I clamped both hands over my mouth and the sob broke through anyway.

Why?

Why, when I'd finally caught hold of happiness?

Why was heaven so cruel that it made me push Wayne away with my own hands?

The tears slid through my fingers and struck the floor.

Slowly, my reason came back to me.

I forced the tears away and scrambled, wretched, to gather the pill bottle off the floor.

A knock came at the door.

Then his voice, low and rough, fighting to stay steady.

"Lacey, the house is yours. I'm leaving it to you."

"I'm setting the keys in the entryway."

"If anything ever comes up, you can still call me..."

"We can still be friends. Right?"

The bottle trembled in my hand.

My mouth opened, but not a single word came out.

A long while passed before his footsteps moved off, growing fainter, and the front door clicked softly shut.

Then the feeling I'd held down broke loose all at once.

I dropped to the floor and wept until my voice gave out.

He was the one I'd wounded, and still he was thinking of me.

When I was little, my father came home drunk and he and my mother would fight. When it got bad, they smashed things. I'd be sleeping soundly and the crash of breaking things would jolt me awake. My father came home later and later, and the fights turned uglier. Every time their shouting woke me, my heart would skip and stutter while I curled into a corner and shook. Over time, that kind of noise became a trigger. Even after I grew up, a sudden loud sound could send me cowering in a corner, trembling.

Wayne knew loud sounds frightened me.

So he muffled everything in our home as much as he could.

Every door was padded.

Thick carpet covered every floor.

Even our dishes were plastic.

I'd weighed the flimsy things in my hand and teased him.

"This is too much. I'm not that fragile."

He only pulled me close, gentle.

"Lacey, everything I give you has to be the best."

"I want you to feel that marrying me was the most right decision you ever made in your life."

The most right decision I ever made in my life

was saying yes to Wayne on that rainy night.

But we were never meant to last.

There would be no more after this.

I gave a bitter smile and pushed myself up.

The bottle that wouldn't open suddenly gave.

I pressed the pill onto my tongue,

and the bitterness spread in an instant.

A cramp seized my stomach, and the taste of blood rose up my throat.

My hand flew up and clamped over my mouth.

But the blood spilled out between my fingers anyway, beyond stopping.

I stared at the blood dripping onto the floor, and the world went black.

My whole body folded and hit the ground.

I dragged my hand toward the phone.

I could not die here, in the home Wayne and I had made.

With shaking fingers I called my doctor.

"I think I'm dying..."

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a hospital bed.

Dr. Spencer Dawson stood over me, his face like a storm.

"You didn't follow a single instruction!"

"I told you to take your medicine properly. Did you?"

Weakly, I let my eyes fall shut.

I shook my head without a trace of shame. "No."

That made him angrier. "If you won't take your medicine, how do you expect to—"

"If I take my medicine properly, will I not die?"

His expression shifted, and he let out a sigh.

He tucked the blanket in around me.

"You need to be admitted. No more running off."

“I notified your family. They should be here soon.”

The words sent a jolt of panic through me, and I shot upright.

“Who did you call?”

Dr. Dawson pressed me back down onto the bed.

“Relax. I didn't call your husband. I called your mother.”

My mother?

Not great.

But still better than Wayne finding out I was dying.

The sharp click of heels came rattling down the hall outside.

“Lacey, do you have any idea how busy I am?”

“Now that you're dying, suddenly you remember I exist?”

“You marry into money and cut me off completely.”

“Did it ever cross your mind back then that one day you'd come crawling to me?”

My mother stood at the foot of my bed, fuming.

The same cheap, flashy getup she'd worn ten years ago.

Ten years ago, the moment she and my father divorced, she cut me out of her life.

She warned me never to come looking for her, not even if I were dying. As far as she was concerned, I didn't have a mother.

Then I married Wayne, and there she was again, fawning all over me.

I'd only given her a taste of her own medicine.

And somehow she still had the nerve to be upset.

It took effort to work the Cartier bracelet off my wrist.

I held it out to her. “Will money do?”

She snatched it from my hand and tucked it against her chest.

“Fine. I am your mother, after all.”

“I owe you that much.”

Then she dropped into the chair beside the bed, studying me with a smug little gleam in her eyes.

“So Wayne dumped you? Threw you out?”

I gave a tired nod.

“Yeah.”

“But he left me a lot of money.”

“Take good care of me, and when I'm gone, all of it's yours.”

She nodded, pleased, then let out a wistful sigh.

“He doesn't know you're dying, does he.”

I said nothing.

She gave a cold little snort.

“I know you too well. The more you love someone, the less you want to be their burden.”

“Those years your father was sick, he just drank and stayed away from home.”

“Picked vicious fights with me, drove me off, took your custody from me too.”

“After he died, I finally understood he'd done it on purpose. I cried over him more than once.”

She tipped her head back and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You fought with Wayne too?”

I closed my eyes, and the tears slid down my cheeks into the pillow.

“Yeah.”

“No regrets?”

I didn't answer her.

I didn't know.

I just didn't want Wayne to watch me die in front of him.

Once I was gone, he'd hear the news later.

It would be a little easier for him to bear that way.

Just like it had been for my mother.

On my third day in the hospital, Wayne called out of nowhere.

I couldn't bring myself to hang up.

After a moment's hesitation, I answered.

The instant his gentle voice came through the receiver,

my throat went tight.

“Lacey, I left something at the villa. Can I come by to get it?”

When had we become this polite with each other.

Three days. That was all it took for Wayne to talk to me like nothing had ever happened.

But I couldn't!

I didn't even dare open my mouth.

I was afraid that the moment I spoke, I'd burst into tears.

Afraid I'd be selfish enough to ask him to stay with me until the very end.

I bit my lip and managed a soft “Mm.”

Then, like a coward, I hung up.

The second the call ended, a wrenching pain twisted through my stomach.

I looked, anguished, at my mother peeling an apple,

blood seeping steadily from the corner of my mouth.

The apple dropped from her hands and hit the floor.

She screamed toward the hall, voice splitting.

“Doctor! Doctor! Someone save my daughter!”

Wayne came loaded with everything Lacey loved to eat, and he gave the doorbell a token press.

Three seconds. No answer.

He fished out the spare key.

He'd already made up his mind. So what if all Lacey wanted from him was his money?

He had money.

As long as he stayed rich, she'd stay by his side.

He slid the key into the lock and pushed the villa door open.

Inside, everything sat exactly as he'd left it.

He called her name low.

No answer.

He eased the bedroom door open.

Lacey's things lay scattered across the floor, and beside them was a smear of blood.

His chest seized.

He was reaching for his phone to call her when her laptop chimed with a new email.

Without a second of hesitation he opened the screen.

Every message was from the hospital.

His hands shook as he carefully clicked the newest one.

The moment he understood what it said, he tore for the door like a man gone mad.

"Lacey, please! Don't leave me!"