From that day on, Sean changed.
Not all at once.
But enough for everyone to feel it.
He stopped going to the apartment where Chloe lived.
Stopped attending parties.
Stopped appearing in gossip columns.
He stayed at the hospital like a man trying to repay ten years of cruelty in ten days.
It didn’t work.
Of course it didn’t.
Some debts are too old.
Too deep.
Too soaked through with blood.
Still, he tried.
He fed me soup when I was too weak to hold a spoon.
Wrapped blankets around my legs when my feet got cold.
Learned exactly how warm I liked my water.
Stayed awake through the nights I hurt too much to sleep.
Sometimes I’d open my eyes and catch him staring at me with that shattered, unbearable expression.
As if each breath I took was both relief and torture.
One afternoon, I asked Lily to leave us alone for a few minutes.
She looked wary, but she listened.
Sean stood by the window, tense and silent.
I said, “I need a favor.”
He turned instantly.
“Anything.”
“I want a divorce.”
The silence after that felt endless.
Then he laughed softly, like he hadn’t heard me right.
“No.”
“Sean.”
“No.”
I looked at him and repeated, “I want a divorce.”
His eyes reddened almost at once.
He came to the bedside and knelt down.
Actually knelt.
For the first time in all the years I had known him, Sean York knelt in front of me.
“No,” he said again.
His voice was breaking now.
“You can hate me.”
“You can stop loving me.”
“You can curse me for the rest of your life.”
“But don’t ask me for that.”
“Megan… don’t leave me with that.”
I stared at him for a long time.
Then I reached out and touched his hair once.
Very lightly.
“Sean.”
“I’m already leaving.”
“It’s just that this way… you won’t still be my husband after I’m gone.”
He caught my wrist and pressed his face against my hand.
His shoulders shook.
I had never seen him cry like that.
Not even when his grandmother died.
Not even when he was penniless and starving and trying to act brave for me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The words came out again and again.
But apologies are strange things.
Sometimes they come too late to heal.
Sometimes they only make the wound more obvious.
I looked at the ceiling and said quietly, “Sean, if I forgive you now, it would be unfair to the girl I used to be.”
The girl in the snow.
The girl who trusted him.
The girl who stood outside that club with tears in her eyes and still tried to explain.
That girl had suffered too much.
I couldn’t betray her.
He slowly raised his head.
His face was wet.
After a long time, he asked in a thin, uneven voice, “Then… can you at least not hate me?”
I thought about it.
Really thought about it.
Then I answered honestly.
“I’m too tired to hate anyone anymore.”
That seemed to hurt him even more.
A few days later, my condition worsened.
The doctors didn’t say much.
They didn’t need to.
Everyone could tell.
I started sleeping almost all the time.
And when I was awake, I drifted in and out so easily that even speaking became exhausting.
One evening, I called Lily close and asked her to bring me paper.
She understood immediately.
She cried while helping me sit up.
I wrote slowly.
Every word felt heavy.
I left Lily my jewelry, the apartment under my name, my savings, and a few letters she wasn’t allowed to open until later.
For Sean, I left almost nothing.
Only one sentence.
Don’t come looking for me after I die.
I signed an organ donation agreement too.
Whatever still worked, they could take.
Maybe some part of me could stay useful.
Maybe some stranger would live longer because I had not.
When Sean found out, he looked like he had been stabbed straight through.
He held the paper so tightly it trembled in his hand.
“You’d rather disappear completely,” he said, “than leave anything to me?”
I smiled faintly.
“That’s right.”
He stood there for a long time.
Then, with red eyes and a voice that was barely more than air, he asked—
“Were you ever happy with me at all?”
This time I didn’t answer.
Because the truth was too long.
And I didn’t have enough strength left to tell it.