1 For ten years, I lived in Pierce Crawford’s shadow—an unlisted habit, a no-strings arrangement that lingered until we finally bypassed the girlfriend title entirely and signed a marriage license at City Hall. No fanfare. Just ink on state paper. Yet every single time we tried to hold an actual ceremony, his childhood friend found a way to pull him away. The first time, right as I was about to read my vows, Kinsley Shaw called sobbing over an acute dental emergency, and Pierce left to sit by her side at an oral surgeon’s office. The second time, as the ring was halfway down my finger, she had a manic episode in her high-rise, threatening to swallow a bottle of sedatives and step off the balcony. For our third attempt, I left nothing to chance. I slipped an envelope of cash to the head of security at the botanical garden estate, giving strict orders not to let anyone uninvited past the iron gates. Yet on the afternoon of the wedding, I was the one the guards barred from entering. Standing in the gravel turnaround, I watched through the French doors as the ivory silk gown I had guarded for a decade moved down the aisle—draped over someone else’s frame. In ten minutes, Kinsley walked the path I hadn’t managed to finish in ten years. Unlike before, her face carried a chalky, fragile pallor. Pierce held her against his side, his arm curved around her waist like a shield. “Kinsley was diagnosed with something aggressive,” he murmured when he finally stepped out to the foyer, keeping his voice low, protective. “Her only wish before going under the knife was to have this moment with me. You got the legal certificate, Natalie. After ten years together, missing one afternoon won’t break you.” Kinsley leaned against him, her hazel eyes brimming with well-rehearsed tears. “Pierce has been yours for a decade, Natalie. Before my surgeons cut me open, couldn’t you just lend him back to me for twenty-four hours?” Seeing her distress, Pierce instinctively stepped between us. “I know you’re upset, but she’s sick. Just be patient. We’ll reschedule.” I stood frozen on the marble steps. She’s sick. The words echoed, hollow and cruel, in my ringing ears. But I was dying too. The osteosarcoma had chewed through my marrow, hollowing out my bones until they felt like dry balsa wood. My final wish in this life was simple: to walk toward the man I loved wearing the wedding dress my mother had designed and sewn with her own hands before her fatal car crash. Pierce, my body doesn’t have another “next time.” “Why are you crying on a day like this?” Pierce glanced at the cluster of guests milling near the glass pavilion, his brow furrowing with sudden irritation. He drew me slightly aside, his leather-and-cedar scent washing over me as he thumbed away a tear from my cheek. “Look around you, Natalie. In front of all these people, the bride has to be Kinsley. Don’t make a scene. Don’t embarrass her.” I lifted my gaze. Every face in the crowd belonged to high society circles I had never been introduced to. The gilded welcome signs, the floral centerpieces, even the framed portrait by the registry desk had been swapped out for Kinsley’s delicate, smiling likeness. I was an intruder in my own wedding, looking every bit like an unhinged mistress arriving to cause a scandal. “Be good,” Pierce urged, his voice dropping into that familiar, persuasive hum he always used when asking me to yield. “Let me see her through the surgery and recovery. After that, I’ll throw you the most lavish reception in the city.” Third time. The exact same promise. A quiet, final snap occurred inside my chest. “Don’t bother,” I whispered, my vocal cords scratchy and thin. What was never truly mine wasn’t worth begging for. “Marry whoever you want, Pierce. Take the flowers, take the caterers, take the vows. But that gown is mine. Tell her to take it off.” I took half a step forward. My fingers hadn’t even grazed Kinsley’s sleeve when Pierce’s expression hardened into pure frost. He thrust an arm out, shoving me back to protect her. “Enough! It’s just fabric! Why do you have to be so bitterly calculating about every little thing?” His voice rose, carrying a sharp edge of disgust. “Look at the room. Have you no dignity left at all?” “I just want my mother’s work back…” His fingers clamped around my wrist like an iron vise, wrenching the brittle joint until pain flared all the way into my shoulder. I barely registered it. Through sheer, frantic instinct, I reached out again, desperate to peel my mother’s stitches away from Kinsley’s skin. With a shrill, theatrical gasp, Kinsley violently recoiled. Her elbow clipped the tiered champagne tower behind her. Crystal flutes cascaded down like an avalanche of ice, golden sparkling wine flooding the runner, soaking into the pristine vintage train, staining the French lace with amber streaks. “Oh, God! It hurts!” Kinsley cried, tumbling sideways into the spill. “Natalie, Pierce gave this dress to me! How is it yours? If you loved it that much, I would have lent it to you for your own day! You took him away from me for ten years… I might not survive this tumor, and all I wanted was one dream before the operating room!” Seeing her sobbing on the floor, Pierce’s face darkened with fury. But as he turned to lash out at me, he caught sight of where I had fallen. I had collapsed straight into the sea of broken glass. Jagged crystal had sliced clean through my right sleeve, crimson blood pooling out across the wet tiles, staining the hem of my coat. His reprimand died in his throat. He reached a hand toward me, an instinctive tremor of panic in his jaw. “Natalie—” “Natalie, does humiliating me make you feel powerful?” Kinsley choked out from behind him, collapsing into heavy shudders. The whispers from the onlookers rippled through the hall like a wave of locusts: “Look at her… Kinsley is literally facing surgery, and this girl throws a fit the second she doesn’t get her way.” “She used to work the VIP lounges at high-stakes poker clubs, didn’t she? Crawford picked her up off a velvet banquette. What class did you expect?” The shame was a dull, burning needle in my spine. The color drained entirely from my face. Pierce looked at the whispering crowd, then down at my bleeding arm. His outstretched hand recoiled, slipping back into his trouser pocket. “You heard them,” he said flatly, his tone stripped of warmth. “Get up on your own.” He didn’t say the rest aloud, but his eyes screamed it: Stop putting on a performance. I’m not buying it. A sudden, sickening crunch radiated up from my left fibula. The fall had fractured the bone. Cancer had turned my skeleton into honeycomb. Months of solo chemotherapy sessions had depleted whatever resilience I had left. Two weeks ago, I had finally gathered the courage to tell him, waiting up until midnight with my biopsy results on the kitchen counter. He hadn’t even let me finish my sentence. “I have back-to-back board meetings, Natalie. It’s just a routine clinic visit. Don’t be so fragile, alright?” The next morning, I saw Kinsley’s Instagram post. A photo of her and Pierce, huddled together at dawn behind an alley dumpster, cradling a shivering stray spaniel. Her caption read: If digging through city trash cans with me at 4:00 AM isn’t love, then love doesn’t exist. At 4:00 AM that same morning, I had been sitting under the fluorescent lights of the oncology infusion bay, staring at the purple hematomas blossoming over the backs of my hands. He didn’t know about the chemo, nor did he ever notice the bottles of liquid oxycodone tucked inside my nightstand drawer. “Are you going to lay there on the floor forever?” Pierce snapped, his patience evaporating. The agony in my fractured leg throbbed with every heartbeat, waking me to the brutal reality of the room. I looked up at him, stripping every shred of pride from my soul. “Take the ceremony,” I begged, my chin trembling against the wine-soaked floor. “Take him, Kinsley. Take everything. Just give me the gown. Please. It’s all I have left.” A collective gasp swept through the hall. Kinsley’s eyes rolled back, and her slight body went completely limp. Pierce caught her before she hit the ground, his expression twisting into sheer panic. He scooped her into his arms, spinning around to bolt for the double doors, entirely stepping over where I lay. As he lunged forward, the hem of my mother’s gown caught on a jagged triangle of broken glass bolted beneath a display pedestal. A loud, violent riiiip echoed through the hall. The vintage ivory silk—already ruined by alcohol—tore open down the spine, ribbons of hand-beaded lace shredding into tattered remnants against the wet floor. I stopped breathing. The last thing my mother ever made for me. The dress she promised would stand in her place at the altar. Ruined. Just like everything else I had ever tried to keep. No matter how tightly I clenched my fists, it all slipped through like water. Pierce paused at the threshold, glancing back over his shoulder with utter disappointment. “It was just a dress, Natalie. Did you really have to push her to the brink of death to feel satisfied?” The groom carried his bride out into the rain. The guests drifted out behind them in hurried murmurs. Within minutes, the cavernous reception hall fell dead silent, leaving only the smell of spilled champagne and the metallic tang of my own blood. I dragged myself across the glass, clutching a severed scrap of lace against my chest. I wiped the tears from my cheeks with a trembling hand, forcing a hollow, ragged laugh. “It’s okay,” I whispered to the empty air, trying to stitch my sanity together. “Mom’s original design sketchbook is still in the cedar chest. As long as I have the sketches, I can reconstruct it. I can fix it.” Clinging to that singular lifeline, I hauled my broken leg into a rideshare and made it back to the penthouse we shared. I dragged myself to the master closet. The locked brass drawer had been pried open. The leather-bound sketchbook was gone. I tore through the room like a madwoman, tossing linens and drawers until my knees gave out against the rug. Beside the nightstand, caught in the plush wool carpet, lay a diamond drop earring. Kinsley’s. My hands shook so violently I could barely unlock my phone to dial Pierce. “Why is Kinsley’s jewelry in our bedroom?” I choked out the moment he picked up. “Kinsley needed full-time care closer to the hospital,” Pierce answered smoothly, background hospital monitors beeping behind him. “Our place was sitting empty while you were at your appointments anyway—” “Did she take my mother’s sketches?” I cut him off, my voice shrill, cracking at the edges. There was a heavy silence on the line. When Pierce spoke again, his tone was frigid. “What kind of attitude is that? You nearly killed her at the venue, and now you’re accusing her of grand larceny? Kinsley studied fine arts. She thought your mother’s silhouettes were striking. She asked if she could look at them, and I told her she could have them.” Something vital inside me collapsed. The tears came hard, burning my throat. “Who gave you the right to give away the only piece of my mother I had left?” Another pause. Then rustling leather, and Kinsley’s breathy, sweet voice took over the receiver. “Natalie? Pierce said you need to learn that actions have consequences after what you did today. But I stood up for you. He said if you come down to the surgical wing and apologize to me in front of everyone, he might consider giving the notebook back.” When I pushed open the heavy door to Room 704, over a dozen pairs of eyes locked onto me. The room was packed with Kinsley’s social circle—trust-fund kids, fashion influencers, gallery heirs. “I’m here,” I said, leaning hard against the doorframe to keep my fractured leg from buckling. “Give me my mother’s book.” “Not so fast,” Pierce said, stepping out from the corner. “Apologize to Kinsley first. Because of your tantrum over a piece of clothing, she’s been hyperventilating for hours. The floor doctor said her vitals are unstable.” I lowered my eyes, my lips parting to force the words out. “An apology isn’t enough,” one of Kinsley’s friends sneered, stepping forward with his phone camera raised. “You ruined her once-in-a-lifetime day and nearly sent her into cardiac arrest. If you want those papers back, get on your knees and hit the linoleum. Admit you’re a homewrecking opportunist who stole Crawford for ten years, and swear you’ll never cross her again.” Another girl chimed in, tossing the leather sketchbook carelessly from hand to hand. She set it down right over an open carton of takeout noodles, letting grease soak through the aged paper. My vision blurred. A physical ache squeezed my heart until I couldn’t draw oxygen. Slowly, carefully, I let my good knee hit the hospital tile. Then the fractured one. The agony shot through my skull like lightning. I pressed my forehead to the floor. “I’m… a homewrecker,” I whispered against the cold wax. “I swear… I will never try to keep her man again.” The rapid clicks of smartphone shutters filled the room. I struck my head against the floor three times, the impact dull and sickening. “Can I have it back now?” I wheezed. Pierce’s brow twitched, an uncomfortable shadow passing over his features, but he said nothing. Kinsley’s friends erupted into snickers. “Look at her. When it comes to clinging to Pierce’s wallet, she really doesn’t have an ounce of shame. Tells her to kneel, and down she goes.” “Well, look where she started. Pierce bought her out of that private VIP card room when she was twenty-one, remember? When a girl comes from the gutter, she’ll do anything to stay in a penthouse.” The floor beneath my knees was freezing. I stayed bowed, letting their venom wash over me like dirty rain. The door swung open, and a clinical nurse bustled in carrying a clipboard. She stopped dead when she saw me crumpled on the floor. “Ms. Miller? What on earth are you doing here?” She hurried over, looking baffled. “Dr. Bradley—the oncology surgical chair you’ve been on the waitlist for over the last six months—just had a sudden cancellation this afternoon. He’s in the clinic wing right now! You need to get over there immediately!” Pierce’s head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing sharply. “Why are you on an oncology waitlist? What are you sick with?” Before I could draw breath, Kinsley spoke up from the bed, her hands clasped over her chest. “Natalie… thank you so much,” she gasped, her voice trembling with emotion. “I had no idea you knew Dr. Bradley was consulting today. His surgical calendar is booked out for the next year… to think you used your connections to secure this slot for me…” Pierce’s guarded expression instantly softened into warm relief. He looked down at me with rare approval. “I see. You were planning this as a peace offering. I suppose I misjudged you.” “You did,” I interrupted, lifting my head. “It wasn’t for her.” I had waited six agonizing months for this appointment, enduring endless referrals, praying for a surgical window to resect the tumor before it colonized my lungs. I had long abandoned hope. To have it materialize on the day of my death sentence was nothing short of a cruel joke. Ignoring Pierce’s darkening gaze, I hauled myself upright, gripping the edge of a rolling tray to steady my fractured leg. “I knelt. I said what you wanted. Give me the book.” As I shifted weight, Pierce’s eyes fell straight to my swollen, crooked ankle. His pupils contracted. “What happened to your leg?” Before I could answer, his palm pressed against my forehead. His touch was warm, familiar, and utterly terrifying. “You’re burning up. You have a fever?” Between the shock and the infection brewing in my bone, my body had tipped into systemic fever. My lips trembled. A soft, theatrical sob broke out behind us. Kinsley pulled the white hospital blanket to her chin, her eyes red. “Natalie, taking Pierce for ten years wasn’t enough? Now that I’m facing real mortality, do you have to mock my illness by pretending to be sick too?” Her circle jumped in like a pack of wolves. “Pierce, don’t fall for this trashy routine. Women like her know every trick in the book. She saw how attentive you were to Kinsley, so she paid off a nurse to run in here with a script to guilt-trip you!” The warmth in Pierce’s face vanished, replaced by an icy, visceral revulsion. His grip tightened around my arm, the pressure grinding the fractured bones beneath the skin. “Natalie, do you have any bottom line at all?” he hissed, his voice trembling with disgust. “She is fighting for her life, and you turn severe illness into a cheap performance? You sicken me.” He shoved me away. Turning to his assistant, he barked, “Get Kinsley into a wheelchair. Take her to Dr. Bradley’s office on the fourth floor right now.” Kinsley was tucked gently into a chair. As they wheeled her past me, out of Pierce’s line of sight, the corners of her mouth curved into a sharp, victorious smirk. “You shouldn’t have played sick, Natalie,” she whispered under her breath. “Thanks for the specialist slot, though. I’ll make sure he takes good care of me.” Pierce held the stained leather sketchbook in his hand, looking down at me with absolute authority. “If you want this book back, sign over the clinic intake form to Kinsley without another word. Her clock is ticking. I don’t have time for your childish games.” Her clock. I almost laughed. My cancer had already entered stage IV; the bone was paper, the metastases were settling in my pleura. There was no surgery left that could save me anyway. I watched him walk out, cradling Kinsley as if she were made of the finest Venetian glass. I reached out, took the grease-stained sketchbook from the counter where he left it, and limped out into the gray evening. I didn’t call a cab to the hospital clinic. I took a bus north, out toward the coastal bluffs, toward the cemetery where my mother rested. Six months ago, upon receiving my diagnosis, I had emptied my savings to put down a non-refundable deposit on the single open plot directly beside her, overlooking the Pacific ocean. It was a good spot. High on the cliff, wind off the salt water. A violent gust tore across the grass, sending a spasm through my chest. I doubled over, coughing violently into my sleeve until a hot, dark clot of blood spattered across the gravel. Tumor-induced hyperthermia had set in. I reached into my pocket for my prescription bottle. The plastic cylinder was bone-dry. I offered the empty bottle a faint, bitter smile. My engine had finally burned its last drop of fuel. Too exhausted to move another inch, I slumped against the cold granite of my mother’s headstone and closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me. A harsh beam of white light jolted me awake. The cemetery superintendent stood over me, looking irritated. I thought he was going to cite me for trespassing after hours. Instead, he cleared his throat and adjusted his clipboard. “Ms. Miller? There’s been an issue with your plot reservation. A private buyer came in with an immediate cash offer well above market rate. We’re going to have to cancel your hold.” I blinked against the flashlight, my brain sluggish. “What? But I paid fifty percent down… the contract was locked…” “Your little deposit doesn’t cover our operating costs,” the man said dismissively. “The company will refund your money with a standard five-percent inconvenience fee. Let’s go. Stop squatting here.” “No,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around my mother’s stone. “I promised her. When my time came, I promised I would be right here with her, watching the water. Please. I don’t have anything else.” The manager sneered, stepped back, and pulled out his phone. Ten seconds later, my phone vibrated in my coat pocket. Pierce. “Kinsley mentioned you reserved a plot on the northern headlands,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “The view is peaceful. She wants it. Her surgery date is approaching, and having her final affairs settled brings her peace of mind. I’ll wire you triple what you paid.” I didn’t speak. Hearing my silence, he resorted to his usual transactional cadence. “Don’t be petty, Natalie. It’s a patch of grass. Letting her have it gives her comfort before a major operation. Whatever pride you lose today, I’ll make it up to you later.” Later. A wet, broken laugh tore out of my throat, dissolving into tears. “Pierce… you won’t have a later. Do you even know why I bought this ground?” For a fraction of a second, something in his voice faltered—a sudden, uncharacteristic hesitation. “Why?” Before I could answer, Kinsley’s weeping voice bled through the speaker: “Pierce, it’s my fault… if I just died quietly, you wouldn’t have to fight with her. I just wanted a place where I could look at the ocean… you promised me when we were kids that we’d watch the waves together forever…” At the mention of their childhood pact, Pierce’s hesitation vanished. “You aren’t dying, Natalie,” he said, cold and weary. “Let Kinsley have the plot. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” He ended the call. Seeing that the wire had cleared, the cemetery manager waved over two private security guards. “Get her off the property.” I locked my fingers around the rough edges of my mother’s headstone. The granite chewed through my skin, tearing my nails, coating the gray rock in dark streaks of red, but I refused to let go. They pried my wrists back until my bones clicked, dragging me across the wet turf and dumping me outside the rusted perimeter gates. I lay in the dirt, my phone buzzing continuously on the ground beside me. Dozens of notification banners flashed across the cracked screen. Vicious text messages, direct message alerts from unknown handles, death threats. Headlights cut through the sea mist. A black van screeched to a halt at the curb, and half a dozen people piled out, blinding me with mobile ring lights and professional camera rigs. “That’s her! That’s the escort who tried to extort the Crawford heir!” “Look at her! The girl in the hospital is literally in critical condition, and this homewrecker had the nerve to crash the ceremony!” “The video of her on her knees is trending number one on TikTok! She confessed it herself—she’s a professional parasite! Teach her a lesson!” The livestream counter on the lead phone spiked into tens of thousands of viewers. Before I could shield my head, heavy boots and fists rained down on my shoulders, my ribs, my broken leg. My fractured fibula splintered completely under a steel-toed shoe. Inside my chest, a mass gave way. Warm, dark blood erupted from my mouth, pooling across the wet asphalt. The headlights spun into long streaks of silver and red. The shouting voices grew muffled, as though submerged beneath twenty feet of ocean water. Then, the world went entirely, mercifully dark. Back at the university medical center, Pierce sat in the private consultation suite while Dr. Bradley reviewed Kinsley’s intake file. He had forced Natalie to trade her mother’s notebook for this slot, expecting a complex surgical roadmap. Dr. Bradley tossed the thin folder onto the mahogany desk with unconcealed irritation. “Ms. Shaw, where are your primary imaging scans? Where is your surgical biopsy report?” Kinsley shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her gaze darting to the floor. “They’re… the hospital in Chicago has them… I requested the transfer…” “I have terminal patients lined up outside this corridor!” Dr. Bradley cut her off coldly. “Do not waste my time with fabricated paperwork. You do not have a malignant tumor.” Pierce frowned, stepping forward. A sudden, cold dread prickled at the base of his neck. He remembered the nurse’s words in the hallway: She took the slot from another patient who has been waiting six months… someone whose condition has deteriorated dangerously. Pierce stood abruptly, his heart hammering against his ribs. He turned to question the nurse, but his phone rang. An unfamiliar number with a municipal precinct prefix. “Mr. Crawford?” an officer’s voice said, formal and sterile. “We’ve recovered the body of a female decedent identified as Natalie Miller near the coastal bluffs outside the city cemetery. Your number was listed as her sole emergency contact. We need you to come down to the coroner’s office to identify the remains.”
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