Marcus's sixth patent had just gone through, and he said he was going to give me the grand proposal, the one that would close out four years of dating.

The campus quad was covered in candles and roses. Marcus stood in the middle of it holding a bouquet, his eyes shining.

He was halfway through his speech when his graduate student Claire threw herself into his arms. The plain silver band on her finger, identical to his, caught the candlelight.

The crowd went still, then started murmuring. Every face turned toward them with the kind of look people get when they think they've stumbled onto a secret.

And I was standing in the middle of that crowd. His girlfriend of four years, the one he had kept hidden the entire time, watching them hold each other. Watching him swallow the rest of his speech. Watching him hand my flowers to her.

My phone buzzed in my hand. A message from S.

"Sweetheart. Have you thought about it? We know we were wrong."

Marcus's sixth patent had just gone through, and he said he was going to give me the grand proposal, the one that would close out four years of dating.

The campus quad was covered in candles and roses. Marcus stood in the middle of it holding a bouquet, his eyes shining.

Those flowers were meant for me. Claire thought the proposal was for her, and she threw herself into his arms before he could open his mouth.

I stood in the crowd and watched him hand my flowers to her.

I pulled out my phone. My fingers were shaking as I typed.

"Clear this up. Now."

Thirty minutes later, he replied. "Claire is young. She got carried away. If I make a public statement, people will tear her apart. Don't read too much into it."

I stared at the screen and gripped the phone so hard the case bent.

Nice work, Claire.

Claire was Marcus's PhD student.

An orphan who had grown up in foster care.

Marcus pitied her, and that pity had always tilted into something closer to favoritism.

A message popped up in the department group chat. Someone had shared a post from the campus social platform.

hashtags: [Dr. Marcus Hale and grad student Claire, relationship confirmed], [Breaking down every soft moment we missed]

The post had a photo of Claire teary-eyed, Marcus down on one knee, and an older shot of the two of them walking through campus together. The comments were unhinged.

"She looks shocked. She had no idea Professor Hale was going to be this brave, going against everything to claim her. I'm sobbing."

"I cannot believe my ship sailed. It's fate, I swear."

"The straight-laced professor and the brilliant student. They're perfect together."

Claire had liked that last one.

I looked at the comments. I looked at the like. My chest got tighter.

Claire could like a comment. Marcus couldn't post a denial.

There was no logic to it. He just didn't want to.

Again.

I thought about all the other times.

The first time he took Claire to an amusement park behind my back, I tried to break up with him. He cried. He apologized. He said he just felt sorry for her, that he knew it was wrong, that he was begging me not to leave.

I told myself maybe he really was just soft-hearted, and that didn't mean he didn't love me.

I forgave him.

The second time was when students caught him and Claire in matching hoodies and posted about it. I tried to break up with him again. He told me Claire had saved up her café tips for months, that it was the first gift she had ever given anyone, and he couldn't bring himself to refuse her. He swore there wouldn't be a next time.

I told myself I was being petty. It was just a sweatshirt.

I forgave him again.

On my birthday, which also happened to be our four-year anniversary, he brought Claire along. He was polite with me, and distant. Every other sentence was Dr. Sinclair this, Dr. Sinclair that. With Claire, he was soft.

I sat there trying to remember when he had stopped calling me Evelyn. At the beginning it had been Evelyn. Then Ev. Then somewhere along the way it had become Dr. Sinclair.

Claire said something to him. He turned his head to listen, and he smiled.

It was the same smile he had had the first year he knew me.

I had lost count of how many times I had tried to break up with him.

He just said he hadn't thought it through, that he would make it up to me, that he loved me. Claire had never been to a restaurant this nice, and he had wanted her to see something different. As her advisor, he had to look out for her.

I told myself one more chance.

I asked him over and over to keep distance.

He told me over and over that Claire had no family, and since he was her advisor he was basically her guardian.

Every time I let it go, he took more.

I opened our chat again. My thumb hovered over the words "Let's break up."

Ten minutes passed. The screen went dark. No new message from him.

I slid the silver band off my finger and hit send.

He replied almost instantly. "Stop. We'll talk when you get home."

Then another message: "I baked you those strawberry cookies you like. Come home. Love you."

I locked the screen, tuned out the gossip around me, and started walking toward faculty housing.

I saw them outside the building.

"Aw, you actually made my favorite cookies?" Claire was holding the box I had bought.

They were standing close. His hand was at her waist. He could have leaned down and kissed her without moving his feet.

She said something, and he laughed. It was soft.

When he first came to the university, he had no money. His apartment was a long way from the lab. Whenever I worked late, he waited. When my data wouldn't make sense, he would sit with me until dawn going through the raw records. Once I was sick and couldn't keep anything down, and he drove forty minutes off-campus to bring me soup. He told me it was on the way. It was raining. His jacket was soaked through.

Back then, Marcus actually loved me.

I should mention that I had been hired at this university two years before he was. I already had a reputation.

When we got together, Marcus asked me to keep us private. He said he didn't want people saying his career was built on Evelyn Sinclair's name. He wanted to prove himself first, and then go public.

He had proved himself. And the woman beside him wasn't me.

He had aimed too low for himself.

I let out a laugh and threw the ring on the ground. It made a small bright sound against the concrete.

Both of them turned.

Marcus's face dropped. "Evelyn, what are you doing here? It's not what it looks like."

He moved to hug me. I stepped back.

"Dr. Sinclair, are you okay?" Claire said, eyes wide.

I looked at her. "Drop the act. Last time, you stood outside my office watching us. Was that not enough for you?"

I stepped closer and glanced back at Marcus. "What was it then? You watched us and turned red. Now you finally got the hug. Is it everything you imagined?"

Marcus's face went dark. "What the hell are you saying!"

"No, I didn't see anything, I swear," Claire said, waving her hands. Then, in a small voice, "I was just so moved by how sincere Professor Hale was. I grew up in foster care, and I've never met anyone like that. I was jealous of his girlfriend, that's all. I never thought people would twist it into this."

She bent forward to bow, lost her balance, and pitched sideways with a small cry.

Marcus caught her. He stepped in front of her, half-shielding her with his body. "Claire and I have done nothing wrong. Don't put your sick assumptions on us."

Looking at the two of them, him protective and her wounded, something in me went completely cold.

I looked Marcus in the eye. "We're done."

He froze. The color drained from his face. He grabbed my wrist. "I told you we'd talk at home. Once this dies down, I'll go public. Okay?"

He still thought I was throwing a tantrum.

He still thought he could smooth it over the way he always did.

I shook my head, slowly. "We. Are. Done."

Claire's face fell. "Dr. Sinclair, please, I'm sorry. Don't be angry at the professor. He hasn't slept properly in months. It hurts me to see."

Then, quieter: "And the drug he developed just got FDA approval. The reviews are amazing. His career is taking off. Being with him, you'd have everything." Her voice trailed off.

I laughed. "If I wanted name or money, I'd already have both."

To protect his fragile little ego, I had never told Marcus how many patents I held or how many studies I had run.

They had no idea. When I finished my doctorate, half the research institutes and universities in the country had tried to recruit me. Even as a grad student I had been on the team for several drug developments. I held multiple U.S. patents. After I started working, I basically lived in the lab.

And my family…

I glanced at Marcus. "When I started dating Professor Hale here, he was nobody."

It was my second year on faculty, and his first.

We ate together a lot. He couldn't afford anywhere off-campus, so we used the faculty discount at the dining hall and argued about research over reheated pasta.

I had a field trip planned. I needed to study a medicinal plant in its native habitat in the mountains.

Marcus came with me.

We stayed at a small inn in town.

The night before we were supposed to drive back, an earthquake hit.

The emergency alert went off on my phone, but I slept through it.

Marcus broke the door open and woke me.

It was already too late.

The building was coming down. He yanked me out of bed and shoved me under the table, then braced himself over me.

I could hear that he was hurt and trying not to make a sound. I didn't say anything, and neither did he.

When the rescue team found us, they saw him first. He told them there was someone underneath him and to get her out first.

I remember thinking I was going to love this person for a long time.

After that, things moved fast between us.

When he told me he loved me, he said he would always stand behind me and protect me.

But somewhere around the time he took Claire on as a student, the person standing behind me wasn't him anymore.

Marcus saw me drift off, and his voice went hard. "Take it back, Evelyn. Pretend you never said it."

I looked at him like I was meeting him for the first time, and shook my head. "No."

I turned and walked away.

It didn't matter how good things used to be.

I don't hang on to what's gone bad.

I couldn't go back to the apartment. The thought of it made my skin crawl.

I went back to the lab. I needed something to do with my hands.

I dripped the plant extract into a petri dish and turned to log the data.

There was a bang behind me.

A wall of heat hit me, and I was on the floor.

My vision went black.

My back was burning.

Pure survival instinct started dragging me toward the door.

Everything blurred. I heard the lab door beep open.

Running footsteps.

"Dr. Sinclair."

"Dr. Sinclair."

Lisa, one of my students, had come to pick up a report. She found me face-down on the floor and called 911.

On the way to the hospital, my head was spinning. The doctor told me not to fall asleep. They said a student couldn't authorize surgery and they needed my emergency contact, so they asked for my name, my phone passcode, and a number.

I gave them Marcus's name without thinking.

The call connected.

"Hi, is this the emergency contact for Evelyn Sinclair? Ms. Sinclair was burned in a lab explosion. She's being transported to University Medical Center. Can you come in?"

"What did you say?" Marcus's voice jumped. "I'll be right there."

Then, behind him, Claire's voice: "Marcus, the stove. Your food's going to burn."

Footsteps. Then her again, all concern: "Was that Evelyn? Is something wrong with Dr. Sinclair? You should go."

Then, lower: "After what happened today, she's probably upset. She might be trying to scare you, you know, hurting herself for attention."

"You should…"

"Evelyn." Marcus's voice came back on the line, cold and tired and impatient all at once. "There's a limit to this. You don't get to scare me with stuff like this. You're an adult. Be responsible for your own body."

Then the line went dead.

I stared at the black screen, and I couldn't hold it anymore. My throat closed up.

The pain in my back pulled all the way up to my chest.

Tight and burning.

His name was still saved as my emergency contact.

We used to be good. The memories came back without permission.

Once I had fainted in the lab from bad cramps, and they had taken me in. When I woke up, Marcus was passed out at my bedside, unshaven. He had driven all night from a conference. He stroked my face and held me and told me he had been terrified. He told me he had answered a call like that once before, when his mother went into the hospital, and by the time he got home she was gone. He said he was never going to let me go to a hospital alone again.

That Marcus, the one who had looked at me like that, who had spoken to me like that, who had treated me like something he didn't want to break, kept flashing through my head.

And then he blurred and shattered.

"Dr. Sinclair. Dr. Sinclair." The EMT was shaking me. "Your phone."

The screen said S.

"Sweetheart. So you finally decided to pick up." His voice was low and warm.

Everything I had been holding in came up at once. I started crying.

"Sebastian. It hurts. I want to go home."

I was the eldest daughter of the Sinclairs.

I had always wanted to go into medicine, but my family forbade it. My aunt had died from a malpractice case, and they wouldn't let me anywhere near a clinical career.

Then they tried to push me into an arranged marriage.

So I ran.

But when something breaks you, all you want is home.

On the other end, I heard glass crash to the floor. "What's wrong? Where are you right now?"

"There was an explosion. I got hurt. They're taking me to University Medical Center."

Sebastian's voice went flat and fast. "Which road are you on? Give me the plate number."

A few seconds of muffled instruction to his assistant.

"Tell the ambulance to reroute to Mercy General. The OR is ready and the doctors are waiting. I've got someone clearing traffic for you."

Then, softer: "I'm coming. Hold on."