When He Faked His Death I Chose Mine

1 On the way to City Hall, Chase slammed his foot on the brake and told me he couldn’t marry me. I laughed, reaching across the console to swat his shoulder, expecting the crooked grin he always wore when he took a bit too far. Then he rolled up his sleeve. Under the harsh daylight, the pale skin along his forearm was mottled with a constellation of needle punctures, bruised purple and yellow around the veins. "Multiple myeloma," he said, his voice flat, staring straight through the windshield. "Diagnosed three months ago. I didn't want to drag you down with me. Walk away now, Laurel. While you still can." I tore the printed clinical summary into shreds right in front of him, my hands shaking so violently the paper barely gave way, and slapped him across the face with everything I had left. "If you dare die on me, Chase Montgomery," I sobbed, tasting salt and terror, "I swear to God I'll go right behind you." From that morning on, the life I had planned vanished. I liquidated every single piece of gear I had spent six years collecting for my photography studio—the Hasselblads, the Profoto packs, the prime lenses—sold off below market value in desperate, parking-lot cash transfers. I resigned from my six-figure art director position without giving two weeks' notice, surrendered my apartment lease, and moved onto a squeaking, vinyl cot in the oncology wing hallway. In the eleventh month, Chase crashed. They wheeled him past the heavy double doors into the Intensive Care Unit, alarms screaming in an awful, rhythmic panic. His primary physician, Nathan, pulled me into the sterile alcove by the fire exit, his expression weighed down with practiced gravity. "Prepare yourself, Laurel," he murmured, his hand resting heavy on my shoulder. "It’s a matter of hours. Make your peace." I didn’t cry. The capacity for tears had been burned out of me months ago. I walked out of the hospital into the freezing rain and went straight to the twenty-four-hour CVS two blocks down. I emptied the final ninety dollars in my checking account on a refill of diazepam. Thirty-seven pills. Back in the dim cubicle of the ICU, beneath the suffocating hum of the filtered air, I swallowed them dry, four at a time, until the bottle was hollow. Then I sat on the edge of the mattress, slipped my fingers into his cooling, limp hand, and rested my forehead against his knuckles. "I promised I wouldn't leave you behind," I whispered. The first wash of caustic heat bloomed in my stomach. A searing, chemical wave that clawed its way up my esophagus. And then, Chase opened his eyes. The erratic zig-zag on the vitals monitor straightened, settling into a crisp, rhythmic, perfectly normal sinus wave. He turned his head toward me on the pillow. The hollow, half-dead glaze in his eyes had cleared completely. He smiled—bright, amused, entirely alive. "No myeloma, babe," he said softly. "It was all a setup." The world shrank to a pinpoint of dizzying white noise. "I just needed to know," he continued, his tone conversational, laced with an intoxicating sense of triumph. "I needed to see how far you’d actually go for me. If anyone in this godforsaken world was truly capable of unconditional devotion." He reached out, his thumb catching the edge of my jaw. "Thank you for loving me this much, Laurel. Tomorrow morning, we're going back to City Hall. For real this time." I parted my lips, but my vocal cords felt like rusted iron cables, paralyzed in place. The cancer had been a theater piece. The needles, the forged charts, the agonizing eleven months of watching him wither. All of it had been staged. The only thing that was real was the thirty-seven sedatives dissolving into my bloodstream. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue? Are you in shock?" Chase sat up. He moved with an easy, fluid athleticism that made a mockery of the frail shell he’d inhabited for nearly a year. He reached out and wiped a stray tear from my cheek with sickening tenderness. The fire in my gut flared violently, twisting into an agonizing spasm. I gaped at him, trying to draw breath, but my windpipe felt clogged with wet sand. Not a syllable came out. The diazepam was surging into my central nervous system faster than I had anticipated. A heavy, iron vertigo rolled over me, dimming the edges of my peripheral vision, while the mechanical beeps of the monitors grated against my skull like screeching tires. Chase chuckled under his breath. He reached down and yanked the IV catheter from the back of his hand, tossing it onto the rolling tray without flinching. A drop of bright red blood welled on his skin, flush against flesh that was radiant, rested, and impossibly healthy. "All right, don't be mad at me," he murmured, cupping my face in both palms, his eyes shining with unadulterated conquest. "I know it was a little extreme. But I had to hear you say it again." He leaned in close enough for me to smell the crisp mint on his breath. "You told me: If you dare die, I’ll go right behind you. Do you have any idea what that did to me, Laurel? For a woman who loves me like that, I’d hand over the world." The door swung open with a dull thud. Dr. Nathan Ellis stepped inside. He peeled off his white lab coat, tossing it carelessly over the back of an armchair, his tie loosened at the collar. "All right, Montgomery," Nathan sighed, checking his Rolex. "Show's over. Clear out the room. Do you have any idea how many administrative hoops I had to jump through, how many shift nurses I had to pay off to keep your fake terminal file from hitting the chief of medicine’s desk?" Chase glanced over his shoulder, chest puffing with unrepentant pride. "Put it on my tab, Nate. We're hitting the clerk's office first thing in the morning, and drinks are on me tomorrow night. You’re sitting at the head of the table." Nathan walked to the foot of the bed, his gaze finally sliding over to where I sat, rigid and pale against the wall. "Looks like your girl is about to murder you," Nathan noted, half-smirking, though there was a flicker of discomfort in his posture. "Can't blame her. Eleven months of living in a hallway on a five-hundred-dollar cot, quitting a creative director gig that paid six figures... Honestly, Laurel, you're a saint. I watched you break your back out there. Even I was starting to feel guilty." I stared at Nathan. His outline was splintering, cleaving into two shimmering, distorted shadows. Eleven months. Every night spent weeping on cold linoleum, bargaining with God, skipping meals to afford his compound prescriptions—it had all been an inside joke between two fraternity brothers testing the limits of an emotional lab rat. The pills were melting in my stomach acid now, an invisible poison seeping into every vessel. My extremities went completely numb. The sensation in my fingertips vanished, replaced by an icy prickling that crept steadily toward my wrists. Chase wrapped an arm around my shoulder, hauling my limp frame against his broad chest. "See that? Even Nate feels bad for you," he teased, his mouth pressing into the crown of my hair. "You went through hell, sweetheart. But starting tomorrow, whatever Mrs. Montgomery wants, she gets. Triple the budget. Anything." I tried to push him away. I willed my muscles to shove him back, but my arm merely drifted upward, useless as wet paper, before sliding down to clutch weakly at the hem of his hospital gown. Chase caught my hand in his, frowning slightly. "Why are your fingers like ice?" He rubbed my hand between his warm, calloused palms, bringing it up to brush against his lips. "They keep these damn rooms freezing," he muttered. "Come on. Let's go home." Nathan leaned against the doorframe, jingling his car keys. "Yeah, get out of here. Stop making the single guys sick. But seriously, Laurel—Chase is an arrogant bastard, but the guy’s obsessed with you. He’s always had this pathological need for absolute certainty. Now that you’ve passed his little loyalty test with flying colors, you two are set for life." I couldn't look at Nathan’s face. My breathing had grown ragged, shallow and wet, each inhalation scraping against my lungs with the sharp, metallic stench of copper and bile. Chase noticed I wasn't moving. He reached behind my neck, giving it a playful, possessive squeeze. "Laurel. Talk to me. Where's that sharp tongue of yours? You had plenty of fight in you when you slapped me in the car." His tone was indulgent, like a father coaxing a petulant toddler out of a tantrum. I looked into his eyes. Tears leaked unbidden from the corners of my lids—not from heartbreak, but from the brutal physiological onslaught of acute sedative toxicity shutting down my autonomic nervous system. Chase sighed softly, shifting his weight, and scooped me up into his arms, carrying me bridal-style off the cot. "Fine. Give me the silent treatment," he whispered against my temple. "When we get back to the house, you can punish me all you want." He carried me out into the corridor. As we passed the nurses’ station, two of the shift nurses who had watched me cry myself to sleep on the waiting room floor for three hundred days suddenly dipped their heads, busying themselves with charts, unable to meet my eyes. They had known. The whole wing had known. I was the only clown in the circus, slowly bleeding herself dry for a ghost. I slumped against Chase's chest, my ear pressed to his sternum. His heart was beating with an unbearable, offensive vitality—strong, rhythmic, indestructible. While mine was fluttering like a moth drowning in oil. At the elevators, Chase looked down, his brow furrowing as the overhead fluorescent lights illuminated my features. "You look terrible, Laurel. Ghost white. Have you been skipping meals again?" A flicker of genuine concern crossed his features. "If I knew you were running yourself this ragged, I would've cut the act short last month. It's fine. You have the rest of your life to sleep." The elevator chimed, the stainless steel doors sliding open. He carried me inside. "First the license tomorrow," he said, staring at the floor indicator, his voice brimming with unbridled anticipation. "Then we’re booking the flight to Iceland. You wanted to see the northern lights, right? We’ll rent out the whole damn resort. I swear to you, Laurel. I will never lie to you again." I let my eyes drift shut. My throat seized, burning with an acrid, chemical reflux that tasted like pure ash. Just twenty minutes ago, I had stood at the drugstore counter, my eyes swollen, my phone showing an account balance of twelve dollars and forty cents. The clerk had looked at me with cautious pity, asking if I was okay. I had smiled, told him I was fine, and walked out holding my own execution in a small amber vial. I had thought I was staging an act of holy, boundless devotion. A tragic, poetic plunge into the dark so he wouldn't have to wander into eternity alone. And now, my martyrdom was nothing more than the punchline to his vanity. The elevator dropped smoothly toward the ground floor. Beside me, Chase watched the numbers tick down, the triumphant smile never leaving his lips. "Smile, Laurel," he murmured softly. "Tomorrow, you become a Montgomery." 2 The night air outside the hospital hit me like a bucket of ice water. Chase carried me across the asphalt of the physician's parking lot, the asphalt damp from the evening mist. He clicked the key fob, unlocking his Range Rover, and eased me into the passenger seat with the kind of practiced delicacy reserved for heirloom porcelain. My clothes were plastered to my ribs, drenched in cold, clammy sweat. Every bone in my body felt hollowed out, humming with a deep, vibrating chill. Chase rounded the hood, climbed behind the wheel, and immediately dialed the climate control to eighty degrees. The vents roared to life, blasting hot, dry air against my face. "Why are you shivering like that?" He reached across, pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, his brow knit tight. "Is your blood sugar crashing again? Hang on, I've got mints in the console." He popped open the leather armrest and rummaged through the clutter, pulling out a tin of Altoids. He extracted a chalky white disc and pressed it directly against my lips. "Open up, Laurel." I leaned back against the headrest, my head lolling to the side. My vision was warping into grain and shadow; his face doubled, then tripled, swimming in the cabin light. My jaw had clamped shut in a violent, involuntary spasm triggered by the acid crawling up my throat. I couldn't part my teeth even if I wanted to. Chase’s patience thinned, though he kept his tone light, almost chiding. "Still pouting?" He scoffed gently, snapping the tin shut and tossing it back into the console. "I told you the cancer was a lie. You should be down on your knees thanking God, not sulking. Or were you actually hoping I’d drop dead?" He threw the SUV into reverse, swinging the wheel around with one hand. As we merged onto the empty avenue, the amber ambient lights along the dash washed over him. With his free hand, he fished into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, square box of red velvet. He flicked it open with his thumb. Nestled inside was an emerald-cut diamond the size of a quail's egg, flashing cold, prismatic fire in the dimness. "Take a look," he said, turning the box toward me, his voice rich with satisfaction. "Had it flown in from Antwerp four weeks ago. I was just waiting for the right moment to give it to you. Do you like it?" I forced my pupils to track the stone. Eleven months ago, in order to pay for the first six-week cycle of his non-existent experimental immunotherapy, I had sold my entire professional kit. I remembered sitting in the passenger seat of this very car, watching a stranger load my cases of lenses into the trunk of a Honda, while Chase held my hand with tears pooling in his eyes, telling me how sorry he was, how he had destroyed my dreams. And what had I said to him? Gear can be replaced, Chase. You can't. Now, looking at the ice sitting in that velvet box, I realized the retail markup on that single diamond could have purchased my photography studio three times over. It was sickening. A farce so absolute it defied comprehension. My left hand twitched against my lap, an involuntary, neurological spasm. Chase took it as an invitation. He lifted the ring from its velvet slot, reached for my limp left hand, and shoved the heavy platinum band down my fourth finger. "A perfect fit," he declared, holding my hand up to admire it against the dash light. "I knew it would look incredible on you." He didn't notice that the skin beneath my fingernails was already turning a dull, suffocating slate-blue. The Bluetooth audio system chimed sharply through the speakers. The dashboard screen lit up with Trevor’s name. Chase tapped the steering wheel control. "Speak of the devil." Trevor’s drawling, loud voice boomed through the high-end sound system, backgrounded by the muffled thumping of a bassline. "Montgomery! What's the word, Lazarus? Did you rise from the grave or what? Nate just dropped a bomb in the group chat—said Laurel was actually ready to drink the Kool-Aid with you. Are you serious? Does pure, unadulterated devotion like that even exist in the wild? The boys are losing their minds." Chase glanced at me, the corners of his mouth twitching upward, utterly incapable of hiding his bloated ego. "Of course it does," Chase said smoothly. "You think I'd waste my time with the gold-diggers you cycle through? When I pick a woman, Trevor, she’s in it to the death." Trevor whistled through his teeth. "Well, the curtain’s down, man. You’ve gotta bring the saint out for a victory lap. We’re at the Reserve downtown. Private room in the back. Top shelf is already flowing. We're breaking open the good stuff for you two." Chase hesitated, his eyes lingering on my slumped posture. "Laurel's looking pretty wiped out. Sweating through her sweater. Not sure dragging her to a club right now is the best move." I gathered the microscopic dregs of my remaining will, forced my cracked lips apart, and pushed out a ragged, dying whisper: "...No..." Trevor heard it through the sensitive cabin mic and burst out laughing. "Man, listen to her! Her voice is shot! You haven't even been out of the ICU for an hour and you’ve already worn her out, haven't you, you animal? Don't be a buzzkill, Chase. Bring her down. Five minutes. The whole crew wants to toast the most loyal broad in the tri-state area. Anyone who no-shows is dead to the group." Chase’s vanity won. It was never a fair fight. He reached over, tweaking my cheek between two fingers. "All right. Twenty minutes." He hung up, flicked the turn signal, and veered toward the highway leading downtown. "Hear that, baby?" he said, reaching over to smooth back the damp strands of hair glued to my forehead. "The whole city wants to bow down to the future Mrs. Montgomery. We'll drop in, let them buy us a round, and then I'll take you home to bed. Deal?" I looked at him, my vision tunneling fast, the black margins creeping inward like spilled ink on silk. The diazepam was shutting down the brainstem now. Every breath required a conscious, monumental command that my brain was growing too numb to send. The dull ache in my belly suddenly sharpened into an unbearable, white-hot twist, as if someone had taken an iron ladle and scraped the lining of my stomach. My torso buckled inward, my knees pulling up toward my chest as I clutched my abdomen, a silent, dry heave ripping through my throat. Nothing came up. Only a bitter, chemical foam that burned the roof of my mouth. Chase finally caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He tapped the brakes, pulling the heavy vehicle onto the shoulder under the amber glow of a highway streetlight. "Laurel? Hey, what's wrong with you?" He unbuckled his seatbelt, leaning over the center console to rub my back, his hand heavy and jarring against my shivering spine. "Is it a stomach ulcer? I told those incompetent quacks at the hospital to make sure you were eating actual meals while you were babysitting me. God, you can't trust anyone in public healthcare to do their jobs." He grumbled under his breath, shifting the blame outward with practiced ease. It never occurred to him—not for a fraction of a second—that he was the architect of the agony in front of him. My fingernails dug into the perforated leather of the passenger seat, tearing through the stitching as another wave of convulsive nausea racked my frame. Chase caught my wrists, pinning them gently down. "Stop that. You're going to rip your nails off. Just breathe, all right? Hold on for ten minutes. As soon as we get to the lounge, I’ll have the kitchen whip up some hot ginger tea and broth. It’ll settle your stomach." 3 The Reserve was hidden behind an unmarked brass door in an alley off the financial district. Chase practically carried me through the private corridor, his arm banded around my waist, lifting my dragging feet over the plush, patterned carpet. When he shoved open the heavy oak door of the private VIP room, the bass from the subterranean sound system hit my skull like a sledgehammer. The air inside was thick with the suffocating musk of expensive cologne, Cuban cigar smoke, and spilled bourbon. A violent wave of dizziness tilted the room ninety degrees. Trevor was the first on his feet, raising a crystal tumbler of scotch and letting out a piercing whistle. "Here they are! The martyr and the king!" A dozen faces—men I had seen at charity galas and Hamptons polo matches, women draped in designer silk who had ignored my existence for eleven months—erupted into cheers, raising their glasses in unison. Garrett, sitting in the corner with a half-empty glass of Macallan, strolled over with a lazy grin plastered across his face. "Seriously, Laurel," Garrett drawled, leaning against the back of the leather banquette. "They need to mint a medal for you. Most girls these days hear the word 'terminal' and they're clearing out your bank account and booking a flight to Miami before the lab results even come back. To actually say you'd go into the ground with him? Damn, Chase. You won the lottery." Chase’s chest swelled. The triumphant flush on his neck was almost incandescent. He guided my limp body onto the deep center sofa, shoving a glass of lukewarm water into my trembling fingers. "Shut up, Garrett," Chase said, though he was practically glowing. "Don't overwhelm her. She’s had a hell of a day. Still in shock. Be gentle with her." I slumped back against the tufted leather. My spine had turned to water; gravity was pulling me down, dragging me sideways into the cushions. The heavy crystal tumbler slipped through my numb fingers. Smash. The glass shattered against the marble tabletop, water and shards splashing across the polished stone. The laughter died instantly. The room went dead silent. Chase’s brow twitched, a flash of irritation breaking through his smug facade. But he caught himself quickly, mindful of his audience. He pulled a linen napkin from the ice bucket and began dabbing at the dampness on my bare wrists. "Baby, come on," he whispered, his lips brushing my ear, his voice dropping into a tight, strained hiss. "Are you still pulling this? I told you it was a joke. You should be celebrating. There are people watching, Laurel. Don't embarrass me." Don't embarrass me. A bitter, hysterical laugh tried to rise in my throat, but it died as a muffled gasp. To him, my near-dead body was just an accessory that wasn't performing its assigned role in his grand display of masculine dominance. Trevor leaned over the table, squinting down at my grey, clammy skin. "Hey, man... she looks really bad. Like, grey-bad. Is she actually sick?" Chase waved a dismissive hand, reaching for a bottle of sparkling water. "She spent eleven straight months sleeping on a cot in a hallway, Trevor. How would you look? I kept telling her to go home, but she refused. If I coughed in my sleep, she was calling three nurses into the room. She’s just run herself into the ground." A chorus of appreciative chuckles rippled through the banquettes. "Unbelievable," someone muttered. "Chase, stop bragging, you're making the rest of us look like trash." Garrett picked up an unopened bottle of Armand de Brignac, popping the gold foil with his thumbnail. "To Laurel! The last loyal woman in North America!" I sat there, the roaring in my ears swelling into a deafening, metallic pitch. My heart felt heavy, dragging like a pendulum weighted with lead, skipping every third beat. The walls of the lounge seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't die on this leather sofa while a room full of trust-fund narcissists toasted my corpse with vintage champagne. I pressed my palms against the armrest, digging deep for whatever microscopic shred of adrenaline remained in my adrenal glands, and tried to stand. The moment my weight transferred to my feet, my knees folded like wet cardboard. I pitched violently forward toward the broken glass on the table. "Look out!" Trevor yelled. Chase moved instinctively, his long arm snaking around my ribs, hauling me backward against his chest before I could hit the marble. "Laurel!" There was a real edge of panic in his voice now. "What the hell are you doing? You can't even stand up!" I collapsed into his lap, my mouth gaping open, dragging air into my lungs in short, desperate rasps. Cold sweat dripped from my bangs, stinging the corners of my unblinking eyes. My trachea felt compressed, as if a heavy boot were resting squarely on my throat. Chase tapped my cheek, his slaps growing firmer, more frantic. "Laurel? Hey! Stop messing around. You're scaring me." Garrett set the champagne down, his grin completely gone. "Chase... her lips are blue, man. You need to get her to a hospital. Right now." Chase glared up at him, his face darkening with stubborn, defensive pride. "She was just in a hospital! She doesn't need an ER, she needs sleep!" He looked down at me, his jaw clenching hard enough to crack enamel. "Laurel Brooks, that is enough," he commanded, his voice dropping to a harsh, private rasp. "I know you're furious about the lie. But you don't get to stage a medical emergency just to spite me. I gave up eleven months of my life to see where your heart was. Playing the dying swan in front of my friends isn't going to change anything." He thought I was faking it. He genuinely believed this was an act of emotional protest—a tantrum designed to embarrass him in front of his peers. I slowly rolled my neck back against his shoulder. Through the thickening, milky veil of my failing vision, I looked up at the sharp, aristocratic contours of his face. The vanity. The hollow, monstrous arrogance. My cracked lips parted, and despite the fire tearing my organs apart, I smiled. A faint, terrible, mocking crescent. Chase froze. In all the years we had spent together, he had never seen me look at him like that. It wasn't anger. It wasn't grief. It was pure, unadulterated contempt. "What is that?" He seized my chin, his grip bruising. "What are you smiling at? I told you I’d make it up to you! I'll buy you the best studio in the city tomorrow! I'll fund whatever gallery show you want! What more do you want from me, Laurel? When does this stop?" Trevor stepped back, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Hey, Chase... seriously, take her home. She’s out of it. You've got the marriage license thing in the morning anyway. Don't blow it." The mention of the license seemed to pull Chase back from the ledge of his temper. His grip on my face softened. He let out a long, ragged exhale and slid his arms beneath my thighs, lifting me once more. "Right. The license," he muttered to the room, adjusting his jacket over my shivering shoulders. "Drink whatever you want tonight, boys. It’s on my card. Tomorrow afternoon, at the usual spot—I’m bringing Mrs. Montgomery to lunch." 4 The streets of the city were dead and washed in shadow. Chase didn't take me to our penthouse. Instead, he drove toward the municipal district, the Range Rover gliding through the mist before pulling up beneath the bare, weeping willow trees lining the avenue outside City Hall. He glanced at the clock glowing on the dashboard. 3:32 AM. Over five hours until the county clerk’s doors would open. "We're waiting here," he said softly, turning to look at me, a feverish, obsessive glow lighting up his dark eyes. "I want to be the first in line. I want us to be the very first license they issue today. I want the whole city to know that Laurel Brooks belongs to me." I leaned against the window, the cold glass pressing against my temple. I was beyond speech now. My hearing was degrading rapidly, drowning under a sound like rushing water. His voice seemed to travel from the bottom of a deep well—muffled, distorted, stripped of consequence. My core temperature was cratering. A profound, leaden stiffness had settled into my fingers, my toes, the joints of my knees. Each breath was a labor of friction, scraping against my bronchi like coarse sandpaper. Seeing that I wasn't responding, Chase unclicked his belt, hopped out into the chill, and came around to open the passenger door. "It's too stuffy in the car," he said, entirely blind to the reality unfolding before him. "Let's wait on the steps." He dragged me out. My legs dragging uselessly on the concrete, he hauled me onto his back, hooking his arms under my knees, carrying me piggyback up the wide, granite staircase toward the towering bronze doors. The pre-dawn wind was sharp, carrying the bite of late November. It lashed against my bare neck like tiny blades. "Do you remember this time last year?" he murmured, his breath forming small white clouds in the darkness as he climbed. "We came here on a whim. You got cold feet on the second landing and dragged me back to the car, saying you weren't ready. Saying we needed to build something real first." He reached the top landing, sinking down onto the broad, icy stone steps, pulling my limp body into his lap so that my head rested against the hollow of his shoulder. "After we went home that day, I went in for a full executive physical," he chuckled softly, staring out over the empty plaza. "The doctor told me my bloodwork was immaculate. Heart of an ox. But that night, lying in bed, I started wondering: What if I wasn't fine? What if I was rotting from the inside out? Would she stay? Or would she run?" He tightened his arms around my waist. "And you stayed, Laurel. You gave up your cameras. You gave up your sleep. You bathed me with warm sponges when I pretended my joints were aching too badly to walk to the shower. Those eleven months... God, they were the best months of my life." A faint, shuddering rattle escaped my throat. My eyelids had drifted shut, too heavy to lift. In the dimming theater of my mind, the past year played out in rapid, disjointed flashes: Bowing my head to an arrogant commercial real estate agent, begging him to return our security deposit so I could buy Chase's synthetic albumin. Walking through the terminal market at four in the morning in the sleet, hunting for clean organic produce because I thought his liver couldn't filter pesticides. Hiding behind the heavy steel door of the hospital stairwell, biting down on my own forearm until blood ran down my wrist just so he wouldn't hear me sobbing. All of it. Every drop of my soul, poured out into the dirt. Not to save a dying man. But to stroke the fragile, sociopathic ego of a boy who needed to know he owned me completely. Chase took my left hand, playing with the cold band of the diamond, still rambling into the quiet night. "We'll do a small ceremony first, just close friends. Then a massive reception at the estate in the spring. Two kids. A boy who looks like you, a girl who looks like me..." My chest barely rose. The interval between my breaths stretched—five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen. The thirty-seven tablets had finally crossed the blood-brain barrier in full force, severing the last fragile electrical impulses running from my brain to my heart. The agony in my stomach suddenly vanished. The bone-deep chill faded, replaced by an extraordinary, weightless warmth. The howling wind, the hum of the distant traffic, the sound of his relentless voice—all of it slipped quietly away, like a radio dial turning slowly to static. Chase must have noticed the absolute stillness. He paused mid-sentence. "Laurel?" Silence. "Hey. Did you fall asleep?" He lifted a hand, tapping my cheek with his knuckles. What met his skin was not the warmth of a sleeping lover, but the stiff, unyielding chill of a corpse. He stiffened. Slowly, hesitantly, his index finger drifted down to hover beneath my nostrils. No air. Not a breath. The easy, possessive grin on his face vanished, shattered into a mask of pure, uncomprehending shock. "Laurel?" He spun me around in his arms, gripping my shoulders, pulling me face-to-face. My head fell back, resting against the cold granite, my unseeing eyes half-open beneath the harsh sodium glow of the municipal streetlights. "Laurel!" The panic broke through, high and shrill and utterly unhinged. He grabbed my cheeks, violently shaking my head. "Stop it! Stop playing around! Open your eyes!" Nothing moved. He lunged forward, pressing two trembling fingers hard into the hollow beneath my jaw, searching for the carotid artery. Under the cold, paper-thin skin, there was only stillness. On the freezing steps of City Hall, where he had brought me to claim his ultimate trophy, I had slipped through his fingers forever.