson family. After her parents died in an accident years ago, Bruno’s family had practically taken her in. His parents treated her like a second daughter. In the past, whenever Bruno ditched me for her, he used the exact same line: “She doesn’t have parents, Callie. Just yield to her a little, okay?” At first, I felt sorry for her too. It was only now, standing in this warm, beautifully lit apartment, that I realized her tragedy had long become his ultimate excuse to ignore me. Without another word to me, he reached into his pocket and dropped a spare set of house keys into Isla’s purse. “You’re always losing things, Isla. Keep a back-up set in your bag.” I stood in the middle of the room like an uninvited guest. At noon, the smell of sautéing peppers drifted from the kitchen. Isla sat on the sofa, dramatically covering her nose, whining that she couldn’t stand spicy food. Bruno immediately turned to me. “Callie, let’s keep things mild today. I’ll make you a full spicy meal another time, okay?” I remembered our dinner dates back home. He used to laugh softly as I ate spicy noodles until tears ran down my cheeks, gently wiping my face with a napkin, teasing that he’d have to buy me safety goggles just so he could cook my favorite meals once we moved in together. Back then, no matter what we talked about, he always framed it around our future life together. Now, I was entirely erased from his present. That evening, a sudden storm caused a power outage in the old apartment complex. The living room plunged into total darkness. Isla shrieked, throwing herself directly into Bruno’s arms. “Bruno! I’m scared!” Bruno wrapped his arms around her tightly. “Don’t worry. I’m right here.” Meanwhile, I was in the dark kitchen, gathering up the lunch dishes. A sharp piece of broken porcelain sliced deep into my index finger. Blood gushed out immediately. In the living room, they whispered gentle words of comfort to each other. Neither of them turned around to check on me. When I left, I demanded my documents back. Bruno unzipped his suitcase. My file folder was crushed and crumpled at the very bottom, while Isla’s medical records, lease forms, and campus orientation maps were neatly organized in a pristine clear sleeve right on top. I pulled my papers out and walked out the door without saying another word. Back in my temporary room, I logged into the London university portal and uploaded all my finalized materials. The day I went to the Columbia administration building to process my formal withdrawal, the cut on my hand still hadn’t healed. Bruno, who had promised to accompany me for campus registration, dropped me the second Isla couldn’t find the medical center building. When his text arrived, my heart gave a dull, familiar ache, though the numbness was already taking over. I told myself it was fine; I was cutting him out of my life anyway. I dragged my luggage to the registration queue alone. The student volunteer looking over my passport paused when she saw my name. “Wait, you’re Callie Palmer?” She smiled warmly. “Isla mentioned you earlier! She said you guys went to high school together, and that you’d be coming over to their place for dinner on weekends.” She chuckled. “She was telling us how sweet they are together. Honestly, you guys must be the power couple of the incoming freshman class!” “High school friend.” “Their place.” “Power couple.” Every phrase felt like a tiny, deliberate twist of a blade. At noon, a notification popped up on my feed. Isla had posted a new photo on Instagram. She was standing in front of the iconic university gates. Bruno stood beside her, holding two iced boba teas and a massive bouquet of sunflowers. Her caption read: “Day one in New York with @Bruno. We both have a brand new home!” The comments were already flooded with high school classmates. “Wait, is this official?!” “What about Callie though?” “Honestly, childhood sweethearts always win in the end.” Bruno didn’t reply to any of them, nor did he deny it. If it had been me tagged in a photo like that, he would have instantly posted a public correction: “Just friends, guys. Don’t make rumors.” A torrential downpour hit the campus around two in the afternoon. I was stuck inside the main administration building while my heavy suitcases and paper records were still sitting under a temporary canvas canopy near the registration plaza. I messaged Bruno, asking if he could push my bags inside the lobby. He texted back: “Isla felt dizzy after her blood draw.” “I need to stay with her in the clinic for another thirty minutes.” “Your luggage is hard-shell and waterproof anyway, stop worrying.” By the time I ran through the rain back to the plaza, the canvas tent had given way. My bags were completely soaked, and my printed files were dripping wet. I grabbed my files. As I pushed myself up, my wet shoe slipped on the marble step. I fell hard, crashing against the concrete ledge. The scab on the back of my hand tore wide open, blood mixing with rainwater as it trickled down my wrist. My vision swam with gray spots. I couldn’t stand up. My assigned advisor happened to pass by and quickly pulled me into the dry hallway. She flipped through my wet registration file, concern written all over her face. “Can you hear me? I need to call your emergency contact. Did he come with you today?” She dialed Bruno’s number on speaker. First call: No answer. Second call: Straight to voicemail. When we were filling out our pre-orientation safety forms back home, Bruno had insisted on being my emergency contact. He had taken my phone, typed his own cell number into the field, and said, “If anything ever happens to you in New York, the school needs to call me first.” I had believed him. The advisor stared at the silent phone for a few seconds, then looked up at me gently. “I can’t reach him, sweetie. Rest here for a bit, and once the rain slows down, I’ll walk you to the health center.” Thirty minutes later, Bruno finally rushed into the lobby—holding a fresh set of dorm bedding he had just picked up for Isla. He took one look at my drenched, disheveled state and scowled. “Callie, why do you always have to make things so complicated?” Isla peeked out from behind his shoulder, her voice tiny and sweet. “It’s all my fault, Callie… If I hadn’t felt sick, Bruno could have come over to help you sooner.” Bruno immediately turned to her, his voice softening. “This has nothing to do with you, Isla.” The advisor stepped forward, her voice sharp and uncompromising. “Is this young man your boyfriend? You were listed as her primary emergency contact, sir. She was injured and stranded in a downpour. If you accept that responsibility, you step up—you don’t come in here and blame the victim.” I lifted my head, staring at his face. For a brief, fleeting second, I wanted to ask him: “Were we ever actually boyfriend and girlfriend?” Then I caught myself, feeling a bitter wave of self-ridicule. Whether we were or weren’t didn’t matter anymore. The answer was already staring me in the face. That night, I logged into the residence portal and officially canceled my dorm reservation. I reprinted my UCL admission documents, carefully placing each clean sheet into a protective plastic sleeve. Just as I tucked the final page into my envelope, an email from London popped up on my screen. “Clearing Application Approved. Please complete final registration and travel verification within three days.” That same night, I booked a one-way flight to London Heathrow for three days later. The night before my flight, the freshman group chats exploded. Someone had taken a screenshot of Isla’s post and re-shared it to the campus gossip page, commenting on the handsome new couple living together off-campus. I stared at the endless stream of comments reading “So cute!” and “Relationship goals!”, my fingertips trembling on the glass. Deep down, a tiny, foolish part of me was still unwilling to accept that years of shared memories were nothing more than a fever dream I had experienced alone. In a moment of final, tragic hope, I typed a comment under the main post: “Don’t misunderstand. He has a girlfriend.” It was the first time I had ever publicly claimed my place in his life. “Just give me one sign,” I thought. “If Bruno stands up for me just once, I’ll give him one last chance.” Within an hour, my comment was screenshotted and pinned at the top of the thread. The new headline was vicious: “Freshmen Living Together? Real Girlfriend Steps Up? Who’s the Side Chick?” The comment section erupted into chaos. “He has a girlfriend and he’s renting an apartment with another girl? Isla is literally a homewrecker.” “Wait, I saw them at orientation, they looked totally like a couple!” “I went to high school with them. Bruno and Callie were definitely dating.” “Isn’t Isla an orphan? The Lawson family has been taking care of her for years.” “Even so, zero boundaries! Who moves in with a guy who has a girlfriend?” Isla was soon sobbing in the group chat. She claimed she was only staying there temporarily, that Bruno was helping her purely out of family obligation. She said being an orphan was hard enough, but now she was being publicly branded a homewrecker on her first week of college. She added that if I was really that insecure, she would break her lease and drop out of school altogether. The post gained so much traction that the department dean called the three of us into her office the following morning. The dean laid her tablet on the desk, the viral post still displayed on the screen. “This is spreading through the incoming class,” she said, looking over her glasses. “Normally, I don’t interfere in students’ personal lives, but campus code of conduct is strict, and this isn’t the reputation we want for our freshmen. I need an explanation.” She looked at Bruno first, asking if the cohabitation was real. Then she turned to me, asking what I meant by “girlfriend.” The office fell deathly quiet. I turned my head to look at Bruno. All he had to do was say one sentence—”She’s my girlfriend”—and the whole nightmare would end. He stayed silent for a terrifyingly long time. Finally, he pulled out his phone and brought up a text thread from months ago, showing a message where I had asked, “Are we officially together now?” He showed only my desperate, insecure question, hiding all his previous replies where he had promised: “When we get to New York, we’ll be official.” He looked the dean dead in the eye. “Professor, Callie has had a crush on me for a long time.” “But I never officially accepted her.” “We are not in a relationship.” “Isla is not a side chick.” “Isla and I are the ones currently seeing each other seriously.” My body went numb. I was pinned to the floor, frozen. All those years of quiet, tender devotion were instantly rewritten as the delusion of a desperate girl who couldn’t take a hint. Isla’s sobs grew louder, delicate and heartbroken. “I just started college… I can’t have everyone calling me a homewrecker…” Bruno immediately turned to comfort her, his hands rubbing her shoulders. Then, turning his back to the dean, he leaned in and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Callie, apologize to Isla right now.” I stared at him. “Apologize for what?” “Her reputation can’t be ruined over this!” he hissed, his eyes pleading and angry all at once. “She doesn’t have parents, Callie. She can’t handle this kind of humiliation. You know what I meant—just don’t make things hard for her right now.” My voice came out barely audible. “So to you… I was never your girlfriend?” Bruno’s throat bobbed. Isla clutched his sleeve, burying her tear-stained face in his arm. He closed his eyes. “At least… not right now.” In that exact second, I heard something deep inside me break into a million pieces. It wasn’t a loud, dramatic shatter. It was just a quiet, final snap. Something that could never, ever be put back together. I stood there for a long time. Then, I turned to Isla. “I’m sorry.” Everyone in the dean’s office let out a long, collective sigh of relief. Only I knew the truth. I wasn’t apologizing for the rumor. I was apologizing to the past version of Callie Palmer—the girl who had spent three years foolishly believing she was loved. When I walked out of the administration building, I didn’t offer another word of explanation to anyone. I opened the UCL registration portal on my phone. “Do you accept your offer of admission to University College London?” I stared at the words for a long moment. Then, I tapped “Accept”. When the green confirmation checkmark flashed onto the screen, I finally let myself swallow the tears choking my throat. Bruno didn’t run out after me. I glanced back once through the glass doors. He was still in the office, using tissues to gently wipe the tears from Isla’s cheeks. He probably assumed I’d be waiting outside, just like I always did, standing in the cold until he was done comforting Isla, waiting for whatever crumbs of explanation he decided to throw my way. That evening, he finally went to the freshman residence hall to look for me. When I ignored his endless stream of texts, he tried asking a passing student to take a message up to my room—only to realize he had no idea what my room number was. Frustrated, he went to the housing desk. The housing coordinator flipped through the system logs and looked up at him. “Callie Palmer withdrew her housing application this afternoon. She moved all her luggage out hours ago.” Bruno’s face drained of color. “What?” A student volunteer standing nearby overheard and chimed in casually, “Oh, Callie? She transferred to UCL in London. She came by to turn in her keys today. Didn’t you guys go to high school together? How did you not know?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “556422”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On my birthday, my wife trended on social media with another man. Tim had posted a photo wearing the limited-edition luxury watch I was supposed to unwrap that night. “My favorite little girl sure knows how to show respect,” his caption read. “Gave Papa her husband’s birthday present to wear first. Come kneel and thank me, and I might just grant you a kiss.” The image breaking the internet was a close-up of the two of them, mouths pressed together in an intimate, breathless kiss. Moments later, Adriana called me. “Tim was just messing around,” she said, her voice smooth, devoid of any real apology. “Don’t make a scene over this. I’ll make it up to you.” A notification chimed on my phone a second later: a wire transfer for one million dollars. In our social circle, the high-society trust-fund heirs were having a field day. They mocked me in private group chats, whispering that I couldn’t even hold my ground against my wife’s “guy best friend.” I accepted the money. My heart rate didn’t even spike. I didn’t care. Not anymore. Because three months ago, the System had given me a singular rule: every single cent I made in this world could be transferred back to my real life. I had given Adriana five years of my life. I wasn’t about to walk away empty-handed. Thirty days left. Just thirty more days, and I’d return home as a very, very wealthy man. … Tim posted another update. In the photo, Adriana was asleep on his sofa, her head resting on his shoulder. He angled his face close to hers, holding a single finger to his lips in a “shh” gesture. “Insisted on keeping up with me all night,” he wrote. “My good girl completely wore herself out.” The comments under the post were predictable. “Haha, you really broke her, didn’t you?” “Damn, Tim, the husband’s position is looking real fragile right now!” My phone buzzed relentlessly with direct messages. The guys-only group chat was practically on fire. “Larry, if you don’t put a leash on your wife, get the hell out of this chat. If you’re not embarrassed, we are.” “Letting her ‘platonic bestie’ walk all over you like this? How do you even look in the mirror?” I scrolled through the messages without replying. Sitting alone at the grand dining table, I continued eating my birthday dinner. When I swallowed the last bite of cake, I opened Tim’s post and gave it a polite like. I typed out a comment: “Thanks for looking out for her. She snores when she sleeps like that—make sure to put a blanket over her so she doesn’t catch a chill.” After posting, I opened my banking app to check the transaction history. One million dollars deposited tonight. Nice. At one in the morning, just as I was drifting off to sleep, Adriana called. “Larry!” Her voice was raspy, heavy with sleep. “What the hell is happening online? What did you do?” “I didn’t do anything,” I said mildly. “How is that possible? My parents just called me in a panic!” She was furious now. “I spent a little time playing games with my best friend—is that really worth turning into a national scandal? Do you care about my family’s reputation at all?” So, she cared about her reputation now. My voice remained entirely flat. “Adriana, the people who made a spectacle online were you and Tim. Not me.” “Stop acting so innocent!” She let out a sharp, disdainful sneer. “Today was your birthday. I wasn’t home, and you didn’t call me even once to nag me to come back. That isn’t like you!” “Not today,” I said, looking at the glowing digits on my phone. “It’s past midnight. Yesterday was my birthday.” Adriana went quiet for a beat. “So what?” she snapped, though her tone faltered slightly. “You never used to be like this. You used to blow up my phone until I came home……” I let out a soft laugh. I truly couldn’t follow her logic anymore. “You were spending quality time with your best friend,” I said softly. “If I kept calling to drag you home, wouldn’t I be disrespecting your bond?” Silence stretched across the line. She was right about one thing: I didn’t used to be like this. I used to scream. I used to break things. I used to cry until my throat burned. I used to drive out to Tim’s loft, corner him, and throw punches. But even knowing how much it destroyed me, Adriana refused to cut ties with him. Instead, she blamed me for being unreasonable, for being insecure. “He’s my brother!” she used to yell at me. “When you lay a finger on him, you’re disrespecting me!” Once, she abandoned me to go skateboarding with Tim. We had hired a surrogate who was five months pregnant with our child. I had just picked up the ultrasound reports with the surrogate when Tim came tearing down the concrete path on his board and slammed straight into her. The collision was brutal. We lost the baby that night. When Adriana arrived at the hospital, her expression was indifferent. “He didn’t mean it,” she had said coldly. “Who knew your surrogate was made of glass?” Then, she transferred a million dollars into my account. “Let it go,” she told me. “We can always hire another surrogate later.” She used a million dollars to buy out the life of our unborn child. That night, lying on the hospital cot, I stared at the confirmation page on my phone for hours. And then, I started laughing. I laughed until my chest ached, until tears burned my eyes. It was a bitter, hollow sound. That was the night I remembered the System’s original prompt. [Task: Win Adriana’s heart and stay married to her for five years. Upon completion, you may return to the real world.] [Special Bonus: Any wealth accumulated in this world can be transferred to your real-world bank account.] I had long forgotten about the mission because I had genuinely fallen in love with Adriana. I had wanted to build a real life here with her. But I didn’t want to love her anymore. From that day forward, I started counting down the days. When the five-year mark arrived, I would leave. And I would take every single cent I could get my hands on. The next morning, Adriana came home. She walked into the dining room carrying a bakery box, wearing an expectant smile that practically begged for gratitude. “I stood in line at seven this morning to get your favorite chestnut sponge cake,” she said, setting it in front of me. “Eat up.” I glanced at the cake. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” Her smile froze. “I’m severely allergic to chestnuts.” Annoyance flashed in her eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a sudden, jarring panic. I gave her a polite, unbothered smile. “Don’t you remember? Last year, Tim blended chestnuts into a powder and told me it was a protein smoothie. I drank it and ended up in the ICU.” My voice stayed conversational. “Back then, you told me Tim was just careless and didn’t mean anything by it.” Her mouth opened slightly. A rare pang of guilt washed over her face. “I…… I forgot.” “It’s fine,” I waved my hand dismissively and took my seat at the table. “You’re a busy woman. You can’t be expected to remember every little detail.” Adriana watched me, her gaze analytical, searching my face for a crack in the armor. “Larry…… are you really not angry?” I chuckled, taking a slow sip of my warm milk. “What is there to be angry about? If I had to guess, Tim was the one who suggested you pick up chestnut cake in the first place, wasn’t he?” She parted her lips to explain, but I cut her off gently. “He loves chestnut cake,” I said softly. “It makes complete sense that you’d buy one for him and grab an extra while you were at it. The fact that you thought of bringing one home to me at all is already very sweet.” Adriana stared at me, her expression a messy knot of confusion and guilt. I didn’t look at her again. I quietly ate the breakfast our butler, Frank, had already prepared for me. The grand gesture of bringing me breakfast was a performative act she was late to—Frank had already taken care of it. We ate the rest of the meal in silence. “There’s a company gala tomorrow night,” she said finally, dabbing her lips with a napkin. “I want you to come with me.” It was her classic routine. Every time she stepped out of line, she insisted on dragging me to public events to prove to the world that our marriage was as rock-solid as ever. I pondered it for a second. “Sure. But I’ll need a new suit and a pair of cuff links.” She visibly breathed a sigh of relief. My lack of resistance meant, in her mind, that the storm had passed. She immediately pulled out her phone and wired me five hundred thousand dollars. “Let me know if you need more.” It was more than enough. My closet was lined with custom suits I had bought for past galas. But if she was offering cash, I wasn’t going to turn it down. It had taken me four years to realize that cash was the only thing in this house that wouldn’t betray me. The next night, I arrived at the gala wearing a silver-grey bespoke suit, accessorized with diamond cuff links Adriana had gifted me years ago. Tim was already there. He was wearing a champagne-colored silk suit, cut low at the neck to show off his chest. When he spotted me, he smirked loudly enough for half the room to hear. “Look who it is! My girl actually brought her husband out tonight!” He stepped up, scanning me from head to toe. “Look at you, all dapper. This suit must’ve set you back a few hundred grand, huh?” “It was alright,” I replied coolly. “Thirty-eight thousand.” Tim’s grin faltered for a fraction of a second. My suit was significantly more expensive than his. A waiter carrying a tray of champagne walked past us. Tim executed a sudden, clumsy turn, deliberately brushing against the tray and sending a full flute of champagne splashing across his own chest. “Oh no!” he gasped dramatically. The amber liquid soaked down his front, turning the light silk a dark, ugly yellow. “I’m supposed to give a speech on stage in twenty minutes……” he whined, looking helpless. Adriana frowned, her eyes immediately darting to me. “Larry…… could you swap suits with him?” I remained silent. Tim playfully smacked Adriana on the head. “Hey, little girl, I’m wearing yours! Just take yours off and give it to me, hurry up.” Adriana blushed slightly. “Stop messing around. I have to go on stage later, too.” Then, her eyes locked onto me again. This time, it wasn’t a request. It was an order. I offered a perfectly practiced, polite smile. “Take mine.” Tim’s eyes gleamed with instant triumph. “Larry, you’re a real pal!” We walked into the VIP restroom to swap clothes. The moment the heavy door clicked shut behind us, the easy smile vanished from Tim’s face. “How do you tolerate this?” he asked, staring at me with pure contempt. I unbuttoned my jacket, my voice completely tranquil. “What do you mean? You’re her best friend. Helping you out is the right thing to do, isn’t it?” He let out a cold snort, taking the silver-grey jacket from my hands and slipping into it with agonizing slowness. It fit him like a glove. He turned in front of the mirror, admiring himself. “Honestly, I thought this suit looked tacky when I first saw it.” He glanced at my reflection through the glass. “Every piece of clothing Adriana gives you is something I rejected first.” I smiled softly, entirely unbothered. “Then you definitely made a mistake passing on this one.” I reached out to pick up his stained champagne suit from the counter. Tim casually let his hand slip, letting the dirty jacket tumble straight into the toilet bowl. “Oops. My hand slipped,” he said, his eyes glittering with smug malice. My expression faltered just enough to satisfy him. I was standing there in my undershirt and trousers. Tim grabbed the cuffs of his trousers, spun around on his designer leather shoes, and walked out, the heavy wooden door closing with a firm click. As soon as he was gone, I reached into my pocket and stopped the audio recording on my phone. Then, I dialed Adriana’s number. She picked up on the second ring. “Larry—” “Hey, stop talking on the phone, we’re up next—” Tim’s voice cut in through her speaker. The line went dead. When I tried calling back, her phone was switched off. I took a deep breath, dialed the hotel front desk, and spoke clearly into the receiver. “Hi, please send a size medium staff uniform to the main floor VIP restroom.” Ten minutes later, dressed in a plain black hotel polo and cargo pants, I slipped out of the venue through the service exit. By the time I reached home, my phone rang again. Adriana’s voice erupted with rage the moment I answered. “Where the hell did you go without telling me? Tim said you threw his thirty-thousand-dollar suit into the toilet! You need to pay him back right now!” I didn’t answer. I simply tapped on the audio file I had recorded in the restroom and sent it directly to her chat. Two minutes passed in absolute silence. Then, a voice note arrived from Adriana. “Tim didn’t mean it…… don’t take it to heart.” “He’s wearing your suit home tonight. I’ll reimburse you for it.” My phone buzzed with a bank notification. “Four hundred thousand dollars deposited.” I accepted the transfer, locked my phone, turned over, and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. Twenty-five days left. The following morning, I began quietly liquidating my assets. Over the years, Adriana had transferred two luxury villas, ten prime commercial storefronts, and two plots of land into my name. I didn’t make a grand spectacle of it. Instead, I hired a discreet, high-end real estate broker to list everything quietly. My only condition was speed: sell at slightly below market value, but close as fast as humanly possible. The broker looked at me in surprise. “Mr. Vance—sorry, Mr. Larry—are you in urgent need of cash?” I nodded serenely. “Yes. I’m preparing to make a quick exit.” The broker chuckled, assuming I was pulling his leg. When I returned home that evening, Adriana and Tim were already sitting at the dining table. Frank had just finished serving a spread of elaborate dishes. “Here, try this, it’s amazing,” Tim said, using his own chopsticks to drop a piece of braised pork into Adriana’s bowl. Then, with casual familiarity, he reached into her bowl with the same chopsticks, picked out the green peppers she hated, and popped them into his own mouth. It was an exchange so practiced it looked like second nature. When Tim noticed me entering, he looked up with a easy grin. “Larry’s back! Come on, sit down and eat!” I sat across from them. Tim continued heaping food onto Adriana’s plate. I glanced at the serving utensils sitting untouched in the center of the table. Tim noticed my gaze and laughed it off. “Oh, come on, Larry. Adriana and I go way back. We don’t need to be so formal with serving spoons.” I said nothing, quietly eating the food in my own bowl. Adriana set her chopsticks down and cleared her throat softly. “Larry, I wanted to talk to you about something.” She paused, taking a breath. “Tim’s baby is going to be born soon. He wants to raise the child as a single father.” My hand holding the fork stilled for a fraction of a second. Tim was staring down at an ultrasound photo on his phone, a smug, triumphant smirk playing on his lips. “But his parents are extremely traditional,” Adriana continued, her fingers nervously twisting together. “They refuse to accept him being a single dad and are threatening to force the child into adoption.” She took a breath, watching my face closely. “So…… I was thinking I could enter a temporary, fake marriage with him. Just to get his parents off his back and secure the child’s legal birth certificate. Once the baby’s registered, we’ll get divorced immediately.” She emphasized quickly, “It’s just helping out a friend. It doesn’t mean anything.” I held my bowl, perfectly composed on the outside while a wave of pure, unadulterated thrill washed over me. I had been wondering how to extract one final, massive payout from her before my time was up. I looked up at the two of them. “Whose baby is it?” Tim waved a hand carelessly. “Who cares? Some girl from a party. I’m raising it on my own regardless.” Adriana frowned at him. “Watch your mouth.” I laid my utensils down, my tone entirely flat. “Fine. We can get divorced. But how are we dividing the property?” Adriana froze. “It’s a fake divorce, why would we divide anything? Don’t you trust me?” I shook my head slowly. “Then you transfer everything to my name and walk away with nothing.” I locked eyes with her, speaking each word deliberately. “Do “you” trust “me”?” Adriana’s lips parted, entirely caught off guard. Tim crossed his arms, leaning back with an annoyed scowl. “Walk away with nothing? On what grounds? Are you insane?” I ignored Tim entirely, keeping my eyes fixed on my wife. Adriana remained silent for a few agonizing seconds. “I have to keep the company under my name for operational reasons,” she said slowly. “Everything else…… I’ll sign over to you.” I nodded cleanly. “Deal.” Tim’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. “Are you out of your mind? What if he—” Adriana offered a confident, relaxed smile. “I trust Larry. Besides, we’ll be remarrying in six months anyway.” I offered her a polite smile in return, choosing not to say a single word. The look Tim hurled at me was no longer just petty jealousy. It was poison. A few days later, Adriana and Tim publicly announced their sudden engagement online: “My best friend is about to become my forever family.” Social media exploded instantly. Old rumors and gossip were dragged back into the light. In front of a swarm of paparazzi, Tim officially moved his luggage into the estate. Adriana pulled me aside, whispering softly, “We have to make it look convincing for the media.” I shook my head gently. “I don’t mind.” I didn’t care. I had one week left. On the day we went to the family court to file for divorce, the entrance was swarming with reporters. Camera flashes went off like lightning strikes. “Ms. Adriana, are you divorcing your husband due to an extramarital affair?” “Mr. Larry, how do you feel about your wife marrying her best friend?” Adriana frowned, reaching out to block the camera lenses. I calmly wrapped my arm through hers, facing the reporters with a relaxed, composed smile. “Adriana signed over all her personal real estate and cash assets to me in the settlement,” I said clearly into the microphones. “What do I have to be unhappy about? Very few women in the world are this generous.” The crowd of journalists went dead silent. Someone whispered loudly in the back, “Damn, so Larry traded his dignity for a paycheck.” Adriana looked up at me, a flick of deep guilt flashing through her eyes. I simply maintained a refined, dignified smile. Inside the building, we filled out the paperwork, signed the agreements, and took the final photographs. When the clerk handed over the finalized divorce certificates, Adriana took hers, her expression deeply unsettled. “Larry…… I’m really sorry about all this.” I smiled softly. “If you’re truly feeling guilty, why don’t you transfer a portion of your company stock to me as well?” I said it lightly, as if making a casual joke. She thought about it for a moment. “Fine. I’ll give you ten percent.” Within two hours, her corporate lawyer drafted the “Equity Transfer Agreement”, and we both signed it without hesitation. As I walked out of the courthouse doors, Tim was waiting outside, leaning against a luxury sports car. The moment he saw us, he stepped forward and wrapped his arm around Adriana’s waist, pulling her toward the marriage registration window. A seamless transition. Very typical of Tim. Flashy, reckless, and entirely unbothered by public decency. Back at the house, I began packing my remaining belongings into a single suitcase. Adriana grabbed my wrist, stopping me. “Why don’t you just stay here? You can help me take care of Tim while he’s recovering.” I glanced down at her hand, then up at her face. “If I stay, what will Tim’s conservative parents think when they come over and see the ex-husband living in the guest room?” Adriana bit her lip, realizing her oversight. “Then…… at least stay until after the wedding,” she pleaded softly. “If you attend and give us your blessing, the rumors outside won’t be so vicious.” I glanced at the digital calendar on my phone. The wedding was scheduled in three days. The very last day of my five-year term. “Sure,” I smiled gently. “I’ll be there.” It was the perfect timing to deliver my final gift.

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My life was down to a ticking clock, so I bought a one-way ticket to Morocco to finish the Sahara expedition Gideon Wells and I had promised each other back when we were still madly in love. On my first day, I barely managed to drag myself through the local bazaar before my body caved. Exhausted, hollowed out by pain, I retreated early to my hotel room. Curled in bed, I unlocked my phone and opened my feed. The top video hit me like a slap to the face: Gideon, standing beneath a canopy of desert stars, down on one knee proposing to Mallory King—my best friend from college. Behind Gideon, a wall of fairy-light letters blazed into the night sky, burning straight into my chest. “Thank you for holding me up through the hardest three years of my life.” Three years ago, when I tore my own heart out and left him, Gideon had looked at me with bloodshot eyes and screamed, “You don’t have a soul, Clara! I’ll never forgive you for this. Not as long as I live!” It turned out that for those three long years, Mallory had been the one keeping him whole. The comment section was a waterfall of congratulations from our old college circle. “Mallory deserves this more than anyone.” “She pulled Gideon out of the gutter and stood by him when he had nothing. It’s about damn time.” “True love survives the storm. Those toxic ghosts from his past finally belong in the trash where they belong.” I locked my screen and set the phone face down. I was dying anyway. Stepping back into the shadows was the kindest thing I could do for everyone. That way, when I slipped away, no one would have to grieve. I forced myself up, clutching my side, and reached for the souvenir I’d picked up at the medina earlier that afternoon: an antique brass lamp, tarnished and heavy. I pulled out a soft cloth and began to polish the dull metal. As the last layer of grime gave way, a dense, violet smoke surged into the room. A towering, translucent shadow materialized before me, bowing low until its silhouette hovered inches from my face. “Speak, my master. Three wishes. Anything within this realm is yours.” I laughed until tears streamed down my cheeks, choking on my own breath. My body was so withered, so eaten away by disease, that my mind was inventing fairy tales. Still, looking at the apparition, I whispered the truest, rawest wish buried at the bottom of my soul. “I… I want to live.” … “As you command, my master.” The shadow dissolved slowly into thin air, and the purple fog receded like a dying tide. Suddenly, the deep, gnawing agony in my stomach—the ache that had haunted my every waking hour for three years—simply vanished. I took a tentative, deep breath. My lungs expanded fully. There was no stabbing pain, no metallic taste of blood at the back of my throat. I was… alive? Truly alive? If I wasn’t going to die in a foreign hotel room, there was no need for the absurdly expensive international body repatriation service I’d pre-arranged. I pulled up the agency app, canceled the post-mortem transport, and watched a massive refund post back to my account. With cash in hand, I decided to book a suite at the iconic luxury desert resort nearby. Back when Gideon and I were broke and backpacking through North Africa, we’d stood outside its high gates, looking up at the glowing glass domes. He’d wrapped his arms around me from behind and whispered, “One day, Clara. When I make it, I’m taking you here. We’ll get the top-tier star suite, and we’ll lie in bed and watch the Milky Way together.” Now, I was finally here. Alone. My car pulled up to the glowing oasis camp set deep in the dunes, its fairy lights shimmering like fallen constellations. The valet stepped forward to open my door. In the grand open-air lounge, a massive digital screen was cycling through a romantic photo slideshow. My breath hitched. The couple in the high-resolution portraits was Gideon and Mallory. Across the top of the display, bold elegant script read: “From Nothing to Everything: Together Forever.” He had returned to the desert and rented out the entire resort for Mallory’s engagement gala. “Clara? What on earth are you doing here?” A voice broke through the ambient music. I turned to see Tyler Scott, an old mutual friend from our group, staring at me in disbelief. Surrounding him were several familiar faces. When they recognized me, their expressions curdled into collective disdain. “I booked a room,” I said quietly, keeping my posture straight. Another friend sneered, “Oh, look who suddenly found some cash. Following him halfway across the globe?” “Today is Gideon’s big night, Clara. Don’t do something desperate.” “Seriously, after how ruthlessly you dumped him when he was down? Now that he’s a millionaire and happy with Mallory, you crawl back? What is wrong with you?” Tyler cut them off with a dismissive wave, giving me a cold, patronizing smile. “Alright, guys, give it a rest. Look, Clara, just head inside. Gideon’s in the main courtyard greeting real guests.” I nodded silently and wheeled my luggage toward the concierge desk. Behind me, the whispers floated over the desert breeze like venom. “Jesus, why is she so thin? She looks like a ghost.” “Karma, probably. She saw Gideon hit the big time on the news and realized what she threw away. She’s green with envy.” “Serves her right. Mallory stood by him through hell while Clara bounced the second things got tough. Who does she think she is?” I kept my eyes down and handed my passport to the clerk. Suddenly, a heavy hand gripped the handle of my suitcase. I turned around and ran straight into a pair of stormy, familiar eyes. It was Gideon. He wore a tailored linen tuxedo, polished and radiating the quiet authority of a man who had conquered the world. He looked nothing like the broken boy I had walked away from three years ago. “Why are you so thin?” he demanded, his voice dropping an octave. The raw, instinctual concern in his tone made my heart stutter. For a fraction of a second, the years vanished. Then, a flurry of white silk appeared at his side. Mallory wrapped her arm securely around his, her smile radiant, practically dripping with triumphant bliss. She followed Gideon’s gaze to me, her eyes widening in theatrical surprise before softening into a sweet, graceful mask. “Clara? Oh my goodness, it’s been so long! You’ve gotten so thin.” She stepped closer, her voice laced with honey. “Did you really fly all the way to Morocco to celebrate us? I’m so touched. Please, come inside and join the party!” Gideon snapped back to reality, the lingering warmth in his eyes instantly freezing into stone. He pulled his hand back as if my suitcase were contaminated. “Tonight belongs to Mallory and me,” he said coldly. “What kind of scene are you trying to make?” I stared at him, refusing to offer an explanation. Instead, I pulled up my single-room confirmation on my phone and held it out to the receptionist. “I had no idea you were staying here,” I said, my voice smooth and detached. “If my presence makes you uncomfortable, I’ll just cancel.” The clerk processed the cancellation immediately. I grabbed my bag, turned on my heel, and headed for the exit. I passed right by Gideon without giving him a second glance. “Look at her, still playing the tragic martyr,” someone scoffed behind me. “Self-righteous as ever…” I walked out into the cool desert night. A moment later, the hotel manager came hurrying out of the lobby, holding a sheet of paper. Spotting the crowd near the entrance, he assumed Gideon’s group was with me and handed the document over with a professional bow. “Mr. Wells, pardon the intrusion, but the lady left before I could hand her the final refund receipt. Please make sure she gets this.” Gideon didn’t reach for it, but his eyes drifted down to the page. Tucked right beneath the hotel invoice was a fresh fax that the front desk had received on my behalf—a confirmation from my travel insurance provider. The header read in bold, black print: “Terminal Care Services: International Remains Repatriation Service — Cancellation Confirmed.” Gideon froze, his head snapping toward the dark driveway where I was walking. Mallory read the lines over his shoulder, her flawless smile instantly fracturing. “Gideon… what does that mean? ‘Remains repatriation’?” I had doubled back to grab a forgotten coat from the bellhop counter, and I caught the tail end of her panic. “It means nothing,” I said calmly, taking the papers straight out of Gideon’s paralyzed hands. “Just a cheesy marketing bundle the travel agency pushed on me.” Without waiting for a reply, I turned and vanished into the darkness. … The next morning, I plunged into the labyrinthine alleys of the old Medina in Marrakech. The lamp had given me a second chance at life, which meant it was time to purge the ghost of my old one. I stepped into an ancient jewelry shop hidden down a quiet alleyway, the air thick with burning frankincense and aged cedar. From a hidden pocket inside my coat, I pulled out a simple, worn silver cuff bracelet. Gideon had forged it himself. Back when his tech startup was bleeding money and we were living on instant noodles in a drafty apartment, he spent an entire month hand-carving and polishing this bracelet for my birthday. He had pressed his lips to my wrist that night, his eyes shining with fiery promise. “I’m sorry it’s not real jewelry, Clara. But I swear to you, the second I make my first million, I’m going to design the biggest, reddest ruby ring in the world for you. You’re going to be my bride.” Memory was a dust storm, blinding and sharp. I laid the tarnished cuff on the glass counter. “Excuse me. I’d like to sell this.” The silver-bearded Moroccan shopkeeper picked it up, examined it for a second, and shook his head gently. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. This has no commercial value. It’s just common, low-grade silver.” Before I could answer, the brass wind chimes above the shop door jingled. I turned instinctively. It was Gideon and Mallory. The moment they walked in, the old jeweler’s face lit up. He reached beneath the counter and brought out a plush velvet box. “Ah, Mr. Wells! Perfect timing. Your custom piece is ready.” He popped the latch. Resting on the black velvet was a breathtaking, pigeon-blood ruby ring, set in platinum and glowing beneath the shop lights like a drop of liquid fire. The cut, the intricate vintage band, the hidden heart engraved inside the setting—it was the exact design Gideon had sketched on a napkin five years ago. Mallory gasped, clapping her hands to her mouth. “Gideon! When did you order this? It’s… it’s absolute perfection!” She picked it up, admiring the way the ruby caught the light, before throwing her arms around his neck. “Thank you, baby. I love it so much.” Gideon wrapped his arms around her waist, his voice soft and tender. “You stood by me through the mud, Mal. You deserve the absolute best.” The words weren’t loud, but they struck me like a physical blow. The promise he had made to me in a cold, leaky apartment was now sitting on another woman’s finger. Gideon looked up, his gaze suddenly locking onto me standing at the far end of the counter—and then down to the tarnished, worthless silver cuff resting in front of me. His face drained of color. “It’s… it’s just a standard classic design,” he stammered, his voice unnaturally tight. “I saw it in a catalog…” I looked at him, forcing a soft, faint smile onto my lips. Mallory noticed the silence, her eyes darting between Gideon and the silver bracelet on the glass. The air in the shop instantly curdled into suffocating awkwardness. “My mistake,” I told the jeweler quietly. I pulled the cuff off the glass. “Thank you anyway.” I turned and walked out into the crowded street. Navigating through the sea of tourists and merchants, I walked until I found the administrative office for the central bazaar. Outside the door sat a clear plastic Lost & Found box filled with unclaimed trinkets. I opened the lid and gently slid the silver cuff inside. “Hi,” I told the clerk behind the window. “I found this near the alley. If no one claims it after a week, feel free to toss it.” As I stepped back onto the cobblestones, I felt an physical weight lift off my shoulders. A breath I had been holding for three years finally left my chest. Suddenly, a grip clamped around my wrist from behind, spinning me around. Gideon stood there, glaring down at me, his chest heaving. “Clara! Do you really have to be this dramatic?!” I looked down at his grip and tried to pull away, but his fingers were like steel bands. “Gideon, you’re hurting me.” “Hurting you?” He let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “You ghosted me three years ago without a word of explanation! You made a fool out of me! Did you ever once stop to think about how much you hurt “me”?!” I stopped struggling and looked straight into his eyes. “You gave the ring you designed for me to someone else,” I said softly, every word measured and calm. “It’s hardly appropriate for me to keep the bracelet anymore.” Gideon froze. His grip went slack, his hand slipping off my wrist. At the entrance of the alley, Mallory stood frozen under the afternoon sun, staring at the two of us. The ruby ring on her hand blazed blindingly in the sunlight. “So…” Mallory’s voice trembled across the distance. “This ring… was meant for her all along?” I didn’t answer her. I smoothed down my sleeve, turned my back on both of them, and walked away. … The desert sky flipped without warning, a wall of dust swallowing the afternoon sun. Within an hour, a sudden sandstorm trapped dozens of travelers—including Gideon, Mallory, and me—inside a stone roadside diner off the main highway. I sat alone in a quiet corner booth, separated from their group by several tables. Shortly after placing my order, I heard a low groan. Mallory was hunched over, clutching her stomach against Gideon’s shoulder. “Gideon… my stomach is killing me.” Gideon immediately pulled her close, raising his hand to shout across the room. “Excuse me! We need some hot water over here! Now, please!” Mallory leaned into his chest, her voice small and pouting. “It’s your fault. You insisted on taking me to that seafood place yesterday. You know how sensitive my stomach is, but you keep spoiling me.” “My fault, totally my fault,” Gideon murmured softly. He unzipped his leather bag and pulled out a travel pill organizer with practiced ease. “Here, take these first.” I watched them quietly from my booth. A dull ghost-pain vibrated in my abdomen—not physical anymore, but emotional. I remembered the night I was diagnosed with terminal late-stage stomach cancer three years ago. I had sat alone on the floor of my tiny rented room, shivering violently as cold sweat soaked through my shirt from the agony. I had gripped my phone, Gideon’s contact pulled up on the glowing screen. That exact night, his company’s funding had fallen through. Creditors were beating down his door, threatening to destroy him. He was drowning. I had told myself over and over: “You can’t burden him. You can’t make him watch you die while his life is falling apart.” I never made that call. I reached into my pocket and pulled out an old, faded prescription bottle. It was the heavy-duty narcotic painkiller I used to rely on just to get through the night. I didn’t need it anymore. I tossed the bottle into the small trash bin beside my booth. As Gideon stood up to get Mallory’s water, his eyes happened to land on the trash bin—and the red warnings printed on the prescription label. His expression shifted instantly. It was a high-grade oncology drug, available only through hospital dispensaries. He frowned, stepping toward my table as if to demand an explanation. “Gideon…” Mallory whimpered behind him, grabbing his hem. “It still hurts so bad…” Gideon’s step halted instantly. He paused, torn for a single second, before turning back to wrap Mallory in his arms. “Shh, it’s okay, baby. The medicine takes a few minutes to kick in. Just hang on.” Mallory rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes drifting over his collar to lock onto me. She looked at the bottle in the trash, her gaze flickering with a dark, complex mix of realization and dread. “Clara,” Mallory called out softly, her voice barely carrying over the howling wind outside. “Have you… have you been sick these past three years?” I took a quiet sip of my water and offered a small, easy smile. “I used to be,” I said softly. “I’m better now.” Outside, the raging wind gradually died down. Rays of late-afternoon sun broke through the dispersing dust clouds, painting the dunes in warm, golden light. I threw some cash on the table, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and walked out of the diner. I flagged down a passing taxi and instructed the driver to head straight to the airport. I was done with this trip. I just wanted to go home. I was moving so fast I didn’t notice that the side mesh pocket of my canvas bag had torn open. An old, deactivated phone and a worn leather document folder slipped out, tumbling quietly onto the roadside gravel. Back at the diner, Gideon stepped outside, his eyes scanning the empty road where my cab had just sped away. His boot kicked against something hard. He looked down and picked up the fallen folder. He opened it, and his entire body went rigid. “Patient: Clara Price.” “Diagnosis: Late-Stage Gastric Carcinoma (Terminal).” Mallory walked out behind him, leaning over to glance at the paper. She instantly clapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with terror. “So… that fax at the hotel… the body transport service…” Mallory whispered, her voice shaking violently. “It wasn’t a joke?” Gideon didn’t utter a single word. Gripping the diagnosis sheet and the dead phone, he sprinted down the road, screaming my name into the empty desert wind. But I was already gone. … That night, Gideon didn’t return to the luxury suite he shared with Mallory. He rented a separate, solitary room on the lower level, plugged my old phone into a charger, and sat in total darkness wait for the screen to light up. When the display finally flickered on, the lock screen wallpaper made his breath hitch. It was a candid selfie of the two of us from three years ago, laughing in the rain. With trembling hands, he unlocked the device and opened the photo gallery. There was only one saved image in the entire album: a high-resolution scan of my terminal cancer diagnosis. The timestamp on the photo was dated precisely one day before I had broken his heart and ended our relationship. He exited the gallery and opened the notes app. At the very top was an unsent draft: “Gideon, I’m leaving. I sold my parents’ old house in the suburbs—the money has been routed directly into your startup’s escrow account through an anonymous trust. That house was the last thing my parents left me, but now it’s yours. Consider it my way of paying you back for the beautiful years you gave me. Don’t look for me. Forget me, and please, build a wonderful life.” It was the original breakup letter I had written before I lost my nerve and replaced it with a cruel, terrible lie. Gideon’s chest heaved as panic choked the air from his lungs. He frantically tapped into the phone’s archived call logs. On the night of his company’s total collapse, at 3:14 AM… My phone had attempted to dial his number three times in a row. Every call had been canceled after two rings—hung up by my own terrified hand. He remembered that night vividly. He had been surrounded by aggressive loan sharks at a bar, overwhelmed and drowning his sorrows. He had turned his phone off and thrown it into his trunk. He had spent that night thinking “he” was the most miserable man in the world. He had no idea that on the other side of the city, I was sitting alone in a sterile hospital hallway, crushed under a death sentence. And the next morning, when he finally turned his phone back on, the first thing he’d received was my icy text message: “Gideon, I’m done. I’m tired of being broke and waiting for your grand dreams to pan out. I met someone else—he has real money. Don’t call me again; it’s pathetic.” “NO! GOD, NO!” Gideon slammed his fist into the concrete wall with monstrous force. The impact cracked the plaster, blood bursting from his knuckles, but he didn’t even flinch. He threw the door open, sprinting frantically down the hallway, desperate to reach the airport, to track down every flight, to tell me he was sorry, that he was an idiot, that he was wrong— “Gideon, stop!” A figure blocked his path at the corner of the corridor. Mallory stood there, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. She reached out, grabbing his bleeding hand with all her strength. “I know where you’re going,” she sobbed, her voice breaking. “I know you want to run after her and tell her you still love her.” She stepped closer, clutching his suit jacket. “But what about us, Gideon?! What about the last three years?! I worked twenty-hour days alongside you! I drank with your investors until I vomited blood! I built this company with you from nothing! Are you telling me none of that mattered?!” Gideon stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t stop because he didn’t love me. He stopped because he was paralyzed by the overwhelming weight of reality. He couldn’t simply erase three years of Mallory’s devotion, sacrifice, and presence from his life without feeling like a monster. He looked down at Mallory’s tear-stained face, an agonizing war raging behind his eyes. “Mallory…” he rasped out, his voice hollow. “Just… give me some time.” Standing at the far end of the quiet hallway, I stood partially hidden behind a decorative pillar. I had realized my old phone was missing and had taken a cab back to the hotel to retrieve it. I had heard every word. I saw the hesitation paralyzed in Gideon’s posture. I quietly stepped back. It didn’t matter anymore. He knew the truth, but truth couldn’t rewrite time. These old relics were useless to me now. I slipped down the service stairs without making a sound. Walking down an empty, sunlit street away from the hotel, I pulled the antique brass lamp from my bag and lightly rubbed the cool metal with my thumb. The purple smoke swirled into the desert air once more, the giant shadow bowing before me. “Master… state your second wish.” I looked down the long, endless road stretching into the horizon, and whispered softly. “I want money. I want enough wealth to live comfortably, independently, and freely for the rest of my life.” The moment the words left my mouth, my current phone vibrated in my palm. A major breaking financial news alert popped up on my screen: “Tech Giant Acquires Dormant AI Startup ‘Singularity Labs’ in Shock $2 Billion Deal. Early Angel Investors See Returns Exceeding 10,000%.” Singularity Labs was a tiny, failing project run by a college senior I had thrown a spare ten thousand dollars at five years ago just to help him pay rent. Now, I was a multimillionaire. I boarded my flight home, switched my phone to airplane mode, and leaned my head against the oval window, watching the golden dunes of North Africa shrink into tiny ripples below. Down in the terminal below, Gideon finally broke past security, only to be tackled and held back by airport guards as my plane lifted into the clouds. None of it mattered anymore.

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When my family found out that my severe clinical depression was caused by years of emotional neglect, they were suddenly consumed by overwhelming guilt. My father ordered my older sister, Whitney, to pack up her stuff and hand over her spacious, sunlit bedroom to me. My mother grabbed the brand-new designer clothes she’d just bought for Whitney and forced them into my hands. Even my younger brother, Toby—who had spent years treating me with open coldness—baked a birthday cake from scratch with his own hands. He held it out to me with wide, expectant eyes, wishing me a speedy recovery. Never mind that they had gotten my birthday completely wrong. Wanting so desperately not to disappoint them or waste their sudden effort, I forced myself to smile. And in the very next second, Toby smashed the cake directly into my face. “I told you she was faking!” he sneered. “If she were actually depressed, how could she smile so easily?” Whitney burst through the doorway, her eyes rimmed red with theatrical tears: “Sadie, if you wanted attention, you could have just asked for it! Why fake an illness and drive Mom and Dad crazy with worry?” I caught the sudden shift in my parents’ faces—the guilt vanishing, replaced instantly by cold, familiar disgust. Panicked, I opened my mouth to explain. But sticky, cloying frosting filled my throat, choking back every word. I could only watch with wide, helpless eyes as they dragged my threadbare blanket out of the bright room and shoved it back into the cramped closet-bedroom under the stairs. As Mom snatched the new clothes off my lap and handed them right back to Whitney. Slowly, my vision blurred. Only my parents’ sharp, venomous words echoed clearly through the quiet apartment: “Faking depression at your age just to compete with your sister for attention—are you trying to put us in an early grave?” “If I knew you’d turn out to be this manipulative, I would have smothered you the day you were born!” So, I swallowed the bitter, cloying cake. And I made the very first real wish of my life. “May Mom and Dad finally be happy after I die.” … My parents’ sharp insults completely drowned out my whisper-thin wish. “Ungrateful little brat! Your father and I are sick with rage, and you have the nerve to sit there eating cake?” A heavy slap landed across my cheek. I opened my eyes sluggishly, meeting my mother’s gaze, which burned with pure resentment. “Did we starve you? Did we withhold clothes? You staged this whole illness just to scare us?” “If you’re going to fake being suicidal, why don’t you have the decency to pull it off and die?” A dull, sharp pain stabbed through my long-numb heart. I stared at my mother, remembering how just minutes ago, she had cupped my face with tender hands and whispered: “Sadie-girl, as long as you get better, I’ll give you anything you want. Even if you asked for my own life, I’d give it to you.” It had felt like a dream. Now, the dream was over. She was back to her true self, glaring down at me with utter revulsion. “What, caught red-handed so now you’re playing mute?” Dad rubbed his temples, letting out a long, irritated sigh. “Your mother and I took over a month off work to cater to your ‘illness.’ Do you have any idea how much money we lost?” “We have three kids to raise! Money is tight enough as it is. Can’t you just be sensible for once instead of pulling these dramatic stunts?” I had heard variations of those exact words countless times before my diagnosis. When buying new clothes, they said: “There are three of you, Sadie. Be sensible and wear Whitney’s hand-me-downs.” When assigning bedrooms: “Be sensible, give the bigger rooms to your sister and brother, and take the small box room.” When planning family trips: “Be sensible, we can’t afford everyone. Stay home.” Every single time back then, I used to cry and fight back. “Whitney is older, Toby is stronger—why am I the only one who always has to be “sensible”?” After the depression took hold, I lost the strength to fight. And ironically, once I stopped fighting, they stopped demanding I be sensible. Instead, they kept swearing: “Sadie, as long as you stay healthy and alive, even if you tear down the sky, Mom and Dad will hold it up for you.” Seeing me sit motionless on the floor, Mom swung her hand again, landing another hard slap on my face. “Say something! What are you so unsatisfied with?!” My ears buzzed from the impact. Oddly, though, my face didn’t hurt. Neither did my heart. It only solidified the quiet truth in my mind: “Mom and Dad will only be happy if I’m dead.” So I shook my head softly. “I’m sorry. I’ll be sensible from now on.” Even if “sensible” meant quietly dying. That single sentence consumed every last drop of air in my lungs. Seeing me slump amidst the ruined cake and smeared cream, Toby curled his lip in contempt. “Tch. Look at her, acting fragile again.” I looked up at his cruel, adolescent face. Unbidden, memories from the past month flooded my mind. Because of severe somatization, my body would give out without warning, leaving me tumbling to the hard floor. Whenever he saw my skin covered in purple bruises, Toby’s eyes used to turn red with tears. He had become my shadow, trailing behind me everywhere. He would reach out to catch my hand right before I hit the ground. And if he couldn’t catch me, he’d throw himself underneath me to act as a human cushion. And now? Here I sat on top of the ruined cake he had baked, slathered in whipped cream, looking pathetically broken. He didn’t reach out to lift me up. Instead, he hurled a heavy, leather-bound notebook straight at my face. The sharp corner sliced across my cheekbone, drawing a thin line of red. He didn’t even flinch. He just sneered, “If Whitney hadn’t found your secret diary and showed it to us, we’d still be fooled by your little act!” With trembling hands, I picked up the journal and opened it. The handwriting was intimately familiar, but the words written inside were terrifyingly foreign. [June 1, 2026: Mom, Dad, and Toby went to that concert with Whitney and left me behind again. I hate her. Why can’t Whitney just die? What do I have to do to make them love me instead?] [June 7, 2026: Symptoms of severe depressive somatization: loss of speech, vacant eyes, rapid hair loss, total exhaustion, loss of taste… God, please help me act convincing enough!] [June 11, 2026: The whole family took me to the doctor today. When the doctor said I had clinical depression, Mom and Dad cried. Toby even bought me cotton candy—it tasted so sweet. I really am a genius!] I flipped through the pages, a cold wave of panic rising in my chest. The physical symptoms described on the page were exactly what I had suffered through. But I had “never” written this diary. My hands shook violently, and the journal slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor. Desperate, I blurted out, “Mom, this wasn’t me—” “Sadie!” Whitney stepped forward, grabbing my wrist and cutting me off, her voice laced with sorrowful restraint. “I know you’re jealous because Mom and Dad love me, and I know how badly you wanted their attention. But you shouldn’t have resorted to this!” “Lies will only push the people who love you further away.” As she spoke, a tiny flash of triumphant malice glinted in her tear-stained eyes. In an instant, a memory slammed into me. Years ago, when I was first brought back from my grandparents’ house, I wanted so desperately to make Whitney like me. I used to offer to do her homework by copying her handwriting. Over time, my handwriting became a mirror image of hers. I turned my head and stared directly at Whitney. Before I could demand an explanation, she gasped, tears spilling over her lashes. “Sadie, why are you glaring at me like that? Don’t tell me you’re going to accuse “me” of writing that diary?” She looked like the ultimate picture of injured innocence. “You envy me so much? Fine! I’ll give you all of Mom and Dad’s love! I’ll give you Toby’s love too! But we’re sisters—how could you think I’m so evil?” I stared into her eyes, seeing the hidden cruelty dancing beneath the tears. “Is she not evil?” The year I was brought back to this house, my parents saw how thin and frail I was after living with my grandparents in the countryside. I was so terrified of taking up space that I barely dared to reach for food at the dinner table. Back then, Mom and Dad had cried, holding me tight, promising they would make up for all those lost years. Even Toby, who was younger then, had placed the best drumstick into my bowl, promising he’d protect his big sister. But that warmth didn’t last. When Whitney returned home from boarding school and found me living in her house, she threw a massive, screaming tantrum. When screaming didn’t work, she turned to quiet poison. She started whispering to Mom and Dad that she saw me overwatering Mom’s precious indoor plants until they rotted, that she saw me ripping up Dad’s work documents, that she saw me smashing Toby’s limited-edition action figures. Every time I tried to explain that it wasn’t me, Whitney would tear up and say gently: “Forget it, Mom. Sadie is young, and if she made a mistake, it’s my fault for not guiding her. Let me take the blame.” Repetitive drops of water hollow out stone. Over time, Mom, Dad, and Toby began to believe her. They decided I was uncultured, sneaky, and raised improperly by my grandparents. They grew to resent me. Their standards for me became impossible, their coldness absolute. And like those indoor plants Whitney secretly killed, I slowly withered away inside, until I became the ghost standing here today. Seeing me frozen, Mom roared at me in rage. “Sadie, are you done yet?!” “Faking an illness wasn’t enough? Now you’re trying to frame your sister?!” Dad shook his head, looking at me with pure, gut-wrenching disappointment. “If I had known you’d grow up to be this calculating and wretched, your mother and I never would have brought you into this world.” Their cold, murderous disgust pooled around me like ice water. I wanted to speak. I wanted to defend myself. But my mouth felt glued shut. I couldn’t utter a single sound. I could only sit there, paralyzed, as they listed every grievance they held against my existence. Mom said I was born a curse—that the hospital bills and administrative fines from my birth had wiped out their savings. Dad said ever since I returned to this house, there hadn’t been a single day of peace. Toby blamed me for my fake depression, claiming that catering to me had ruined his focus and ruined his high school entrance exam scores. Finally, the three of them looked at me with shared, terrible hatred. “Sadie… you really are the most useless, extra thing in this family.” With those words, they turned away. No one looked at me again. Under Whitney’s gentle coaxing, they went about their business. I sat motionless on the floor until the cream on my skin dried into a sticky, suffocating film. When dinner was ready, Mom called out in a voice like stone: “Clean yourself up and get over here to eat. Or are you expecting me to wait on you hand and foot?” I snapped out of my daze, scrambling awkwardly. “I’ll clean up right now. You guys go ahead and eat… I’m not hungry…” Ever since the depression had taken hold, my appetite had completely evaporated. Before today, every mealtime would feature Mom cooking a table full of my favorite dishes, sitting beside me, softly spoon-feeding me bite by bite. Now, hearing me say I wasn’t hungry, Mom slammed her fork onto the table. “Sadie! Everyone in this house knows you’ve been faking! How long are you going to keep up this pathetic act?!” Seeing the sharp rage in her eyes, I didn’t dare utter another word. I practically crawled to the table, sat down, and began shoveling dry rice into my mouth with frantic, desperate bites. “Mom, don’t be mad. See? I’m eating. I’m eating…” The dry rice burned my dry throat like sand, and my stomach heaved violently in protest. Yet my compliance only infuriated Mom further. As if she couldn’t take it for another second, she snatched my bowl away and slammed it down. “If you don’t want to eat, then get out of my sight!” I stared at her blankly, my hand hovering in midair, torn over whether I should keep eating. Suddenly, Dad’s phone alarm chimed. I recognized the chime immediately—it was the daily reminder set for my evening medication. Instinctively, I walked over to the side table and reached for the pill bottle. Before my fingers could unscrew the cap, Dad struck my hand down with a loud, ringing smack. “Why are you taking medication if you’re not sick?!” “You leech! A single bottle of this stuff costs over two hundred dollars. I’m going to see if the pharmacy will take it back.” The bottle rolled across the floor, and Dad scooped it up, turning his back on me. I watched his silhouette, quietly praying that the pharmacy would accept the return. Maybe then, he’d be a little less angry. Dinner ended in miserable silence. When Dad sat down on the living room sofa to watch TV, my body moved on pure habit. Over the past month, on the doctor’s recommendation, Dad would sit beside me every night and watch warm, uplifting family movies with me. I walked over and sat down on the far cushion next to him. The moment I sat, the terrifying roar of a chainsaw shrieked from the speakers. Dad was watching a violent horror movie. Seeing me shiver uncontrollably, my face draining of all color, Dad scowled with immense irritation. “If you don’t want to watch, get the hell out.” I swallowed hard, pulled myself up, and dragged my feet back toward my tiny box room under the stairs. No food. No medicine. My stomach wasn’t hungry, but my brain was alive with a terrifying, chaotic nightmare of memories. Flash: I was six years old. Mom and Dad had dropped me off at my grandparents’ house in the countryside so they could prepare for Toby’s birth. I remembered sprinting down the dirt road behind their receding car, screaming until my lungs bled. Flash: I was twelve, on a freezing winter night. Whitney accused me of stealing money from Mom’s purse. Mom threw me out into the snow, shutting out my frantic, weeping explanations. Flash: I was eighteen, during Christmas break. We were driving for a family vacation, and because I misspoke during an argument, Dad pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway and left me behind in the cold. During the dark days of my depression, whenever these memories surfaced, I would break down, screaming in terror. And every time, Mom and Dad would hold me close, whispering gently: “Sadie, don’t think about it. That’s all in the past. We’re going to treat you right from now on. We promise.” But tonight… when I couldn’t stop the quiet sob from escaping my throat, the only response was Dad viciously kicking my bedroom door from the hallway. “Sadie! Shut the hell up! Crying, crying, crying—you’re wailing like someone died! You’re sucking all the peace out of this home!” Through the thin door, I heard Mom’s cold, dismissive voice: “Ignore her. Let’s all go out for a walk. She’ll stop her little show once she realizes no one’s listening.” Footsteps receded. The heavy front door clicked shut. Silence descended on the house. Yet inside my head, the noise grew deafeningly loud. “Sadie, why don’t you just die?” “Sadie, you’re extra. You were never meant to be here.” “Sadie, you liar. A fake. Mom and Dad will never love you… unless you prove you were really broken.” My exhausted, shattered body suddenly found a surge of terrifying strength. In a daze, I crawled toward the small window in my room. Looking through the dusty glass, I saw them. Mom and Dad were holding Whitney and Toby’s hands, all four of them walking side by side under the streetlights, laughing and talking as they walked into the distance. “Look at that,” I thought softly. “Without me, they really are happy.” I didn’t hesitate anymore. I pushed the window open, spread my arms into the cool night air, and stepped out into the dark. The moment my body slammed against the concrete below, I caught a brief, fleeting glimpse of my father turning his head back in the distance, his eyes wide with sudden, unimaginable horror.

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Every Wednesday, my fiancé took our dog to see his ex-girlfriend. He swore it was part of their sacred post-breakup pact—a non-negotiable clause from when they called it quits. On the day Chase and I were scheduled to take our wedding photos, I waited at the studio until the sun sank below the horizon. He never showed. Instead, I got a brief, distracted phone call. “Piper’s busy on Wednesday,” Chase said over the rushing sound of traffic. “She can’t see Peanut then, so it had to be today.” I stood alone in the dressing room, the heavy silk of my bridal gown suddenly feeling like an anchor. I had to apologize to the photographer, who also happened to be my best friend, Maeve, and tell her we were calling it off for the day. At first, Maeve laughed, thinking I was pulling her leg. “Alright, real funny. Tell Chase to get his ass in here.” When she saw the hollow look in my eyes, her smile evaporated. The air in the studio turned cold. “Wait… that three-rule agreement with his ex? You’re telling me that bullshit is actually “real”?” I forced a tight, bitter smile. “Well… they did adopt Peanut together.” Maeve crossed her arms, her jaw set so hard her cheekbones trembled. “To hell with understanding his ex! The only person Chase needs to understand right now is you!” Her words hit like a blunt needle, puncturing the fragile bubble of self-delusions I’d spent four years carefully building. When I got back to our apartment complex, I saw them right away. They were out on the courtyard lawn, playing fetch with Peanut. A couple walking past slowed down, smiling at them. “Look at those two,” I heard the woman murmur to her partner. “What a beautiful family.” I walked up to Chase, my shadow falling over his polished sneakers. I looked straight into his eyes. “Since you two look so happy,” I said, my voice eerily steady, “why don’t you just get back together?” … Hearing those words, Chase froze. A flicker of heavy exhaustion passed over his face. “Camille, come on,” he sighed, using that tone he reserved for unreasonable children. “Don’t throw a tantrum.” “Aren’t you the one who taught me?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “A deal’s a deal. Once you make a promise, you keep it.” A sharp ache burst behind my ribs. I used to fall so hard for that trait of his. Even when he was dense, even when he overlooked me, he was a man of his word. If he promised me something, he delivered. I used to mistake that rigid reliability for devotion. I thought it meant he loved me. It wasn’t until this exact moment that the scales fell from my eyes. He didn’t keep promises because he loved me. He kept them because he was a man ruled by ironclad, inflexible principles. His code mattered to him; I was just someone standing within its grid lines. Beside us, Piper broke the silence. She let out a dramatic, annoyed puff of air, rolling her eyes. “Oh, please. As if. Chase and I are ancient history,” she said, though her tone held that playful, possessive edge she always used with him. “He’s way too repressed and straight-laced. I could barely stand him when we were together.” Chase turned to her, his finger pointing at her nose in playful retaliation. “Who are you calling repressed? Who’s straight-laced?” He reached out and tickled her waist. The movement was fast, intimate, born of years of effortless muscle memory. Piper squealed, dodging his touch, and they dissolved into a fit of shared laughter. I stood there on the manicured grass, isolated, like an unwelcome extra who had accidentally walked onto the wrong movie set. Suddenly, Peanut—who had been darting wildly across the lawn—stumbled. His front paws buckled, and he collapsed onto the grass, his small body going completely limp. Piper’s face drained of color in an instant. Panic took over. She dropped to her knees, scooping the dog into her arms. “Peanut! Peanut, what’s wrong? Don’t scare me like this!” Chase’s effortless demeanor shattered. “Something’s wrong. He must have picked up something toxic from the grass. We need to get to the emergency vet. Now.” Piper didn’t hesitate. Holding the limp terrier mix to her chest, she bolted toward the parking lot. Fearing the dog was too heavy for her, Chase stepped in and grabbed Peanut, his movement frantic. As he swung around to take the lead, his elbow slammed heavily into my shoulder. The impact caught me completely off guard. I stumbled backward, losing my footing on the edge of the walkway, and crashed hard onto the concrete paving stones. The rough stone scraped a sheet of skin right off my palm. A sharp, searing pain shot up my arm, settling into a deep, dull throb within the bone. Chase didn’t notice until he reached the passenger side and opened the door. He turned back to check the rear seat and caught sight of me sitting on the ground, struggling to push myself up. A flash of guilt broke through his panic. He jogged back, bending down to grab my arm and pull me to my feet. “Camille, I’m so sorry—I was moving too fast, I didn’t see you. Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?” Before I could regain my balance, Piper’s panicked scream cut through the evening air from the car. “Chase! Where the hell are you?! If anything happens to Peanut, I swear to God I’ll make you pay!” Chase’s feet were already turning back toward the car before he even finished listening to her. “We need to get Peanut to the clinic,” he said, his eyes darting between me and the running vehicle. “Do you… want to come with us? After we sort Peanut out, I’ll take you to urgent care.” I looked down at my raw, bleeding palm. The dark red blood was beginning to bead along the tears in my skin. “Yeah,” I said quiet. “Sure.” At the emergency vet, the veterinarian came out after twenty agonizing minutes. His expression was grim. “He already had a sensitive stomach,” the vet explained. “It looks like he ingested a piece of dark chocolate thrown in the bushes. Toxicity is setting in fast. It’s critical.” The moment the words left the vet’s mouth, Piper snapped. She sank to the linoleum floor, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently as she sobbed. Chase looked down at her, his expression softening into an intense, protective tenderness. He stepped forward, dropped to his knees, and wrapped his arms completely around her. “Hey, stop crying,” he murmured, pulling her head into the crook of his neck. “Peanut’s tough. He’s going to make it through this.” I stared at the dirt and grass stains smudged across Piper’s sweater, feeling an icy sting in my chest. Chase was a severe germaphobe. If I came home from a long day at the office and tried to hug him before washing my hands, he would pull back with a frown. Yet here was Piper, covered in street grime and mud, and he didn’t even hesitate to wrap her in his arms. He was wearing his favorite white linen shirt—the one he was so careful with. Piper’s tear-stained face and dirty hands were wiping straight onto his chest, and he didn’t even flinch. It turned out his boundaries weren’t set in stone after all. They simply shifted depending on who he cared about. When I had been sick with a double stomach flu months ago, he hadn’t even offered to bring me a bowl of broth because I hadn’t changed out of my day clothes yet. My palm throbbing, I stared at the two of them on the floor. Strangely, the physical pain was fading, replaced by a vast, hollow emptiness. It felt as though someone had carved out a hollow space inside my chest and poured cold salt water straight into it. A quiet, inescapable realization settled over me: I was never going to warm Chase’s heart. No matter how long I stayed, no matter how much I gave, the core of him would always belong somewhere else. I didn’t want to watch them anymore. I didn’t want to be the invisible witness to their tragic, beautiful bond. I turned around, pushed open the glass doors of the clinic, and walked out into the cool night air. I pulled out my phone and dialed Maeve. “Cancel the wedding photos,” I said, my voice calm, almost light. “Don’t reschedule them. We’re done.” On the other end of the line, silence stretched for a long moment. “Camille… you two have built a whole life together,” Maeve said softly, her anger replaced by cautious concern. “You were going to get married in forty-eight hours. Are you sure you want to call it off like this?” I stood under the bright streetlights outside the vet clinic. The wind carried a bite, but I didn’t shiver. The scrape on my hand was already clotting into a dark ridge, but the bitter taste in my mouth wouldn’t go away. “When a relationship is rotten on the inside,” I said, watching my breath fog up the cool air, “pretending you don’t smell it doesn’t stop it from falling apart. I can’t keep holding onto a corpse just because I’m afraid of the pain of burying it.” Maeve caught the absolute finality in my tone. She stopped trying to reason with me. “Alright,” she whispered. “Whatever you decide, I’m in your corner. Always.” In the past, I had been terrified of letting go. I used to tell myself that if I just endured a little more, if I was just a little more patient, he would turn around and see me. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting in line for a man who had already given his best years away. I hung up, walked to the curb, and caught a ride home alone. It wasn’t until midnight that Peanut was declared out of the woods. And it was only then, as the adrenaline faded, that Chase realized I was gone. He called me twice, but when I didn’t answer, he didn’t keep ringing. He knew me too well. He knew that whenever we had a major fallout, I retreated to the small reading study in our apartment to process things alone. When he finally walked through the front door at 1:00 AM, he was holding a brown paper bag. The rich, savory scent of spicy citrus duck filled the entryway—it was from a little Thai bistro five blocks away. It was his go-to olive branch. Every time we fought, he would bring home a box of that duck, hand it to me with a faint smile, and tease me about how easy I was to buy off. “‘One good meal and you forgive me every time,’” he used to say. And God, it was true. I had been so easy to satisfy. I asked for so little. Yet even that little was too much for him to give. He walked slowly into the study, setting the warm takeout container on the desk in front of me. “Camille,” he began, his voice laced with exhaustion. “I’m sorry about today. I know I made you feel like an afterthought.” Before I could speak, his phone vibrated loudly against the wood. The screen lit up with an incoming FaceTime call. “Piper.” Chase’s hand hovered over the phone. He hesitated for two seconds, his eyes darting to me, before pressing the green button. A burst of self-pity washed over me. I had been so easily fooled. When he first told me about their “breakup agreement,” I had been furious. He had held my hands, looked me in the eye, and sworn up and down: “There’s nothing between us anymore. I deleted her off social media. We only text about Peanut.” I had believed him. I thought he was a man who understood boundaries. Now, watching her face pop up on his screen in high definition, I realized how blind I’d been. How many other lies had he neatly filed away under the excuse of “keeping things civil”? The moment the video connected, Piper glanced at Chase and immediately pulled a face. “Ugh, pass the phone to your girlfriend. I really don’t want to look at your mug right now. Today was entirely your fault anyway.” Chase gave a soft, defeated chuckle. Without asking if I wanted to speak to her, he handed the phone over to me. Piper’s face filled the screen. “Camille, hey! Look, I am so, so sorry. I honestly had no idea you guys were supposed to do your wedding shoot today. If I’d known, I never would’ve let him bring Peanut over.” I didn’t answer. My eyes weren’t on Piper’s face; they were fixed entirely on the room behind her. She was at her apartment. But her apartment looked identical to the interior design I had meticulously created for Chase and my future home. The cool grey feature wall in the living room. The woven jute mat underneath the low coffee table. The slender brass floor lamp tucked beside the sectional couch. Every single detail of that layout was burned into my mind. I had spent months tweaking those blueprints, measuring dimensions, picking out swatches—building a space where Chase and I were supposed to start our life. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced my voice to stay level. “Your place looks really nice.” In my peripheral vision, I saw Chase stiffen. Piper grinned on the screen, angling the camera to show off the rest of the space. “Right? I have to give credit to this stiff guy here,” she said, nodding toward Chase. “I had zero clue how to decorate when I moved in, so he just handed me this complete design package and told me to use it if I liked it. Turns out you and I don’t just have the same taste in men—we have the exact same taste in interior design!” Each word felt like a tiny blade dragging across my heart. When the call finally ended, Chase immediately stepped forward, reaching out to grasp my cold hands. “Camille, please don’t be mad,” he said quickly, searching my face. “I just thought… well, if someone else appreciated your hard work, it would make you happy. It was such a great design, it felt like a waste not to use it.” I slowly lifted my head and looked at him. My voice was as thin as paper. “Chase… do you have any idea what those blueprints were?” He blinked, taken aback, as if noticing the gravity of it for the very first time. That wasn’t just a collection of pretty renders. It was the blueprint of our home. It was our sanctuary. I gave a dry, lifeless smile and looked him dead in the eye. “Let me ask you something, Chase. If I took your custom wedding suit—or the ring you had made for our vows—and gave it to another man to use, would you be happy?” Chase’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The blood drained from his face, leaving him completely speechless. … That night, after showering, I lay on my side of the bed, my back turned to him. In the past, whenever we had a terrible argument, I would curl into a ball, buried under the covers, crying silently into my pillow until the fabric was soaked through. I would toss and turn all night, mourning the relationship, mourning the years I’d invested. Tonight, I didn’t shed a single tear. I had reached the point where the pain was so severe it turned into absolute numbness. The mattress dipped behind me. Chase shifted closer, his chest pressing lightly against my back. He reached out with tentative slowness, wrapping one long arm around my waist, pulling me against his warm frame. His touch was just as warm as it had been four years ago. But the man holding me was a stranger. “Camille,” he whispered into the dark, his voice thick with gravel. “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” He tightened his grip slightly. “I won’t go back there. I swear it. I’ll never bring Peanut to see her again. Okay? Please…” I let my eyelids drop. A heavy wave of fatigue washed over me. When a heart truly dies, even arguing feels like a waste of energy. Whether he changed or not didn’t matter anymore. A gift promised at twenty-two holds no value when it’s finally delivered to a twenty-six-year-old who has already walked away. … When I woke up the next morning, Chase was already awake. He was propped up on one elbow, watching me with an undeniable softness in his eyes. Seeing my eyes open, he smiled gently. “Morning, beautiful. Why don’t we go reshoot the wedding photos today? I cleared my whole schedule.” I looked at him, my expression blank. “No rush.” He mistook my detachment for lingering anger and quickly tried to smooth things over. “Fair enough, no rush. We can take our time after the wedding madness is over and do a really special shoot. Just the two of us.” I offered a faint, polite smile and said nothing. Tonight was supposed to be our joint single’s party—a big, combined bachelor and bachelorette celebration we had planned months ago. Friends from out of town had taken time off work and flown in for it. I couldn’t just cancel on them and ruin their trips. The lounge was loud, filled with music, laughter, and the clinking of glasses. Everyone was reminiscing about college, talking about the old days, letting the alcohol flow freely. Late into the night, one of Chase’s old college buddies—decidedly drunk—slapped Chase hard on the shoulder. “Man, Chase!” the guy yelled over the music, slurring his words. “I swear to God, back in the day, I thought for sure you were gonna marry Piper!” The room fell into an uncomfortable lull, but the guy kept rambling. “Remember that time your current girlfriend had that awful stomach ulcer thing and fainted at her desk? You couldn’t stay to take care of her, but then a day later you flew all the way out to Aspen with Piper just to see the snow! Man, who would’ve guessed you guys wouldn’t make it to the finish line?” The entire VIP room went dead silent. The guy’s eyes suddenly widened as the alcohol seemed to clear from his brain. He gasped, waving his hands frantically in the air. “Whoa, wait! Shit, I’m wasted! Ignore me! I’m talking out of my ass—totally making things up!” Everyone hastily chimed in, tossing out loud jokes to bury the slip-up. I slowly turned my head to look at Chase sitting beside me. I knew his body language better than anyone. Whenever he was hiding something or feeling utterly guilty, his hand would instinctively go to his face. Right now, his fingers were stiffly pressing against the bridge of his nose, his eyes darting toward the floor, completely avoiding mine. I remembered that week clearly. I had collapsed at my desk from severe gastric spasms and a bleeding ulcer. My coworkers had rushed me to the ER, where the doctor admitted me for three days of observation. During those three days, I dragged myself down three flights of stairs with an IV pole just to buy a piece of dry toast from the hospital cafeteria. Chase had told me he was stuck on an emergency corporate retreat—a mandatory trip that meant his promotion. I had felt so guilty for bothering him while he worked hard for our future. It turned out our relationship hadn’t started rotting yesterday. It had been decaying from the inside out for years. I had just been too trusting to notice the smell. Chase cast a quick, nervous glance at me. I kept a pleasant, calm smile on my face and continued chatting with the girl sitting next to me. Seeing that I didn’t blow up, he visibly relaxed, assuming I hadn’t believed his friend’s drunk rambling. A few minutes later, I stood up and walked to the quiet hallway near the restrooms. I pulled out my phone and dialed my parents. “Mom, Dad,” I said quietly into the receiver. “Cancel the wedding tomorrow. Tell the caterers, and take down the banners at the house.” There was a long, heavy silence on the line. My parents didn’t ask what happened. They didn’t demand an explanation, nor did they scold me for ruining a event that had cost thousands of dollars. Finally, my father’s calm voice came through. “Honey, if you’ve made up your mind, that’s all that matters.” My mother took the phone. “We don’t care about a wedding, Camille. We only care about your happiness. Whatever you need, we’re behind you.” The last lingering weight holding my chest down collapsed into dust. I didn’t go back to the apartment with Chase that night. He didn’t find it suspicious—it was custom for the bride to sleep at her parents’ home the night before the wedding anyway. … The next morning was supposed to be the most important day of my life. Chase stood outside my parents’ front door wearing a crisp, bespoke tuxedo. He held a massive bouquet of long-stemmed red roses, surrounded by his groomsmen, a photography crew, and family members carrying traditional gift boxes. He was beaming, ready to claim the woman he had dated for four years. He knocked on the door. Once. Twice. Three times. Silence from inside. “Come on, Chase, put some elbow into it! The bridesmaids are playing hardball today!” one of the groomsmen teased, clapping him on the back. “Yeah, Camille’s not gonna make it easy for you after all these years!” Chase chuckled, his eyes glowing with genuine excitement. He really thought this was just a playful door-game. He knocked louder, calling out, “Camille! Open up, sweetie! Everyone’s waiting!” Still, no sound came from inside the apartment. The groomsmen started chanting. “Send in the envelopes! Pay the ransom!” Chase grinned, pulling a stack of red cash envelopes from his pocket and sliding them one by one through the crack under the front door. “Camille! I’m here! Open the door!” He knocked again and again, his voice rising, calling my name over the sound of the corridor echo. But no matter how hard he knocked, the heavy oak door remained shut. The commotion finally brought out the neighbors. The door across the hall swung open, and an elderly woman stepped out, her face twisted in annoyance. “Are you out of your mind?!” she snapped, glaring at Chase. “Banging on the door at seven in the morning! People are trying to sleep!” Chase’s grin faltered slightly, though he quickly put on his most polite smile. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I’m here for the bride. It’s my wedding day.” The woman stared at him, stunned for a second, before letting out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Bride? Son, you’ve got the wrong day or the wrong address. That entire family packed up their bags and headed to the airport for Maui first thing this morning!” A loud, metallic ring echoed in Chase’s ears. The bouquet of red roses slipped from his numb fingers, crashing onto the cold floor.

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