Chapter 1

The living room was bathed in cold white light, making Rebecca Leavitt's profile look almost unreal, as delicate and flawless as a marble statue.

I sat curled in my wheelchair and watched the woman I'd loved for ten years.

I'd been diagnosed with congenital dilated cardiomyopathy five years ago. Since then, my heart had swollen far beyond its normal size, stretched so dangerously that it could fail at any moment.

The doctors had given me two choices—get a heart transplant, or wait for the day my heart would inevitably fail.

The transplant alone would cost one million dollars, not including the treatment and medication I'd need afterward.

Our entire family had pooled everything we had, draining every available bank account, and we'd still managed to come up with only 300,000 dollars.

When Rebecca married me, I hadn't gotten sick yet.

Back then, I was the youngest lead designer at an architectural firm, while she taught dance at the art college next door.

She'd designed her own wedding dress. Whenever she spun around on the dance floor, the skirt opened around her like a white magnolia in bloom.

"William," she'd told me, "I want to spend my whole life by your side."

Then, I got sick.

I couldn't work anymore. I couldn't afford to get too excited or emotional. We couldn't even be intimate anymore.

Rebecca quit teaching at the college and opened a dance studio for kids instead.

She left home at 7:00 am every day and rarely returned before 10:00 pm, usually carrying the faint smell of sweaty children and cheap stage makeup on her clothes.

She stopped wearing dresses, stopped putting on makeup, and eventually stopped talking about dance altogether.

For her birthday last year, I saved up and bought her a silk dress.

Rebecca took one look at the price tag and returned it on the spot.

"3,800 dollars? We could get you half a month's worth of medication with that money."

She used the refund to buy me an oxygen concentrator instead. The machine hummed beside our bed every night, and Rebecca told me, "Maybe this will help you sleep better."

What she didn't know was that I barely slept at all.

Every night, I lay awake listening to her turn over beside me, sigh into the darkness, and sometimes choke back quiet sobs when she thought I was asleep.

I knew how tired she was.

The dance studio was struggling, and parents often delayed tuition payments.

Mom had come from our hometown to help, but she and Rebecca argued over little things almost every day.

My sister, Winona Zander, was still in graduate school, so we were helping with her tuition and living expenses.

Dad had injured his back after falling at a construction accident, and when his employer disappeared, the medical bills were left for us to pay.

Rebecca was carrying the weight of all of it.

Last week, she came home with bruises on her arm. When I asked what happened, she brushed it off. "One of the parents got upset and shoved me."

Late that night, I heard her speaking quietly into the phone while she was on the balcony. "Mr. Wagner, I'll take the performance. I'll wear whatever you want me to… We can work out the price."

After the call ended, Rebecca crouched on the balcony and cried for ten minutes. She didn't make a sound. Her shoulders simply shook.

I lay in the bedroom with one hand pressed to my chest, feeling my damaged heart beat beneath my palm.

Each beat felt like another second ticking off a clock.