Chapter 5

VIVIAN'S POV

It was Chloe's handwriting on the cover: Nathaniel’s Hundred Wishes.

I shouldn't have opened it. I opened it anyway.

March 2nd — my birthday. Watch the northern lights together, kiss for ten full minutes under them.

May 20th — fireworks over the water, and I want him to propose right there, in front of everyone.

July 14th — skydive over New Zealand in a wedding dress. Fifteen thousand feet, so he never forgets the day.

It went on. Pages of it. Dates already checked off, little hearts drawn beside the ones they'd finished.

These past two weeks, while I thought he was buried in meetings.

He never gave me any of this. When some other couple's engagement went viral online, he'd look almost irritated and tell me we didn't need that kind of thing — that we were past needing proof, that the quiet, steady kind of love suited us better.

It wasn't that he'd stopped being romantic.

He'd just stopped being romantic with me.

I put the diary back exactly where I'd found it and wiped my face before he got in.

"You've been crying." He glanced over, all concern.

"Something in my eye." I kept my voice light and my face turned to the window.

He didn't push, just started the car. Neither of us spoke during the drive, not that I expected him to. I’d become used to the silence now.

Two turns from my aunt's, his phone rang. Property management. I caught enough through the speaker as they spoke. Something about a smoke alarm going off at the house, no answer at the door.

His whole body went rigid. Chloe was home alone.

He pulled over so fast I nearly hit the dash. "Vivi, I have to check on this. Chloe is there by herself. Go on ahead, I'll catch up if it's nothing."

He had my seatbelt off and the door open before I'd finished agreeing, and then I was standing on the shoulder of the road watching his taillights disappear.

I almost laughed. We didn't cook with open flame at home. Every appliance was top of the line and had never once malfunctioned. But it took exactly one phone call for him to leave me on the side of a road he wouldn't have left for any emergency of mine.

No taxis came. My aunt and uncle lived somewhere too far out for that kind of luck, so I walked the forty minutes there in dress shoes and by the time I rang the bell I'd stopped being angry and started just feeling tired down in my bones.

The door was opened by my aunt.

“Darling, we have been expecting you since. We’re just about to go to the hospital.” she said, pulling me into the house.

Grandma's blood pressure had spiked again and she fell. We went to the hospital and by the time I'd gotten we came back and I had her settled and promised Aunt Dana I'd come back sooner, I was too worn down to feel anything but the ache in my feet on the walk back.

I got home that evening, just seconds away from falling on my feet. Nathaniel and Chloe were curled up on the couch sharing a carton of instant noodles like teenagers, laughing at something on the television. He used to call that stuff garbage food.

He caught sight of me and scrambled up, his face twisting into a sheepish and guilty smile. "Vivi, I'm sorry, Chloe twisted her ankle, I got wrapped up taking care of her and lost track of the time."

I was too tired to perform outrage. I turned toward the bedroom instead.

He caught my sleeve before I could pass. "About that, Chloe was burning some old photos upstairs and the curtains in the guest room caught. It's a mess in there now, and with her ankle she can't manage the stairs to the second floor. Would you mind if she took the master, just until it's fixed? We could move up to the second floor."

I looked past him at her, curled up on my couch in my house, not even pretending to be sorry with a fake apologetic smile on her lips.

“Sorry, Vivi. It's just my ankle.”

My hands balled into fists. I turned to my husband instead. "You've already given up the master bedroom for her," I said. "Why stop there? Why don't you give me up to her too?"

He flinched like I’d struck him. "Vivi, that’s not — I would never —"

I didn’t wait to hear how he meant to finish it. I’d spent five years finishing his sentences for him, filling in the kindest version of whatever he couldn’t quite say. I was done doing that for free.

I went upstairs, took my coat and the bag I’d never fully unpacked from the night I found the diary, and came back down past both of them without slowing. Neither of them called after me the way I might once have imagined they would.

I almost laughed. What a joke! They couldn’t even pretend to care anymore.

The cool night air hit my face as I stepped onto the street, not sure which direction to go. Everywhere was quiet the way it only does close to midnight, streetlights doing more work than the moon. I didn’t have anywhere in particular to go. I only knew I wasn’t spending one more night under that roof.

My throat was tight, my whole body was burning from the activities of the day. I had to blink a few times to clear my eyes and grab onto walls to stay steady.

A cold trickle of sweat trailed down my back and I leaned against a tree, breathing heavily, my stomach churning. The cool evening air did little to help. I couldn't keep going. I sank to the ground at the base of the tree, curling in on myself as another cramp seized my abdomen. This was it. This was the limit.

As I crouched there, fighting the bile rising in my throat, a pair of headlights cut through the growing twilight and slowed to a stop beside me. A car door opened.

I looked up, my vision swimming, a shadowy silhouette approached me, dark, unsettling eyes made it past my hazy gaze as they dropped to where I was huddled on the floorground.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

That voice… I blinked slowly and his face became clear to me. It was the man from the hospital. He spoke again, before my brain could clear.

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time, heir to the Mercer family.”