After I Died, My Fiancé Went Mad

When Luca came home, it was already one in the morning.

I sat in the living room waiting for him. The steak on the table had gone cold, and the candles had nearly burned down.

Today was our tenth year together.

Before he left that morning, he had promised me he would be back by eight.

I had waited five hours.

"Why are you still up?" He took off his coat and came over to me. "Is the leg hurting again?"

I didn't answer.

He bent to lift me, meaning to move me from the sofa to the wheelchair. A faint scent of roses drifted from his collar.

Not my perfume.

I saw a lipstick mark on his white shirt.

"Did Victoria kiss you?" I asked outright.

Luca looked down, and his face changed.

"The reception was crowded. She'd had too much to drink and stumbled into me. It was only a brush."

"Why didn't you push her away?"

"Eve, I've been in meetings for over ten hours today, and two men died at the port. I didn't notice."

He lifted me into the wheelchair anyway, then crouched to help me into my slippers. His movements were gentle, no different from usual.

He had always been good to me.

When my legs hurt at night, he got up to massage them. When I lost my temper and threw things, he never once struck back. Every hospital visit, he pushed his work aside and came with me himself.

But that didn't mean there was nothing wrong between us.

Three years ago, the warehouse at South Harbor exploded. Luca was trapped inside. I ran in and shoved him clear, and a falling steel beam hit me instead.

The doctors saved my life. They couldn't save my legs.

Before the accident, I was a candidate for principal dancer at the Chicago Ballet.

After it, I could only sit in a wheelchair and watch other people dance.

Luca looked after me for three years. At first, he came to rehab with me every day. He said that whether or not I could stand again, he would marry me.

Then his business grew and grew, and the time he had for me shrank.

Six months ago, Victoria Vale came into his life.

She was a lawyer, and a daughter of the Vale family of New York. She helped Luca win the port contract, dealt with the police investigation, and once even took an assassination attempt for him.

They never ran out of things to say to each other.

Between Luca and me, there was nothing left but pills, rehab, and hospital bills.

"What day is it today?" I asked.

Luca went blank for a moment.

A few seconds later, he saw the cake on the table, and his face filled with guilt.

"I'm sorry. I forgot."

"It's fine."

I picked up the test report from the edge of the table and slid it under the blanket over my legs.

It read: malignant spinal cord tumor, late stage, expected survival three to six months.

I had meant to tell him tonight.

Now I didn't want to.

After Luca went to shower, his phone buzzed on the table. A message from Victoria: The witness is safe. Thank you for being with me tonight.

I stared at the words "being with me" for a long time. Once, no matter how late it was, Luca would tell me where he had been. Now he only said the company needed him. He wasn't lying to me on purpose. He had simply grown used to keeping me out of his life.

When the water in the bathroom stopped, I put the phone back where it had been. Luca came out with a hot towel, laid it over my knees, and set the pills in my palm one by one.

"I'm not going in tomorrow. I'll take you to the hospital."

"No need."

"You've been losing weight too fast."

"Because looking at you kills my appetite."

His hand paused, but he still handed me the water. "Take your pills first. If you want to yell at me, yell after."

I swallowed the pills with my head down, not daring to look at him. If he had been a little crueler to me, leaving might have been easier.