Panic flickered through her eyes. She started to say something, but behind her Leigh Delgado sucked in a sharp breath.

"Ah! My hands!"

Annette turned, saw the angry red welts spreading across his skin, and at once draped his arm over her shoulder.

"Oliver, I don't agree to break up, and I'm not moving out."

"Wait for me."

Then she steadied Leigh and led him off to find a doctor.

His arm circled her slim waist, and she didn't push it away.

What kind of normal boss and subordinate touched each other like that?

I gave a tight smile, closed my fist around the ring, and signaled Kevin to push me over to the trash can.

I looked at the two labels, recyclable and non-recyclable.

I dropped it into the second one without a moment's hesitation.

"You're not even running a fever..."

Kevin pressed the back of his hand to my forehead and stared at me like he'd seen a ghost.

"Oliver, did that crash knock something loose in your head?"

"Since you were eighteen you've sworn it was Annette or no one, for the rest of your life. Why'd you finally wise up now?"

I leaned back in the wheelchair and let out a small laugh.

"I just suddenly felt like there was no point anymore."

Last night, when we got home, I'd said to Annette, fresh out of her shower:

"Tomorrow's Saturday. Let's go look at wedding dresses and suits, and we can settle on the reception outfit while we're at it."

She glanced at her phone.

"Tomorrow won't work. I have to meet an old classmate about a partnership."

"As for the dress, it's for the wedding photos, so pick whatever you like. I'll go along with whatever you choose."

I looked at her face and wanted to say that the wedding was a once-in-a-lifetime thing for both of us, that we could pick this part out together.

But the words stalled on my tongue, and remembering how she hated having her plans thrown off, I changed course and asked instead:

"Then can you drop me off tomorrow morning? My car's in for servicing."

She agreed without hesitation.

"Sure."

This morning I got up, finished getting ready, and sat in the living room waiting for her.

The phone she'd left on the table buzzed quickly, the contact name reading Assistant Delgado.

I picked it up and pressed answer, and Leigh's voice came through, thin and strained.

【"Ms. Sullivan... I know I shouldn't bother you on your day off, but Julie Fletcher, the CEO over at Apex Holdings, won't take no for an answer about brunch. I want to turn her down, but I'm afraid it'll hurt the new project..."】

I knew Annette's temper, so I answered for her.

【"Assistant Delgado, Ms. Sullivan has plans today. It's not convenient."】

【"If you can't handle it, then quit."】

The line went quiet, and finally he hung up.

Annette came out of the bedroom, walked up to me, and leaned her body forward toward mine.

"Who just called me?"

I tied her scarf for her, the same as always.

"Assistant Delgado."

"What did he say?"

"Julie Fletcher from Apex Holdings asked him to brunch, and I..."

Before I could finish, Annette snapped upright.

The scarf pulled taut against my fingernail and split it.

Her brows drew together and her face darkened.

"Julie Fletcher?"

I said nothing, eyes dropping to my split nail, a fine sting threading through the tip.

Her expression shifted, and she snatched up her phone, fired off a message at lightning speed, and hit send.

Then she dropped a kiss on the corner of my mouth.

"Take a cab over yourself. Whatever you like, just put it on my card."

"You know what Julie Fletcher's like. He can't handle her on his own."

With that she rushed out the door, never once noticing that I was wincing in pain.

I got out the first-aid kit, disinfected the nail, trimmed off the broken part with the clippers, and pressed on a bandage.

I'd lost any mood for trying on suits, so I just texted Kevin to go get a drink instead.

I didn't feel like calling an Uber, so I scanned a bike and pedaled along, taking my time.

Then bad luck piled on bad luck, and a car running a yellow light slammed into me.

Before I could even register what had happened, both the driver and the car were gone.

The kickstand had torn a bloody gash down my shin, and I lay sprawled on the asphalt, shaking all over from the pain.

A man got out of his car, called the police for me, and called an ambulance.

His phone kept ringing while we waited. The crowd was loud, so he put it on speaker, and I caught most of it.

He hadn't shown up on time, he'd held up work, and both his boss and his client were furious.

I felt awful about it and told him he should just go.

But he only smiled and said, "It's fine, man. This is nothing, I can handle it. Right now the main thing is you."

Then he stayed with me the whole time, kept me calm, and didn't leave until the paramedics arrived.

In the five minutes after I'd called Annette, my mind churned.

Three months ago, all I'd wanted was a seafood dinner while it was in season, but Annette said she didn't like food you had to crack open, so she told Kevin to take me and said she'd pick up the tab.

And today she'd gone out with Leigh.

She didn't like having her schedule thrown off, so I'd had to go try on the suit alone.

But she'd promised to drive me, and then one call from Leigh and she'd dumped me.

And then there was that charger.

Once, I'd only borrowed it to try it, and she'd given me the cold shoulder for a week.

Now Leigh was using it to run a little fan.

I thought again of that man's eyes when he said, "Right now the main thing is you."

When the traffic officer came, the stranger offered his contact information without being asked and said he'd be willing to serve as a witness.

I lay in the ambulance, the wound throbbing, while the paramedics took my blood pressure, stopped the bleeding, and asked about my medical history. Every one of them was gentle.

For ten years, I had been waiting for Annette to break a rule for me.

I waited for her to make one exception, to pick up one of my calls in the middle of her chaos, to shift her schedule once for my sake, to set me firmly at the very top of her priorities.

I kept to her rules, bent around her temper, loved her carefully for ten years.

And yet, in this moment, the one willing to put me first, to ache for me, to set me above everything else, was a stranger I'd met by chance.

That was when I finally understood. She didn't love me.

So I shouldn't keep setting myself up to be let down either.

Lying in the hospital bed, I typed and deleted and trimmed the message in the group chat with both sets of parents, and finally hit send.

I'd barely closed my eyes when the wound got infected and my fever spiked to nearly a hundred and four.

Kevin stayed by my side, running back and forth, and it wasn't until the middle of the night that the temperature came down.

Looking at how worn out his face had been lately from working on his project, I hired an aide and told him to go home and rest.

Early the next morning, a smothered sound of crying woke me.

I cracked my eyes open, groggy, every part of me aching and limp.

Through the blur, I saw Aunt Darlene standing in the doorway of the ward, wiping at her eyes, looking at Annette with the disappointment and anger of someone watching a child throw away everything good in her hands.

"Annie, how can you have so little sense?"

"Oliver's hurt this badly, and you still had it in you to go look after your assistant?"

"Tell me the truth. Did you really do something to wrong him?"

"He's been with you ten years. I know his temper, I know what kind of man he is. If he weren't truly done with you, he would never bring up a breakup at a time like this!"

Annette's brow furrowed.

"Mom, you don't understand what happened. Yesterday I couldn't just leave Leigh on his own..."

Aunt Darlene was shaking with anger, her voice climbing.

"But you could leave Oliver, is that it? Annette, how are you exactly like your father!"

As the words left her, she turned and met my eyes, gathered up a smile, and hurried into the room.

When she saw the gauze wrapped around my leg, her eyes went red all over again.

"Oliver, I'm so sorry. I raised that ungrateful girl and clearly didn't raise her right, and you're the one who's paid for it."

"And these engagement gifts—we can't keep them. Won't you give Annie another chance?"

I was still puzzling over that when my phone lit up. A voice message from my father.

The room was quiet, and I didn't want it playing out loud, so I switched it to text.

Every line of it carried his warmth, and underneath the warmth, a steadiness that felt like solid ground.

He said he would always respect whatever I decided. He would always have my back, no matter what, and the house would always be there if I ever needed somewhere to fall back to.

The warmth of it settled in my chest. I looked up at Aunt Darlene, my voice steady now.

"Aunt Darlene, you don't owe me anything."

"I just wasn't lucky enough to be your son-in-law."

"If my mother were here, she'd make the same choice my father did."

At the mention of my mother, Darlene went still.

The two of them had been friends since they were girls.

Work had pulled them to opposite ends of the country for years.

Then, by some twist of luck, they'd both married into the same city, and the friendship picked up right where it left off.

The year I started high school, Darlene's husband had an affair.

Darlene came to my mother, broke down, and asked her to come along and catch him in the act.

In the middle of the shoving, something went wrong. He put a knife into my mother, and her kidney ruptured.

She survived the surgery, but she was never the same after that.

She died the year before I finished college.

All these years, Darlene had carried the guilt, and she'd loved me like a son of her own.

Once she learned Annette and I were together, she stood by me, right or wrong, every single time.

In the end she let out a long breath, her eyes tired.

"Oliver, I won't push you."

"But the engagement gifts, I have to return them to you. It's not a small sum of money."

"I just hope your mother won't hold it against me."

She pressed the bank card into my hand.

"Get your rest."

Then she turned and walked out of the room, shooting Annette a hard look on her way.

Once Darlene was gone, Annette came in. Seeing nothing changed in my expression, she took my calm for surrender and made herself patient.

"Yesterday was my fault. From now on I'll always pick up when you call."

"Once you're discharged, we'll go shoot the wedding photos and lock in the venue."

"My mother and your father are getting old. They can't take this kind of strain."

As she spoke, she reached for my hand, and her gaze froze on the bare stretch of my middle finger.

"Where's the ring, Oliver?"

I looked down. There was a pale band of skin where it used to sit.

"Threw it out."

Annette's hand hung in the air, her lips pressing into a flat line.

"Oliver, what exactly do you want from me before you're satisfied?"

I lifted my eyes to her.

"Fire Leigh Delgado."

"No."

The refusal came almost before I'd finished.

"Why not?"

"He's worse at his job than anyone you've fired before him."

I held her eyes and laid out the plain fact of it.

Something uneasy flickered across her face, and her voice picked up heat.

"Oliver, you're thirty years old. Can you stop acting like some sulky college boy?"

"Ten years together, six living under the same roof, every friend and relative we have knows we're getting married, and you have to pick now to throw a fit?"

"If we break up at this point, how am I any different from a divorcée?"

Even with my mind made up, the words still landed wrong, and something inside me dropped.

I couldn't make myself believe that the girl who once cried in my arms the day I told her I loved her was the same person as this face in front of me, flushed and furious at being humiliated.