Chapter Five

I checked into a hotel.

I knew it wouldn’t be more than a few hours before Liam found me.

The system had given me a list of ways I could die. I chose heart failure.

It said it wouldn’t hurt too much. It would be like falling asleep.

“Host, the three days aren’t up yet. You can wait a little longer.”

“I don’t want to wait,” I said. “Tonight. When I’m ready, you start.”

The system was quiet for a while. Then it said okay.

I sat by the balcony and talked with it about real estate in the real world.

It suggested buying a place first thing after I woke up, to get settled. I’d grown up in a small town anyway. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars or so would buy a nice house there, and the rest would let me live it up for quite a while.

We talked back and forth. The night wind was a little chilly, but I didn’t feel cold at all.

The doorbell rang.

Again and again, relentless.

I went to the door and looked through the peephole.

Liam was outside, his eyes bloodshot, his hair a mess, rumpled and haggard and wrecked.

I hadn’t seen him like that in a very long time.

For years now, people had flattered him, called him Mr. Hale, called him boss.

The days when people walked all over him—no one had seen that but me.

People can share hard times. They can’t share good ones.

Once Liam was back on his feet, the first thing he threw away was me—his crutch.

I didn’t open the door.

My phone rang. It was Liam.

With a door between us, I answered.

“Claire, open the door.” His voice was raw. “Please. Open the door.”

“Whatever you have to say, say it like this.”

There were a few seconds of silence on the line. Then I heard him crying, unable to hold it back.

“That was our baby. I’m the father!”

“Claire, how could you be so heartless!”

“That was our baby…”

Hearing those words now, all I felt was how ironic and ridiculous they were.

“She had every chance to be born. You’re the one who killed her.”

“It was you, Liam.”

“You did all of this.”

I leaned against the door and said, word by word:

“When our baby died, where were you? What were you doing? Do you have the guts to say it?”

Through the peephole, Liam swayed and caught himself against the wall.

His face was full of disbelief, full of anguish and regret.

Who was this act for now?

Cheating is cheating. What good would explaining do?

“Claire, we can have another baby.”

“Forgive me. Please forgive me. It was just a fling…”

“It’s a mistake a lot of men make. I hate Vanessa. I just wanted to get back at her, that’s all, I just wanted revenge—”

“I slept with someone else. The baby wasn’t yours.”

The words landed.

On the other end of the line, there was dead silence.

Through the peephole, I watched his face go dark and dangerous in an instant.

I laughed.

“Liam, I just made the same mistake you men make. Why are you so upset?”

His face went through a series of expressions, each uglier than the last.

Everything he’d just said had come right back around and hit him.

“I’ve had the wedding photos reprinted. Everything you threw away, I’ll replace, bit by bit. And the gift you bought me—I saw it.”

“Claire, I know I was wrong. I really do.”

“After all these years together, you can’t just decide you don’t want this anymore.”

Liam kept talking at the door, on and on, as if enough apologies could make up for the fact that he’d cheated.

I was sick of listening. I closed my eyes and said to the system in my head:

“Start.”

A sharp pain exploded in my chest.

It was like a hand had closed around my heart and was squeezing, tighter and tighter.

I pressed a hand to my chest, my back against the door, and slowly slid down to the floor.

On the phone, Liam was still talking. “Hit me, yell at me, whatever you want. Please, Claire, don’t give up on me…”

Just then, the other phone in his pocket started ringing, urgent and insistent.

He hesitated. Then he answered.

Through the door, I heard every word.

“What do you mean, she slit her wrists?”

“Tell Vanessa to stop this nonsense!”

A moment later: “…I’m on my way.”

He came back to my line, talking fast. “Claire, something urgent came up. Tomorrow—I promise I’ll come back tomorrow. Get some rest.”

He hung up before I could answer.

In the hallway, his footsteps faded away.

I leaned against the door, listening to the dial tone, my heartbeat slowing with every beat.

He didn’t know that on this side of the door, I was dying.

Those were the last words we would ever say to each other.