I lost a party game on my boyfriend’s twenty-seventh birthday. Connor leaned back against the plush velvet of the booth, a slow, calculated smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He swirled the amber bourbon in his glass, letting the ice clink before he spoke. “Your forfeit, June,” he said smoothly. “Give me one day off a week. For twenty-four hours every Monday, we don’t speak, we don’t text, and we don’t see each other. We’re complete strangers.” I froze, the laughter around the table fading into a dull, uneasy buzz. Before I could find my voice, Lauren—my best friend since middle school—leaned across the table and tapped my wrist, her tone dripping with playful chiding. “Come on, June, don’t be a sore loser. Connor checks in with you fifty times a day as it is. It’s just one day out of seven. Let the man breathe a little.” I looked at Connor’s expectant gaze, then at Lauren’s bright, encouraging smile. A tight knot formed in my stomach, but I swallowed it down and gave a stiff nod. “Fine,” I said softly. From that night on, every Monday, Connor vanished from my universe. When debilitating cramps doubled me over on the bathroom tiles, my frantic texts asking him to bring heating pads and ibuprofen vanished into an unyielding void. When I crossed paths with him on the sidewalk near my office, he looked right through me with glass-cold eyes, brushing past as if I were thin air. Even on Sunday nights, after pulling me into his chest and whispering breathless promises against my skin, he would glance at the digital clock on the nightstand. The moment it flickered to 12:00 AM, he would untangle himself from my limbs, dress in silence, and walk out into the dark. Until the day I was handed a late-stage stomach cancer diagnosis. Standing outside the clinic with trembling hands, I dialed Connor’s number three times. Straight to voicemail. Dazed, I stepped out toward the sunlit lobby, only to stop dead in my tracks. A few yards away, outside the obstetrics wing, Connor stood with his arm curled intimately around Lauren’s waist. “Are you sure about coming with me to my prenatal checkup?” Lauren murmured, her head tilted up, a delicate crease between her brows. “What if June finds out?” Connor smoothed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, his touch infinitely tender. “What’s there to be afraid of? It’s Monday. She has no right to question where I am or who I’m with.” He smiled, calm and entirely unbothered. “I’ve spent every Monday with you so far, Lauren. I know once the baby arrives, one day a week won’t be enough. But don’t worry.” He gave a quiet chuckle. “I’ll just make sure June loses another game.” A bone-deep chill seized my limbs. In that blinding, shattering second, I finally understood. I hadn’t just lost a stupid parlor game five years into our relationship. I had lost the last five years of my life. … My heart slammed violently against my ribs, battering my chest so hard I could barely breathe. I dug my fingernails into my palms until the sharp, blooming pain forced me to tether myself to reality. “So that was it.” Every Monday when Connor went off the grid, Lauren—the girl who practically lived on her phone—would suddenly stop replying to my messages. Whenever I asked if she wanted to grab dinner to distract myself from Connor’s cold rules, she always had an excuse ready: late shifts, a sudden migraine, errands across town. Every single hour Connor had erased himself from my world, he had spent wrapped around her. Across the corridor, Lauren rested a manicured hand over her slightly rounded belly, still looking hesitant. “But is June really going to be that easy to fool? Last time, you had to rig the cards just to get this one day off with me.” Connor let out a faint, dismissive laugh. “Trust me, she’s soft. A total pushover.” He leaned down, whispering with smug confidence. “You should have seen her last week. She actually put on that lace lingerie she was always too shy to wear, trying so hard to tempt me. I lost my head for a minute, but the second midnight struck, I pushed her away and walked out. And what did she do? Not a single word of complaint.” Lauren pressed a hand to her mouth, giggling as she playfully swatted his chest. “God, Connor, you’re awful. You almost make me feel bad for her.” She paused, her eyes gleaming with veiled vanity. “What do you think she’ll do when she finds out I’m pregnant with your baby?” Connor raised a brow. “She might throw a fit. Cry, yell. But it doesn’t matter. She can’t survive without me.” Something vital inside my chest caved in, collapsing into a hollow, jagged crater. I clutched my ribs, feeling an agony so absolute it tore through the marrow of my bones. Thirty minutes ago, a doctor in a quiet white room had handed me an expiration date. “Advanced gastric adenocarcinoma. Three months. Maybe four if you’re lucky.” And my very first instinct—pathetic, devoted fool that I was—had been to protect Connor. I had stood there clutching the paper, terrified of breaking his heart, wondering how to soften the blow. Yet his heart had never belonged to me at all. The impending shadow of death stripped away my fear, leaving behind a raw, searing clarity. I took a breath, stepped out from the alcove, and walked toward them. Connor saw me first. His face froze, the casual smugness instantly wiped away as his hand dropped from Lauren’s waist like he’d been burned. Lauren gasped, stumbling back half a step, clutching her designer tote. “J-June? What are you doing here?” I stared at them, my voice flat and hollow. “Running an errand. What about you two?” Connor’s initial panic morphed almost instantaneously into a practiced mask of cold detachment. He cast an icy glance over me. “Who are you?” “Again.” Just like three weeks ago, when I had stopped by a downtown café after an exhausting client pitch and spotted Connor sitting by the window. He rarely ate fast food, and he looked like he was waiting for someone, so I had walked over, smiling, asking if he wanted to share a table. All I got in return was his clipped, freezing reply: “June, it’s Monday. The deal was we act like strangers. You have no right to question me.” Back then, I had made excuses for him in my head. “I lost the game. I have to honor the rules.” I had never imagined that the entire game was a calculated trap from the start. Lauren scrambled to break the silence, darting a nervous, warning glance at Connor. “June, don’t mind him, you know how he gets about his silly game. I… I was feeling dizzy this morning, and I knew you were swamped with work, so I asked Connor to drive me to the clinic.” She batted her mascara-coated lashes, putting on the wide-eyed innocence she had perfected since we were twelve. I looked down at the white folder tucked under her arm. “What did the doctor say?” Panicking, she jammed the folder deep into her bag and forced a tight, artificial laugh. “Nothing serious! Just minor stomach trouble. You don’t need to worry yourself, really.” Connor instinctively stepped forward, placing his broad shoulder between me and Lauren. His brows drew together in sharp annoyance. “We have places to be. We’re leaving.” A sudden, violent spasm tore through my upper abdomen, so sharp it felt like a serrated blade twisting in my guts. My vision blurred, and I staggered backward against the corridor wall. Connor moved before he could think, his hand darting out to catch my elbow. “June? What’s wrong with you?” I leaned my weight against the cold drywall, summoning every ounce of strength I had left to yank my arm from his grip. “Mr. Beckett,” I said, each syllable coated in frost. “Today is Monday. We are strangers. You don’t have the right to touch me.” … The apartment was suffocatingly quiet when I got home. The silence stripped away my numbness, leaving room for the grief to crash over me in relentless, suffocating waves. I sank onto the hardwood floor in the hallway, pulling my knees to my chest, and wept until I couldn’t draw breath. I cried for my dying body. I cried for the five years of devotion I had poured into Connor. And I cried for the friendship that had anchored my entire youth. People used to warn me back in college. They saw how Lauren hovered around us, how she laughed a little too loudly at Connor’s jokes, and they told me to watch my back. I had defended her fiercely. Lauren had even thrown a drink in someone’s face for suggesting it, swearing with tears in her eyes: “How could I ever do something so vile? Anyone in this world could betray you, June, but never me.” God, what a blind, gullible idiot I had been. Connor didn’t come home until Tuesday afternoon. He walked into the living room, loosening his tie, and paused when he saw my red, swollen eyes. His forehead creased. “What’s this? Did you spend all of yesterday crying?” When I didn’t answer, he let out a heavy, irritated sigh. “All this because I gave Lauren a ride to the clinic? You were busy at work. It was a five-minute favor. Do you really have to be this petty, June?” I lifted my chin, meeting his eyes without flinching. “Connor, every single Monday you disappeared on me… were you with Lauren?” Connor went dead silent. After a long pause, he looked away, staring at the muted television screen. “June, you agreed to the forfeit on my birthday. Mondays are my private time. You don’t need to interrogate me.” I stared at the man I had loved for half a decade, and a single tear slipped down my cheek, hot and bitter. A flicker of guilt flashed across Connor’s features. “June, stop crying.” He reached for a box of tissues on the coffee table, but as his hand moved, his eyes caught the white paper lying beside it. His hand froze. “Advanced Gastric Adenocarcinoma.” Connor’s pupils contracted sharply. Then, his face darkened with ugly, defensive fury. “Have you lost your damn mind, June?!” he snarled, crumpling the paper in his fist. “Just because I drove your friend to the hospital yesterday, you go and forge a fake cancer report? Do you think this is funny?!” He tossed the crumpled sheet onto the sofa, his lip curling in disgust. “You think waving a fabricated diagnosis in my face is going to make me feel guilty? Grow up!” I dug my nails into my palms, a bitter, breathless laugh slipping from my throat. “Guilty? Why would you feel guilty, Connor? You just told me you did nothing wrong.” Connor choked on his words, his face flushing crimson with shame and rage. “Enough, June!” he roared. “I don’t care why you forged this garbage, but let me tell you something—you brought this on yourself! I was sick and tired of you expecting me to check in with you twenty-four hours a day! I just wanted one single day to myself!” Every word hit like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs. “I forced him?” For four years, I had never asked him for a single update. It was Connor who insisted on it. Once, when he had to go on a month-long business trip out of state, he had sent me hundreds of photos and texts every day—pictures of his breakfast, the view from his hotel, his meeting notes. He had kissed my forehead before leaving and said: “You don’t have to reply to all of them, sweetheart. I just want you to feel secure.” I had laughed softly back then, telling him: “Connor, you don’t need to report your day to me. I trust you.” And Connor had gotten genuinely defensive for the first time: “Of course I have to. That’s what a good boyfriend does. Unless you don’t want to hear from me? Unless you want to go out with other guys behind my back?!” Back then, he said it was what a devoted partner did. Now, he claimed I had suffocated him into straying. I stood up, took the wrinkled medical report from the couch, and folded it into my pocket. The desire to explain, to plead, to make him see the truth had withered to dust. “If you don’t believe it,” I whispered, “then don’t.” Connor hesitated, watching the dead calm on my face. “June, you…” I turned my back on him and walked toward the bedroom. Before I could close the door, my phone shrilled on the dresser. Seeing my grandmother’s name on the screen, I swiped to answer immediately. “June… June, please come…” Gran’s voice came through in broken, trembling sobs. “They’re throwing my things out… I have nowhere to go…” Terror pierced through my chest. I whipped around and charged back into the living room. “Connor! Who gave you permission to kick my grandmother out of the townhouse?!” He blinked, caught off guard. “What are you talking about? Who kicked her out?” “Six months ago, when Gran had a stroke, you were the one who insisted on moving her into our new house!” My voice cracked with fury. “You said the suburban air was better for her recovery! You said even after we got married, Gran would live with us forever! Why is she being thrown onto the street?!” Connor’s expression shifted, his jaw tightening defensively. “Watch your tone. Nobody is throwing her out. I just… I have other plans for that house. I was going to find her another assisted living place next week—” I didn’t wait for him to finish. I grabbed my keys, slammed the front door in his face, and sped toward the suburbs. When I pulled up to the modern two-story townhouse, my blood ran cold. Lauren was standing in the front yard beside three burly moving contractors, her arms crossed as she sneered down at my grandmother. “Look, old lady,” Lauren said, tapping her designer sandal against the stone path. “This house is mine now. Pack your junk and get out.” Gran sat huddled on the stone steps, her knuckles white around her wooden cane, her face pale as paper. “Aren’t you… aren’t you June’s friend? Does my granddaughter know what you’re doing?” Lauren rolled her eyes with venomous disgust. “Friend? Let me tell you something, you old bat—June has always been my pet. My convenient little servant, you get that? And now, I’m not just taking her house. I’m taking her man, too.” Lauren took a step forward and shoved Gran hard by the shoulder. “Now get the hell off my property!” Gran lost her balance, tumbling off the steps and hitting the flagstone path with a sickening thud. Something inside my brain snapped. A deafening roar filled my ears. I charged across the lawn, grabbed Lauren by the collar, and whipped her around, putting every ounce of my weight into a vicious, echoing slap across her face. “Smack!” Lauren staggered back, clutching her bright red cheek in utter shock. “J-June?! How are you—” “Who the hell gave you the right to lay a hand on my grandmother?!” Blind with rage, I raised my hand to strike her again, but a pair of iron arms grabbed me from behind, pinning my wrists together with brutal force. “Calm down, June!” Connor’s ragged breath hit my neck as he wrenched me back. I was forced to let go. The moment I was restrained, Connor completely let go of me and dropped to his knees in front of Lauren, his hands hovering frantically around her bruised cheek, his eyes overflowing with raw panic. “Does it hurt? Let me see.” Lauren burst into theatrical, trembling tears, burying her face into his chest. “Connor… she’s insane… she’s trying to kill me… I’m terrified…” I ignored them, scrambling across the grass to help my grandmother up. The poor woman was trembling violently, clutching her chest, her lips turning a faint, alarming blue. “Connor,” I rasped, my voice shaking with pure hatred. “Why is Lauren moving into the home we picked out together? Why are you evicting my sick grandmother?!” Connor frowned, keeping Lauren tucked firmly against his side. “Lauren’s lease ended, okay? She needed a comfortable place to stay during her first trimester, so I arranged for her to stay here temporarily—” “Is the baby in her stomach yours?” The yard fell dead silent. The wind rustled the maples overhead, the air turning suffocatingly thick. Connor’s face flickered through shock, guilt, and finally, a weary, hardened resolve. He straightened his spine, deciding to drop the facade entirely. “Yes,” he said. A bitter tremor ran down my spine. “Why?” Connor looked at me, his voice flat, emotionless, and colder than ice. “Because you’re boring, June. You’re boring to talk to, boring to live with, and completely boring in bed.” Every word drove like a rusted nail into my heart. “Life is too long, June. Spending the next fifty years with you would have been pure misery. Lauren is different. She has life in her. Besides, I only gave her one day a week. I was more than fair to you.” He glanced down at Lauren’s stomach. “As for the baby… it wasn’t planned. But it’s mine, and I’m keeping it.” I stood frozen in the damp grass, trembling so hard my teeth clattered. He held Lauren tightly against him, turning toward his car. “Her face is swollen from your hit. I need to take her to urgent care. While I’m gone, explain the situation to your grandmother and call a taxi.” They turned their backs on us. Behind me, Gran suddenly made a choked, gargling sound. She pitched forward, vomiting a dark pool of blood onto the pavement, her frail body seizing violently. “Gran!” Panic shredded my vocal cords. I lunged forward, catching her before her head hit the stones. “Connor! Connor, stop! Please, help me get my grandmother to the hospital!” Connor’s footsteps paused, but he didn’t turn around. “I know you have her emergency meds in your bag. Give her a pill. Old people have flare-ups all the time, June. Stop being so dramatic.” “Connor, we’re miles outside the city! Taxis don’t come out here, and an ambulance will take twenty minutes!” I scrambled to my feet and threw myself in front of his car hood, begging through broken sobs. “I’m begging you! Just drive her to the nearest ER! Please, Connor, please!” For a fraction of a second, Connor’s jaw loosened with hesitation. Beside him in the passenger seat, Lauren clutched her cheek and whimpered softly, “Connor… my head hurts so bad… and my lower stomach feels really tight…” Connor’s hesitation vanished instantly. He glared through the windshield. “Get out of the way, June. We have to go.” The engine roared. The sedan swerved around me, kicking up gravel, and vanished down the suburban road. I dropped back to the pavement. Gran’s breathing had slowed to shallow, rattling gasps. Her cold, paper-thin fingers reached out, locking onto my wrist with surprising, desperate strength. “June…” she wheezed, her clouded eyes searching mine. “Promise Gran… promise you’ll live… be happy…” Tears blinded me as I nodded frantically, pressing her freezing hand to my face. “I will, Gran, I promise, just hold on! The ambulance is coming, please don’t leave me—” She didn’t hear the end of my sentence. Her hand went slack in my grip, slipping to the cold concrete. … I don’t remember how I survived the hours that followed. The paramedic’s somber headshake. The fluorescent lights of the morgue. The sterile, metallic smell of death. The doctor murmuring condolences, advising me to make arrangements with a funeral home. I felt entirely hollowed out, as though my soul had been scooped from my ribs, leaving behind an empty shell of bone and muscle. I handled the funeral alone. A handful of colleagues and distant relatives came by to offer polite, muted condolences, but their voices sounded like they were speaking from underwater. Connor was the last to arrive. Now that the truth was out in the open, he didn’t even bother hiding. He walked into the memorial chapel holding Lauren’s hand. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured, his tone carrying a mild, distant sympathy. “I didn’t expect her to go so quickly. It’s tragic.” Lauren stood beside him wearing a vibrant, fitted silk dress, looking around the modest chapel with a disgusted pout. “Honestly, it’s such a waste of that gorgeous townhouse,” she whispered, not caring who heard. “Someone dying right outside gives the whole property terrible energy. Connor, babe, we’ll need to hire a professional cleansing crew before we move the nursery in.” Connor reached out and tapped the tip of her nose fondly. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.” A bitter, Arctic chill settled deep into my gut. I looked at the woman I had protected since seventh grade. Back then, she had been the awkward, bullied girl crying behind the gym bleachers, and I had shared my lunch, stood up to her tormentors, and held her hand. When we graduated high school, she had begged me to go to the same state college because she was terrified of being alone. And because my parents had died young, leaving me with only Gran, I had treasured her friendship like gold. In the end, I had nurtured a viper in my own garden. Lauren cast an appraising, superior look over me. “June, even after the baby is born, we can still be civil. But my child deserves a legitimate family. You understand that, right?” Connor’s eyes flickered. Lauren tugged at his arm, swaying gently. “Connor… you wouldn’t want our baby to be born without a father, would you? That would be so cruel.” Connor stared at the floor for a long moment, then stepped forward, pulling me into a quiet corner of the chapel. “June,” he whispered, keeping his voice reasonable. “Our wedding was supposed to be in six months. How about this—Lauren and I will get legally married at the courthouse first. Once the baby is born and settled, I’ll figure out a way to smooth things over with her, and I’ll give you a proper home. I won’t abandon you.” I looked at his earnest, self-righteous face, and slowly shook my head. “No need, Connor. I’m not going to live that long anyway.” His face darkened instantly, his patience snapping. “Are you still trying to pull that fake cancer stunt? At a funeral?! Grow up, June.” He turned away. “Consider it settled.” That night, Connor stayed behind to keep vigil in the chapel. He stood before Gran’s framed photograph, letting out a heavy, performative sigh. “It’s a shame. Gran left too soon. She won’t get to see us get married.” I glanced up at the clock on the chapel wall. The hands had just ticked past midnight. “It’s Monday,” I said, my voice dead and toneless. “Get out.” He blinked, taken aback. “June, that game… the penalty is over. Look at you. You can barely stand. Let me stay and look after you.” “The penalty?” I pulled my lips into a bloodless, humorless smile. “The penalty was never going to end, Connor. Lauren is waiting for you in our bed. Think about your pregnant fiancée.” Connor hesitated, torn. Finally, he unbuttoned his wool overcoat and draped it gently over my shoulders. “If you need anything… call me.” He turned and walked out into the rainy night. The moment the heavy chapel doors clicked shut, the coat slid off my shoulders, falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. I didn’t pick it up. In that vast, empty room, surrounded by white lilies and the cold scent of incense, I realized I had nothing left to live for. My family was gone. My love was a lie. My body was rotting from the inside out. A sudden, coppery warmth surged up my throat. I choked, vomiting a thick wave of dark blood across the marble tiles, before the world tilted sideways and plunged into pitch-black silence. … Connor felt an inexplicable, gnawing dread settle in his chest on the drive back to the townhouse. Even though he had left a couple of his frat brothers to keep an eye on the chapel and help pack up the flowers, a strange unease pricked at the back of his neck. The shrill ringing of his phone shattered the silence of the car. He picked it up on hands-free. His friend’s voice came through the speakers, breathless, chaotic, and laced with panic. “Connor! Connor, oh God, you have to get back here! June… she just collapsed! She threw up so much blood… the paramedics are saying it’s late-stage stomach cancer—” A deafening roar erupted in Connor’s skull. His vision went white, his knuckles locking around the steering wheel until the leather groaned.
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